A report on one of the oldest and most punk circus companies in Bristol, a city famed for its circus history and present.
To a Czech, a visit to the UK around November 5 can be an extraordinary experience, especially if the destination is such city as Bristol. Bristol is known as the birthplace of trip hop and offers many attractions to lovers of arts and culture. On November 5, 2011, the Motion music club hosted a special evening entitled Gunpowder Plot hosted by Doug Francisco masked as Guy Fawkes who marked the midnight by assisting in the public burning of a huge scale model of the Big Ben. This gentle political provocation was watched by hundreds of spectators who had just seen a punk performance by the acrobats of the Invisible Circus. Its founder Doug Francisco AKA Guy Fawkes told us more about the ensemble.
Doug Francisco:
We came up with the idea to create an ensemble like this in London around 1991. In 1996, we started touring as a traveling performance troupe. Around 2000, we permanently settled in continental Europe until we return to the UK again. The nature of the ensemble has changed quite a lot over the years. We started off as a small performance troupe traveling Europe and living completely free. The most important change was us settling down in a permanent venue, which made us responsible for all the program and the operation of the place. We settled down in Bristol after unpleasant experience from the America and actually, from London, too. We met a lot of people from Bristol at that time and that motivated us to move to that city.
Source: Radio Wave (here)
Written By: Veronika Štefanová
Photo: David Konečný