Damn the Circus: A circus performer’s life is a balancing act

Ken Fanning’s and Tina Segner’s new show is about trying to stay in love with circus despite hardship and despite having amicably fallen out of love with each other, says Caomhan Keane

THE frustrations and hardships of being a circus performer are explored by the award-winning Tumble Circus in ‘Damn the Circus’, which begins a two-month, nationwide tour in Cork’s Half Moon Theatre this week. With trapeze, hula-hoops, juggling, acrobatics and musical comedy, it’s a tale about the dream and the reality, and the three performers’ struggles to stay in love with the art-form, despite poor pay and public indifference.

“Circus changed all our lives,” Ken Fanning says. “It gave me direction. I was 21 and bumming around Europe, living in Amsterdam, with anarchistic squatters and punks. They were like ‘we don’t need society, we don’t need money, we can make it on the street’.” Juggling was his gateway to other forms of circus and soon he was addicted, training on a FAS circus scheme when he returned to Dublin.