#lab:time2

Living Room Circus – Lab:time and Lab:time² at the Broadway, Barking - The Penguin and I

Living Room Circus is an experimental circus company, creating and performing intimate and immersive shows. They devise and develop their own blend of circus, dance, live music and physical theatre - always with the emphasis on audience interaction and involvement. This is achieved by transforming any given space into ‘the circus’.

The collaborators of Living Room Circus are Laura Overton, Elinor Harvey, Josh Frazer, Tessa Blackman, Charlee Rico DeBolla and Jason Dupree; all of whom are circus performers and graduates from the National Centre For Circus Arts. The performers bring a mix of skills to the company, including trapeze, rope, straps, acrobatics, gymnastics, hand balancing, juggling, ballet, contemporary dance and theatre.

After receiving some initial funding from the Deutsche Bank award for Creative Enterprise, their first shows were unconventional in setting:

The initial performances were set in a yurt which had been transformed into an enchanting living room into which the audience was invited. We then had a four day run of ‘work in progress’ performances for the public which was received with much enthusiasm. We have since used the audience feedback to adapt and improve the show and were then able to take the Living Room Circus to a community in rural Wales, performing in a transformed woodland roundhouse.

Living Room Circus applied for Lab:time – funding and space at the National Centre for Circus Arts – to rig their new ‘circus sofa’. This is a custom-made, specially reinforced and durable sofa which can be used for tumbling, flipping and handbalancing. It also has the ability to be rigged high in the air, which means that aerial equipment such as a trapeze can be attached. This was successfully carried out and Living Room Circus were excited to be able to realise their ambition of an aerial sofa, a feature they hope to incorporate into performances going forward. 

The group completed their Lab:time² – a funded residency at a collaborating venue – at the Broadway, Barking. Lab:time² funds projects which have already undergone early stage research and development, so this enabled them to more fully explore themes for their upcoming show, The Penguin and I.

At the end of the week we had explored 10 scenes, of which we had finalised 3. We also managed to explore lighting for the first time. This bought a different element to our show and also created a final scene from the exploration at the Broadway theatre. … We co-produced a circus day as part of the Barking Folk Festival at the end of our week where we ran workshops and performed a work in progress. We also managed to explore our bespoke sofa, giving us time to play and create, finding out what it has to offer.

Living Room Circus took The Penguin and I on a short tour this summer to a working dairy farm in East Sussex, Redbridge Drama Centre in Essex and Jackson's Lane in London. They will shortly be announcing their next tour.

Follow Living Room Circus on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

Lab:time² - Mark Morreau / Natalie Reckert – Natalie Inside Out

Mark Morreau and Natalie Reckert received Lab:time² funding from the National Centre for Circus Arts for a week of research at Jacksons Lane.

Mark is an ex-circus performer and teacher, now making photographic, video and digital work for circus, dance and physical theatre. Natalie graduated in 2007 from the National Centre for Circus Arts and has performed internationally as a hand balancer.

Their initial project idea was to research a future performance piece which would combine live performance with digital technology and video projection, focusing on the physical inner workings of the performer as they perform their act, specifically by ‘using sensors and exploring visualisation methods … to show the audience the performer’s body temperature, brain activity, blood pressure, pulse rate, blood sugar levels, muscle tension, and other biological markers to make explicit the ‘work’ involved in doing a handstand.’

They explained the reasoning behind the work thus:

As artists we share a fascination in revealing the unseen to the audience: making explicit the workings – visible and invisible, mental and physical - of the performer’s body. We set out to explore how we could combine the descriptive performance elements of Natalie’s recent works with Mark’s close-up slow-motion videography.

As is very much in the spirit of Lab:time², the team made certain unexpected discoveries along the way, one of which led to the naming of the piece.

We discovered that Natalie became fascinated by images of herself … Watching these images of her body, in such detail, projected so large, was a fascinating experience. … We incorporated this ‘wonder’ into the research, and began to explore Natalie’s body in other ways, looking not just at the mechanics, but at the scars and the stories behind them, her funny elbows, the patch of dark skin under her chin… We’d planned to explore the inside of Natalie’s body more, its physiology, its biological reaction to living its life upside down, but this additional exterior observation gave us a title for the work: Natalie Inside Out.

Additionally the innovative technology used, including ‘Kinect’ motion capture, did not always behave in the way it should, leading to happy mistakes which were then incorporated into the work: ‘we discovered a lot more humour in the work than we’d expected. We began to take real joy in the misbehaviour of the technology. The Kinect’s inability to recognise an upside-down human being because a source of mirth and a gift for the audience’.

The progress made during this period has led to a further life for the work:

The ideas we developed through Lab:time², and the enthusiasm with which they were received, have led to further support from a number of organisations, and to the development of a full length show which will premiere in February 2018, and tour later that year.

Find out more about Lab:time² here.

APPLY NOW for Round 9 of Lab:time², our funded residency programme.

The host venue is The Oak Circus Centre, Norwich, home to Lost In Translation Circus. They are looking to build a relationship with an artist or company who are interested in the crossover between dance, theatre and circus.

We’re very happy to announce that the winner of Lab:time² Round 9 is Jo Moss. Jo won the funding and residency at The Oak Circus Centre to develop a multi-disciplinary show inspired by his father’s brain injury and subsequent recovery. The show will explore themes of perception and consciousness using film, projections, actors, circus and dance.

Are you a circus artist who would benefit from funding or a residency? Applications for Lab:time and Lab:time² CLOSE at 5pm on 12 January 2017.