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Yaron Lifschitz is trying to explain how Brisbane became a world force in contemporary circus.
“We were probably less bound by how things should be and how you’re supposed to tell stories in the grown-up world,” he says.
Circa is performing their show, “What Will Have Been”, in the 20th year of the company’s rebranding.Credit: Steady Jenny Photography
“Second and third cities have a real place in the arts that is hard to quantify. We’re freer to kind of invent and make it up ourselves.”
Rock n’ Roll Circus, founded in Brisbane by Antonella Casella and teenager Derek Ives in 1987, aimed to bring circus to adult audiences in the hotbed of resistance to the Bjelke-Petersen regime.
The company was admired, and even performed internationally, but was run as a collective, and by the late 1990s, was in danger of losing focus and funding.
So 20 years ago, in 2004, Rock n’ Roll Circus rebranded as Circa, and Lifschitz, the youngest person ever accepted into NIDA’s directing course, put up his hand to become its first artistic director – despite lacking a circus background.
“We were looking to make work that was more challenging, more difficult, more interesting, more weird.”
Yaron Lifschitz
He set the renamed Circa on a course to being one of Australia’s most acclaimed cultural exports, one that has performed in more than 45 countries to almost 2 million people.
Over the next two months alone, Circa has three different shows playing in Germany, Belgium, Finland, UAE and Macau. The company has also performed at London’s Barbican Centre and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.