Social Circus
The Cultural Politics of Embodying “Social Transformation”
Jennifer Beth Spiegel
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A pyramid begins to form onstage. A clown emerges from the audience, throwing fake hundred
dollar bills, and climbs to the top of the pyramid. A second clown emerges from the audience
reciting from the book of Matthew. He joins the first clown on the top of the pyramid. All in
the pyramid cry “Capitalism” and the pyramid collapses on itself. The show has begun.
This opening scene — the fruit of a three-week collective creation process — was devised
by Montréal’s Cirque Hors Piste for a Youth for Human Rights event in March 2014. Cirque
Hors Piste is supported by private and public institutions working in tandem with social service
organizations in Montréal’s downtown area. Cirque Hors Piste offers circus training and cre-
ates performances with street-involved youth (youths who live or hang out on the streets), 那些
battling addictions, sex workers, and others who are struggling socially or financially, fulfill-
ing its mandate to “offer an alternative and inclusive space for creation to those with marginal-
ized life paths” and to promote “individual, social and collective learning via circus arts” (Cactus
蒙特利尔 2016).
TDR: The Drama Review 60:4 (T232) 冬天 2016.
©2016 by New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Published under a Creative Commons Attributions 3.0 Unported (CC-BY) License.
50
In the wake of the post-1968 politics of the avantgarde and the spread of youth counter-
cultures, activist and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari developed an “ethico-aesthetic paradigm”
(1995). Amidst the popularization of both art therapy and theatre for development, Guattari
believed that creative practice could instigate new values and sensibilities that would transform
collectives as well as individuals. Among the “ethico-aesthetic” interventions used by Guattari in
his own clinical practice was circus. Throughout his work, Guattari insisted that transformation
was not only a personal affair, but inherently tied to larger collective, 社会的, and political forces
(Guattari 1995, 2008). 尽管, as Jane Plastow (2015) points out, in the 1970s many publicly
supported community-based arts practices emerged as part of politically revolutionary move-
评论, by the 21st century, sustainability required that programs be supported by a combination
of governmental funding and nongovernmental organizations. The various organizational, ped-
agogical, and artistic choices affect the ethico-aesthetic valence of such projects, and reveal the
process of social transformation embedded in the Cirque Hors Piste.
In the later decades of the 20th century, principles of cultural democracy became prom-
inent in discourses of community art (see Goldbard 2006; 格雷夫斯 2005) in the hope that
this approach could redress the social control implicit in colonial and neocolonial programs
(Nicholson 2011). 在 2006, community arts practitioner Arlene Goldbard, elaborating on cul-
tural democracy, explained how cultural development assists communities to learn from one
another and communicate in multiple directions, countering the agendas of elite institutions
that dominate the cultural sphere (Goldbard 2006:129). This discourse, combined with the pop-
ularization of “social inclusion” mandates, meant that rather than focusing on community arts
as a means of “integrating” marginalized peoples into mainstream society, attempts and strate-
gies to allow individuals and communities to creatively participate on their own terms were to
be encouraged (Spiegel 2014).
Social circus, namely programs utilizing circus arts as a means of social intervention with
diverse populations, from homeless youth to remote indigenous communities, have been adapting
and actualizing this discourse.1 In Quebec, Cirque du Soleil is the principal funder and initiator
of social circus for the region, and manages the Cirque du Monde social circus programs, 哪个
usually operate in partnership with local social organizations in over 80 countries worldwide. 这
principles of “cultural democracy” would suggest that Cirque du Soleil no longer sets the agenda
for the cultural values diffused. 讽刺地, 然而, the new inclusive discourse of social circus has
since been increasingly adopted and even promoted from above. Focusing on “social inclusion”
can efface broader structural hierarchies, 价值观, and processes of exclusion, while promoting “cul-
tural democracy” can, inadvertently or otherwise, encourage participation in creative processes
in a manner that merely pushes authoritarian dynamics to a higher structural level, entraining
1. See Jacinthe Rivard’s analysis of the social circus discourse of the international social circus organization, Cirque
du Monde (2007).
数字 1. (facing page) Cirque Hors Piste participants practicing their skills during the Creation Intensive for
the May 2015 展示, led by instructors Emmanuel Cyr and Justin Dale Furgala Krall. (Photo by Céline Côté,
courtesy of Cirque Hors Piste)
Jennifer Beth Spiegel teaches theatre at Concordia University in Montréal, and is a research fellow at
the International Centre of Art for Social Change (ICASC) at Simon Fraser University. She is currently
conducting research on critical theories of art, 表现, and social action, within a multi-institution
arts for social change research partnership project funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research
Council of Canada. She is also the coleader of an international research project on the impacts and
cultural politics of social circus in Ecuador, placing the national social circus initiative instigated by the
Ecuadorian government in a global context. jennifer.spiegel@sfu.ca
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51
Social Circus
neoliberal subjectivity in the service of self-expression and self-disclosure.2 When contextualized
as a means of supporting individuals and communities in pursuit of their own goals, such pro-
cesses of cultural democratization appear as something of a paradox.
In order to analyze the tensions and cultural politics of this creative process of social trans-
形成, I follow the entire collective creative process of three Intensives de Création
(Creation Intensives)3 offered by Cirque Hors Piste from 2013 到 2015, from recruitment and
the identification of goals by the participants, to the creative process itself, through to perfor-
曼斯, and finally to the collective effort to deconstruct the process that comes one week after
the production. I draw heavily on participants’ reflections and my own participation in the
Intensives to analyze the theatrical interactions that took place and the kinds of cultural expres-
sion to which they gave rise. To contextualize these interactions and reflect on their potential
sociocultural impacts, I take into consideration the social realities of participants including their
working and living conditions, the struggles they face, and the artistic and social goals identified
by both the participants and the social circus staff guiding them.
What kind of social transformation can social circus be said to enact? And who can be said
to be guiding it? The movement from expressing singular challenges and objectives in “pri-
vate” to the collective creation of shared expression through circus performance both embod-
ies and shares a particular kinesthetic sociality, enacting a mode of creating collectivity anchored
in polyphony, according to which multiple voices, 身体, and singular trajectories combine
through shared physical acts of performance. It is a movement that navigates the tensions of a
process aimed to attain goals and building skills for surviving neoliberal system collapse, 和
imperative to forge one’s own path, since jobs and socioeconomic support systems as they have
historically been conceived are dwindling. The organization, within this context, acts as hand-
maiden, intermediary, and temporary support, though eventually participants are expected to
move on, to create their own projects or pursue their own training elsewhere.
The Recruitment Process
Social Inclusion and the Production of Subjectivity
Cirque Hors Piste partners with Cactus, an organization that provides harm-reduction services
to drug users in the downtown area; with En Marge, which provides services to youth under
18 years old needing a safe place; and with Plein Milieu, which provides outreach to drug users
aged 18 到 30 in Montréal’s Plateau, a neighborhood adjacent to the southern part of down-
town. Cirque Hors Piste also works with a center that provides free meals to youth and with
organizations that offer support and safe spaces to sex workers. 在 2014 Cirque Hors Piste
worked with over 600 individuals.4 As artist-scholar Susan Schuppli (2013) points out, the ques-
tion of what community is served is often the wrong question for understanding the sociocul-
tural significance of socially engaged community arts projects. The real question is: what kind
of community does a project create?
Cirque Hors Piste recruits participants for its social circus workshops with the help of com-
munity outreach workers, each representing one of the partnering social organizations, WHO
2. For a critique of participatory management models, see Bill Cooke and Uma Kothari’s Participation: The New
Tyranny? (2001). For a discussion of processes of self-disclosure as emblematic of neoliberal subjectivity, see Erik
Bordeleau Foucault anonymat (2012).
3. The new coordinator refers to these multiweek show preparation workshops as “Créations Collectif ” (Collective
Creation) although at the time the fieldwork was being conducted they were referred to as “Intensives de
Création” (Creation Intensives).
4. 在 2014, 319 participants attended workshops, 83 of whom attended more than one of the 12 offered that year;
285 people came to drop-in sessions.
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Jennifer Beth Spiegel
distribute flyers and inform those with whom they may be working, as well as through the
word-of-mouth efforts of previous and ongoing participants. A young woman in her early 20s
who had been victimized by violence throughout her life explained how she was recruited:
So it’s like a domino effect. I was referred here from my friend whom I met at a fire jam
with the fire spinners community in Montréal.5 And how I got there is because I have
an affinity for fire and wanted to meet other people that also spin. And the reason why
I started spinning was because spiritually speaking I felt like I needed to find balance
within myself and become masterful of my body. You know, to avoid pain, to heal bet-
特尔… You know because if I’m not active and if I don’t move, I’ll become stagnate. And I’ll
become rusty. You know like the tin man from The Wizard of Oz. There’s a lot of pain for
我…the way I see circus for me, it’s therapeutic.6
The target population is mixed, but loosely comprises individuals who have dropped out — or
been pushed out — of “mainstream” society, with a high percentage of high school and college
dropouts, as well as many who have been in trouble with the law, or have been in and out of
mental health wards.
For the Intensives, participants are admitted by interview. Once accepted they are given a
small stipend in exchange for working in 7 到 10 sessions over a 3-week period to produce a
theatrical circus show using juggling, ground acrobatics, aerial acrobatics, and clowning as well
as some acting and improvisation skills. Cirque Hors Piste also provides free open drop-in cir-
cus sessions for youth under 30 and free outdoor circus workshops open to all. These offer a
point of first contact for many participants, and a low pressure creative play space where par-
ticipants can come and go as they choose. In all cases, community workers seek to reach target
populations through referral and recruiting in areas and service points where vulnerable youth
are likely to hang out, but anyone is welcome to attend. During periods in which drop-in work-
shops are reaching capacity, participants are reminded that social circus aims to provide social
support during difficult periods and ask that they self-select accordingly. Interviews for the
Intensives, 然而, go a step further, prioritizing those who appear most in need of support.
The Creation Intensives are highly structured and require participants to be committed to
the process and its goals. Once accepted to the program, participants sign a contract and are
told to treat the process as a job, with penalties for tardiness and absences. The level of pay
is limited both because of budgetary restrictions and so that it is low enough that those who
receive social assistance payments do not get their assistance level reduced. 在 2014, 29 individ-
uals participated in these Creation Intensives, 10 of whom participated in more than one of the
four Creation Intensive productions that occurred that year; 66 percent of the participants were
male, 34 percent female.
The vast majority of participants, instructors, and community workers I interviewed said
the collective work of the Intensives generated a concentrated learning and transformation
经验. The Intensives were preferred over more occasional activities that fail to provide
long-term continuity.7 As one young man noted: “What touched me most in the intensive pro-
cess was the intimacy that was created with other participants.” The Creation Intensive model
departs from the Cirque du Monde model from which it was born and which remains domi-
nant in the rest of the province of Quebec. In the traditional Cirque du Monde model, weekly
5. Fire spinning refers to a category of street art associated with circus, which includes dancing with fire-staffs, poi,
and fire hoops.
6. Almost all the more than two dozen interviews conducted from 2014 到 2015 were in French; translations are
provided by the author. Those conducted in English are cited verbatim. No identifiers are provided to guard ano-
nymity. All unattributed quotes are from these interviews.
7. These observations are based on conversations from my over two years of fieldwork.
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53
Social Circus
sessions are voluntary. The weekly drop-in workshops of Cirque Hors Piste continue to follow
this free and voluntary model. But Montréal’s urban environment and the nomadic nature of
the street communities that the voluntary program attracts make attendance at the weekly ses-
sions too irregular to develop a show. By paying participants of the Creation Intensives, Cirque
Hors Piste treats community members as respected artists and the whole performance project
has a more positive outcome. This model proved to be effective in David Diamond’s Theatre
for Living, one of Canada’s most nationally recognized community theatre organizations.8 Both
the voluntary approach and the paid Creation Intensives recognize participants as worthy of
social investment. The former depends on intrinsic motivation, while the latter entrains a work
ethic fitted to the dominant economic system.9
The actual intensive process begins with an admissions interview, typically conducted by one
of the community workers and one of the intensive’s instructors. During the entrance inter-
看法, would-be participants are asked to identify their social and artistic goals. The interviews
are where those who are most able, 愿意的, and/or desiring of an “individual, social and collec-
tive” learning process are identified. The interview also is an opportunity for instructors and
community workers to learn about the social and artistic goals of the participants, facilitating a
participant-centered process. From the beginning, instructors and community workers attempt
to instill in participants an understanding that social goals are primary in social circus. As one
participant remarked: “If my objective is [学习] a circus technique, I could find that in reg-
ular circus […] 和 [in those programs] the human side comes after. 这里, we switch this as the
human side comes first.” Nevertheless, as the coordinator explained: “There are many youth
who come to learn circus technique specifically, and less so for the social aspect. There has
always been this duality since the beginning.”
In addition to these two formal purposes, the acceptance interview also acts as what Michel
Foucault calls a “technology of the self” (1988), an initiatory act of self-reflection and a verbal-
izing of goals and desires. Despite being an important part of understanding participants’ goals,
profiles, and motivations for participating, the interview and selection process have made some
participants uneasy:
So I show up and the woman is sort of talking like as if I wasn’t eligible for circus or
something which made me feel like I had to be some coke head or something or like I
had to have dreadlocks and a bunch of piercings or I wouldn’t be eligible, okay.
实际上, the entrance interview is the gateway to a collective process in which participants from
various walks of life will work together to create a common show.
Collective Creation, Distributed Agency,
and Embodied Critique
While admission interviews begin with the individual, the Creation Intensive process is
participant-centered with the goal of fostering group solidarity to create an ensemble. The pro-
cess shares much with Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (see Boal 1985). The dra-
maturgy is derived from theatre games chosen and in some cases created or modified by the
instructors and community workers to explore a particular social lesson, such as trust, team-
工作, creative confidence, ETC. 例如, in a “flocking” game, one person separates from the
8. Theatre for Living, formerly called Headlines Theatre, is one of Canada’s longest running community theatre
organizations built largely on Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed model. Shows are typically created with
members of the community affected by the show’s theme, and all the performers are typically paid equity rates in
line with pay rates of unionized actors in Canada.
9. For a discussion of how funding structures influence the production of subjectivity, see Grant H. Kester’s The
One and the Many (2011).
54
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Jennifer Beth Spiegel
group and the others, follow-
ing the impulse of someone in
the front of the “flock,” moves
toward the separated person in a
particular manner, and then car-
ries out an action. 例如,
in the Creation Intensive process
of May 2014, this exercise gave
rise to a group poi10 number in
which a group, all following the
same choreography, confronts
other characters onstage, offer-
ing a “power play” (an aspect
of the scene developed from
another game in which partici-
pants improvise, bouncing off of
each others’ movements). 这
choreographed group moved to
face individuals, offering each in
turn a unique learning experience. In the rehearsal process for this particular scene, one of the
participants was a skilled poi spinner, seeking a career in this discipline, and was entrusted with
teaching the others the choreography and helping them to master it.
数字 2. Instructor Cyril Assanthiany demonstrates an exercise to participants of
the May 2014 Cirque Hors Piste Creation Intensive at Père Sablon in Montréal.
(Photo by Jennifer B. Spiegel)
While themes and messages are sometimes explicitly social, the system of valuation is
embedded more concretely in the creation process itself. Whereas in many socially engaged
community arts initiatives, individuals flesh out shows on collectively decided social issues with
material drawn from participants’ own experiences, in the Creation Intensives the issues of the
community are rarely the initial point of departure, even if the group does indirectly arrive at
such an exploration. Social circus dramaturgy begins with the personal and moves toward a col-
lective expression with themes that are fantastical or exotic (爱丽丝漫游仙境, pirates, gypsies)
at least as often as it explicitly explores social issues. Much like the Theatre of the Oppressed,
然而, the show is given its own particular social valence by the ways in which participants
bring their themes to life. The creation process both builds on and transmutes the embodied
rhythms and histories of participants. Participants’ histories are diverse and so are their reasons
for joining social circus, as are the themes they want to explore, and even the kind of dramatur-
gical process they would ideally like to learn and deploy. In keeping with observations of oth-
ers hosting community theatre projects with a view toward social transformation, how and even
whether to explore a theme is a matter of debate, much less whether or not to enact a social cri-
打钩. As Shen Liang observed in his work with migrants in China, many “preferred enacting
the community’s dreams over criticizing the reality” (2014:17–18). Individual participants also
sometimes link their own personal desires or trajectories to the stories told by the group. 为了
大部分, it is the physicalities and corporeal relationship experienced rather than the nar-
ratives illustrated that become the locus of transformation. The creation process offers a mech-
anism not only for conceptualizing problems and their causes, but also for expressing, 如果不
sublimating, frustrations. As an instructor mused, the characters emerge from secret (or in some
案例, not so secret) desires, impulses, and critiques.
The first Creation Intensive that took place after I began conducting research with Cirque
Hors Piste was aimed at producing a show for the Youth for Human Rights event I described
多于. For this creation, the group explored the prejudices experienced by those living on the
10. A poi is a circus prop consisting of a chord and a ball held and spun in each hand, typically creating various
forms with the ball while the artist also dances.
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55
Social Circus
streets. While participants came from diverse milieus, with diverse life experiences, many had
been harassed by police for being in the streets, drinking in public, ETC. One participant pointed
out the irony of her friends getting tickets for drinking in public across the street from the out-
door terrace of a bar. Another explained how his experiences with the police and the experi-
ences of his friends motivated him and others involved in the process to make this a theme in
the show.
This show featured a playful, carnivalesque chase scene in which two of the performers were
confronted by a cop for drinking in the streets. Through an intricate combination of juggling,
partner acrobatics, hula hooping, and a chase through the audience, the pair turned the power
dynamic on its head, leaving the police officer flat on her back. Throughout the production,
the language of circus became a vehicle for a humorous critique of dominant social structures
and policies that affected the participants individually and collectively. The pyramid collapsing
in on itself while performers yelled “capitalism” was a literal critique of capitalism’s exploitative
pyramid schemes. 不久, a young man, dressed as “Waldo” — the picture book charac-
ter famous for being forever lost in the crowd — was featured holding a clipboard, suggesting
the bureaucratic list-making of administrators. Waldo eventually in frustration threw down his
paper and clipboard.
Many of the performers voiced a desire to awaken audiences to the prejudices against
their communities.
This is what happens in our lives. We live prejudices everyday, all the time — in the
metro, on the street, 任何地方. “You know, you’re a bit weird, so we’re going to exclude
you from the system. They want to include us but y’know […] to get you to become a
robot, to get you to follow like a sheep. […] I think that sometimes, you must put things
into perspective so that people see it as if it were them and ask, 例如, would I like
to feel judged, be stared at, because I am different? 他们 [the audience] understand a bit
more how we experience these prejudices. Through the circus show, people are more
open to understanding this kind of thing. So we are able to get the message across.
尽管如此, the desire for inclusion in society does not necessarily mean a desire for integra-
tion into the system such as it is, but an ability to impact transformation. As one participant
把它:
At the end of the day, what is the degree to which we want to integrate into a system that
we oppose? So I ask myself: How can I be happy in this context? How can “marginalized
people” be happy in this context? Renounce our values in order to integrate into a system
that we don’t identify with? 为我, this is an element that is ultra important and under-
lies my approach in this project.
These critiques exemplify the desire to come together to express collective goals and collec-
tive social commentary. The messages, 然而, are not always explicit. In the next Cirque Hors
Piste Creation Intensive, participants built the show on the theme of Alice in Wonderland with-
out discussing or conveying any particular social message. It was devised using theatre games,
explorations of circus skills already known or quickly attained, and improvs pieced together dur-
ing free exploration periods. It also included a group creative writing exercise on the theme of
childhood dreams. The only words spoken were: Qu’on coupe la tête! (Off with her head!). 这
creation process tapped into corporeal fantasies, desires, and the transformation of identities.
Much of the material was generated by a collective stream of consciousness exercise on the
theme of childhood dreams. Each participant writes a thought and passes it to the next person.
The next person adds to the same page. By the end of the exercise there are multiple collec-
tively created “stories.”
Instructors, doubling as directors, discuss among themselves the theme of identity and the
transformation of identities revealed by the material generated in the workshops. While some
56
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Jennifer Beth Spiegel
scenes created by participants repeated traditional gender roles, others destabilized these. A
newly trained aerialist made her debut as a sexy Cheshire cat met by a shy young man trying to
woo her. An acrobalance duet ensued. 同时, the Alice wig was passed from one performer
to the next regardless of gender, allowing for the impression of a growing and shrinking Alice,
a gender-morphing Alice, and a fluid sense of identity. Alice began as a young woman doing a
hula-hoop solo, but the wig was soon passed to a young man on stilts, then a comedic juggler.
Meaning emerged from corporeal transmutations, pushed beyond the everyday through inten-
sive collective creation and shaped by reanchoring the enactments in shared stories based on the
Alice trope, unhinged from any authoritative version.
Whereas the Youth for Human Rights show was based on social critique, the Alice show drew
more heavily on the fantastical. 在五月 2015, approximately a year after Alice, the creation
intensive show that was prepared for the rassemblement — the annual meeting of social circus
programs in Quebec — combined elements of both. After concept discussions, creative explo-
rations, and character development, the collective selected a psych ward populated by a range
of creatures as the scene. When asked what message they wanted the show to carry, responses
ranged from “unity in diversity” to simply “lâcher notre fou,” or “letting ourselves go crazy.”
“We always have a message,” one participant complained, but cited Alice as an exception. “Why
can’t the message just be ‘having fun’”? 的确, the implicit expectation that those living in pre-
carious and marginalized social conditions should put on shows about precarity is something
that has been heavily critiqued, highlighting the problematic assumption that “at risk” people
should perform their vulnerability as spectacle (圣地亚哥 2011).
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57
数字 3. Participants in concept development for the 2015 展示, led by Cirque Hors Piste instructors
Emmanuel Cyr and Justin Dale Furgala Krall. (Photo by Céline Côté, courtesy of Cirque Hors Piste)
Social Circus
实际上, the vast majority of circus shows in Montréal do not have a strong social message.
But despite not settling on a message, in the process of creating a show for the 2015 rassemble-
蒙特, a social purpose did surface. The participants were invited to develop characters based on
“strange creatures” and/or psych wards. The Psych show began with an assortment of strange
characters and creatures, some humanlike but some seemingly of another world. Two nurses
entered. 一, depicted as having a kind disposition, danced through the crowd; 另一个, stern
and aggressive, cried maniacally, “It’s time to take your pills! It’s time for injections!” This set in
motion a series of scenes with the entire collective onstage: a pyramid of the entire company; 一个
androgynous figure dancing a diabolo solo.11 When an acrobalance trio of strange creatures per-
形成的, the aggressive nurse returned and stuck a needle in the behind of one of the acrobal-
ance flyers, shouting: “Take your injection!” The show crescendoed with a synchronized group
dance choreographed from improvisations. In the show’s final moment, the characters scattered
and left the stage. Alone and confused, the aggressive nurse revealed that the entire show had
been her delusion. She was the crazy one. She was escorted offstage by two instructors in hospi-
tal scrubs. Similarly dressed in scrubs, I followed close behind taking notes — a touch that some
of the participants found hilarious because it reflexively referenced the dominant activity (采取
笔记) I had “rehearsed” throughout the intensive.
With its reversal of authority, its denigration of meaning as the ordering principle, 和
production of collective desire in the single and collective bodies of the performers-creators,
the production was, like the previous two, highly carnivalesque. Participants who had engaged
in several creation intensives with the organization agreed that the psych ward show had the
smoothest group creation process with the strongest group chemistry they had experienced.
Exceptionally, even the instructors, and myself as visiting researcher, were integrated into the
mise-en-scène. As with the other Creation Intensive processes, exercises were chosen through-
out to help participants support each other in developing their characters. 例如, an imi-
tation game in which everyone embodied and explored each character had been selected to
aid those who were struggling most in the process. This group solidarity was evidenced in the
actual dramaturgy of the production. The show was replete with pyramids carefully negotiated
to make sure no one would get hurt in assembling or disassembling them. Unlike Alice, 哪个
was primarily solos, duos, and trios, Psych included all 10 participants onstage the entire time.
Social Transformation
Tension in the Politics of Inclusion
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Situating social circus within what Richard Schechner seminally described as the efficacy-
entertainment braid (1977), social circus generates cultural modes of relationality and sociality.
具体来说, it embodies a “politics of touch” as articulated by cultural theorist Erin Manning in
her book dedicated to the concept. Touch — visceral, emotional and intellectual — is the seed of
a “democracy-to-come,” forging what Manning calls a “future anterior” (2007:115–16).
So what kind of future anterior is enacted? What does the social circus process do to gen-
erate “life lessons,” and how do such life lessons redistribute individual and collective agency
within epidemic conditions of precarity? Survey results suggest that social circus programs in
Quebec show some success in equipping participants with “life skills” of the sort delineated
in the Cirque du Soleil community worker handbook When Circus Lessons Become Life Lessons
(Lafortune and Bouchard 2010), skills such as teamwork and risk management, fostering per-
sonal growth, social inclusion, and social engagement (Spiegel et al. 2014). One instructor noted
of the Alice production:
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11. Diabolo is a juggling prop consisting of an axle and two cups. This object is spun, thrown and caught, using a
string attached to two hand sticks.
58
Jennifer Beth Spiegel
We were a heteroclite group, everyone was very different. And we’re going to work
一起. And we will see together, who we are as a group. 因为, even if we have super
different elements amongst us, well then we are a heteroclite group, but we are a group.
And it works, there is glue […,] a type of glue made for this type of mix, of cohesion.
Social circus as a source of creative inspiration has a strong connection with urban youth
living under precarious conditions. Work is both hard to come by and alienating. 以前的
research with Montréal’s social circus community has suggested that the activity is effective in
integrating urban youth into the workforce because of its links with marginality and nomad-
主义 (Hurtubise, Roy, and Bellot 2003). As Jacinthe Rivard (2007) noted in her study of Cirque
du Monde, circus work can be distinguished from alienated labor insofar as it allows for creative
“world-ing” as delineated by Hannah Arendt (1958). As one participant put it, the social circus
was “more stimulating” than the call center jobs that left her feeling useless, due to an inabil-
ity to remain motivated. Social circus offered her a sense that she really could stick to a sched-
ule if she had a good reason, laying the groundwork for pursuing work to which she felt better
suited. 她, like many others, began picking up small contracts teaching circus and performing
in community events.
然而, in session, preparedness for the workforce is never stressed. While some partici-
pants treat the program as a work model, citing CV-building in the face of prolonged underem-
ployment, many participants as well as instructors expressed disdain for the imperative to “go to
school” and “get a job” as a measure of the program’s worth, particularly at a time where going
to school is no guarantor of getting a job. What is stressed is personal and collective learning
and a pursuit of one’s goals. “World-ing” allows for the creation of one’s own system of values
and the forging of systems of signs and meanings that orient the individual toward an alter-
native future, drawing on play, 梦, and collectivity. Sociologist Maurizio Lazzarato has
argued that in the new economy creativity and the ability to self-manage and become entre-
preneurs, to create one’s own work, is becoming an imperative, and even a hallmark of neolib-
eral subjectivity, even as it also creates the potential for nonhierarchical world-ing (1996). 它
is into such a workforce that social circus may be seen to be preparing vulnerable individuals
for “integration.”
In the case of social circus, this world-ing is necessarily corporeal as well as imaginative,
grounded in sensorial experience and the development of new relational patterns at the physical
as well as emotional and social levels. One participant in the drop-in workshops as well as the
Alice Creation Intensive noted:
I really have trust issues […]. A lot of it has to do with my parents. You know my dad,
when I was like 10 或者 11 years old he came out of the closet. And my mom kind of flipped
her shit. 和, because my dad was cheating on her with guys and stuff, they broke up,
divorced, and then everything just went down the drain. And mentally and emotion-
ally to my parents it was like they just engaged in self-destructive, ongoing, escalating
war towards each other […] — ego, rage, 愤怒, revenge, yada, yada. […时间]he people that
I loved the most in the world were causing me the most pain through physical violence
or emotional violence or through just complete indifference […]. I’m a very affectionate
人 […] so immediately I went to boys. And then I just created this emotional depen-
dency on boys. […] I was raped you know. […] I finally caught myself in that negative pat-
tern […]. So the circus in a way is healing that. You know like when I had that exercise at
the last practice, where we’re like dancing, and you close your eyes and people are like
pushing you around. You know just the action of letting go of all of my muscles because
I’m a very tense person, 正确的? […] So that exercise will allow me to just let go of every-
thing and not hurt myself. Somebody was there to support me. So it felt like that physical
action of letting go and having someone else support you was kind of like enforcing an
inner change of that spectrum, cool.
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59
Social Circus
Another stated:
I went too deep with drugs. It was too much. I had to calm down. Then shit happened. 所以
I ended up on the street, where I had nothing [nervous laugh]. After that, I really decided
to go to circus. I was shy, but I ended up saying to myself: I want to do this and let’s see
what will happen.
Still another:
I suffer from social anxiety, I am afraid of new groups and people. But circus gave me the
challenge to integrate within a group. During the year it was always the same people and
I was feeling comfortable. It changed my network and I liked it.
The creative aspect of circus was mentioned frequently:
What attracts me to circus is the creative side. It was a side of me I had never touched,
blossoming in a group through art; when you can learn at your own rhythm, 没有
being judged.
According to one social worker, this primacy of collective play and nonsexual, nonaggres-
sive touch through the creative act of play, are consistent features throughout all the social cir-
cus activities. He explained that the male sex workers with whom he works often are hardened
by life on the streets, living in survival mode and with most of their interactions sexually based,
whether for work or pleasure. Personal development stories are repeated over and over again,
然而, the broader social implications are more difficult to assess.
Each of the Cirque Hors Piste Intensives ends with a postmortem that includes reviewing
what was achieved, what one liked and did not like about the process, as well as the extent to
which goals identified had been reached or approached. In interviews I was able to go deeper
with participants to follow up on their reflections.
The process of creating based on games and improvisations was unfamiliar to some with
less experience in social circus and who associated serious rehearsals with the more traditional
director-led model (rather than facilitator-led collective creation). These individuals tended to
associate such games with childish play, thus feeling that they were being infantalized. One par-
ticipant in Alice critiqued the collective creation process at great length:
事实上, I felt like I was a little bit at a daycare center […]. That’s how I feel, honestly.
Playing tag. They had a whole bunch of people — 20 year olds — up playing tag. […]
That’s just ridiculous. That’s unconstitutional, unprofessional. It’s disorganized com-
pletely. I mean, first of all, out of the seven days, it was probably on day three that they
were starting to talk about the team and the show and everything. What the fuck are you
doing getting a show on the road, hiring people to put up a show and on the third fuck-
ing day, you talk about the team? […] It’s really outrageous. I’ve never seen this on a pro-
fessional level. That should be discussed on the first day. […] Not jumping around and
acting like monsters and running around playing tag and making all these weird sound
effects. […] I understand that it is part of doing theatre. 很遗憾, with the time we
had to put up a show, that wasn’t necessary. […] You know when you’re getting paid to
do a program and you’re going to be dancing samba and we’re going to have a show in
two weeks. And before we teach you how to dance, we run around and we’re going to put
wings on and flap like a bird because it’ll be fun to flap like a bird. […] And then on the
last week, “出色地, you know what? I’m going to start teaching you the steps, not to men-
tion that the show is three days away.” I mean, does that sound logical to you?
“Infantalization” was a criticism repeated often by participants interviewed. 的确, 这是
the only consistent critique from participants who, throughout my research, repeatedly declared
their appreciation for the opportunities that the program afforded them to create and learn in
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Jennifer Beth Spiegel
a supportive environment. Some of these concerns were pedagogically mitigated by instructors
WHO, having heard this feedback, were sure to signal in subsequent Creation Intensives the artis-
tic utility of play and games as being a fundamental part of the creation process. This explana-
tion was given at the outset of the May 2015 密集的, which produced Psych, and there were no
similar critiques. 尽管如此, some of the concerns revealed a more systemic concern:
I don’t like using the term “youth”; 青年, who are youth? We are adults. Me, I am 24
years old, I am an adult. I don’t think that people who do this [call us youth] have bad
意图, it is just that it isn’t right. But really, it’s the manner that people are treated,
sometimes it is as if you were a child or something like that.
Presumably those who don’t appreciate the program are the ones who stop attending. 许多
come only to a few drop-ins. Interviewees indeed reported that some friends stopped com-
ing due to what was perceived as an over emphasis on “life-lesson” discussions. 尽管如此,
some leave in part due to lack of general support for basic survival needs. One participant had
left mid-process after several absences; the explanation offered to me by a friend of hers was
that she had been struggling with basic survival issues such as where she was going to sleep
each night — needs that community workers may have been able to help her address. This high-
lighted the ongoing tension between the need for assistance with basic survival requirements
from community workers often at a time when it may be difficult to ask, which may be essential
for keeping participants in the social circus program, and the imperative to respect the auton-
omy of each participant to resolve their own issues as they wish.
讽刺地, despite the critique by someone new to the process that there were too many
games in the creation of Alice, those participants who had previously participated in Cirque
Hors Piste Creation Intensive described Alice as being among the best quality shows they
had created with the organization, but one with the weakest sense of group cohesion. 在这个
Intensive, the group literally could not work together to create a pyramid. This was in part
a question of micropolitical dissensus, combined with acquiescence by some to the will of
others — the cultural “democratic” process gone awry in favor of rule by the loudest voices who
宣称, often erroneously, to speak for the majority.
These micropolitical dynamics are typically the surface effects of broader societal tensions
that traverse macro-micro divides. As Jacques Rancière points out, they provide sites for rene-
gotiating conditions of inclusion and exclusion ([2004] 2006). In Alice this was due to a conflu-
ence of factors. Participants organized extra rehearsals and planning sessions among themselves.
Those with other commitments or who had trouble integrating into the group for a variety of
reasons ranging from personality conflicts to mental health challenges were left out of these
self-organized meetings. 而且, as is generally the trend in Creation Intensives, those in
the most dire circumstances of homelessness or drug use left the process early. What happened
was that the same pressures of exclusion that persist more broadly threatened accessibility and
group cohesion on the micro level. Mitigating this vicious repetition was the short timespan of
the Intensive process, the remuneration, and the emotional support offered by social and com-
munity organizations. 然而, these are far from panaceas.
One critique of collective participatory processes is their tendency toward generating con-
sensus, 哪个, while it is to a certain extent necessary for moving forward, can at the same time
efface dissent. The refusal to force a singular interpretation within the group opens a proce-
dural space for dissensus; it leaves open multiple meanings and even the possibility of approach-
ing the practice as a non-signifying endeavor, wherein physical prowess and abstract creative
expression are valued for their own sake. The methodology tends toward embracing a mul-
tiplicity of expressions reminiscent of contemporary movements toward communities work-
ing together based on discrete mutually constituting singularities of what Hardt and Negri
name “multitudes” (Hardt and Negri 2004), rather than the homogenizing group identity of
“the community.” The turn toward articulating singularized lessons, 然而, as previously
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Social Circus
提及, was also often resisted by participants who were not comfortable with having to
articulate any lessons at all.
If we return to the dialectical question of what community is served and what community is
已创建, and consider this within the broader sociocultural context within which the program
takes place, the keys to understanding the apparent contradiction come into focus. 有时
the debriefings occur collectively, sometimes individually. 像这样, social circus inverts the
methodology of Theatre of the Oppressed that is aimed primarily at community and societal
transformation drawing on personal reflection and relationship-building as tools for collective
目标. While in Cirque Hors Piste’s social circus intensives, connections between the creative
process and embodied values or messages of the shows are often visible, they are not neces-
sarily unpacked with participants with the same precision as individual goals; social critique
and group work are approached primarily as tools for personal development, even if they seed
future collective initiatives. Despite occasional efforts by instructors and community workers
to draw links between the themes of the shows and current local social issues, the deconstruc-
tion of what participants ultimately created together is left incomplete, and attempts to inquire
more deeply are even met occasionally with resistance. What does it mean for there to be multi-
ple Alices? What does it mean for the story to have all been in the head of the nurse? 还有什么,
如果有的话, connection does the story have to the personal and social goals participants identified,
and the very processes in which they are entangled? Unlike many community-oriented shows,
connections between the Cirque Hors Piste shows and the social values they embody are rarely
discussed with audiences, and only in the softest of terms with participants, typically during the
process itself rather than during the postmortem. During the postmortem, the collective lessons
are repersonalized, validating the paths of participants as individuals as they leave the group at
the end of the Creation Intensive.
The prompt to identify and later report on such personal goals is one that sits uneasily with
many participants. While the self-identification of goals is designed to offer agency to the par-
ticipants in shaping their experience, such participatory schemas have been criticized as seeking
to foster an even deeper assimilation, where the perceived “wrong” answer could keep one from
gaining access to the creation process, regardless of the intentions of the admission interviewers
to remain open. The perceived message is that one needs to demonstrate a desire to transform
to be included. The relationship between participants’ personal and interpersonal goals and the
broader social politics, or the politics of touch embodied by collective creation, make palpable
the potentiality — and tensions — of the process for transformation, which seeks to work across
微- and macro-levels.
What some participants appear to be resisting is the tendency for what Eve Tuck (2010) 有
named the “damage-centered” theory of change — attempts to reform based on the assumption
that the target group is somehow damaged and that identifying the cause of this damage is the
first step toward changing it. This thinking is dominant among contemporary “progressives,”
whether researchers, support organizations, or activists. It also creeps in to haunt participants,
whether or not this approach is actually deployed by those involved in the organization. 的确,
many of the instructors and community workers, in many cases former participants themselves,
are critical of damage-based notions of change, categorically rejecting the supposition that par-
ticipants are “damaged.” The “damage-centered” theory of change holds that if one names a
问题, and shows that a community has been damaged by this problem, this will help to
mobilize the resources and support to transform the situation. On the personal level, this could
be extended to the rehearsal of shortcomings to be addressed, discussed, and worked through
within a collective process where, at the end, one assesses the extent to which one has achieved
one’s goals and addressed one’s problems. If there are tensions in the politics of inclusion, much
of this tension lies in the identification of the challenges and goals themselves. The very ways in
which the singular and the collective are situated within a larger social context positions youth
and marginality as conditions for participation, and predetermines the kind of communities that
may emerge as well as the possible intended outcomes.
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Jennifer Beth Spiegel
Social Engagement and the
Future of Collective Desire
What Does Social Circus Do?
“You know, I always wanted to be a clown” one participant told me. “I always wanted to do cir-
cus arts. What I wanted to do with my life was to do circus and travel in a caravan, sell cos-
tumes, ETC. Cirque Hors Piste allowed me to get started with this dream.”
Desires, 然而, are not only transformative; the desires themselves have a way of becom-
ing more vivid, evolving through actual engagement with a group process, particularly when
one is asked to articulate one’s goals, work closely with others, tap into creative expression, 和
embody the fruits of this in front of friends, 家庭, and a viewing public. Many participants I
encountered who began as shy and hesitant to perform left the process with dreams of spending
a life touring with a circus. While a few sought careers in the performing arts, many specified
that their newfound desire was not a drive to professionalize, though supporting oneself would
be nice, but rather of simply being able to live a creative life and share that with others. 这
question of how to sustain a life of this nature, 然而, was deferred, although many of the
instructors had followed this precise path. The transformation of desires perhaps exemplifies
the impact of emphasizing process over product — the final product being the transformation in
collective subjectivity itself. Shows may critique a social system — or not — but what is learned,
最后, is a way of relating, 创造, and adapting to structures of production itself. Here the act
of expression is what matters rather than that which is said — how it is put together rather than
what is put together. 然而, just as who is recruited and how that is done influences the kind of
community created, what is said and how it is said is part of the production of collective futures:
what can be said, by whom, who is listening, 和, most of all, what does this assemblage do?
Youth culture is increasingly characterized by pressure for individuals and collectives to
self-represent, to perform their individuality, to perform their public image (Fleetwood 2005).
With social circus, 然而, it is the act of performing rather than of being seen that is placed
center-stage, even as the pressure and promise of being eventually seen by an audience propels
the process.
I just kept affirming myself and saying like, “I can do this.” […] We were all encourag-
ing ourselves as a group and bringing up the energy […] I really felt like I was part of the
team and my teammates really appreciated my presence and were really happy that I was
there and that really made me feel important.
What is the purpose of this self-representation and the production of collective subjectivity
that goes with it? As many have pointed out, social arts programs such as Cirque Hors Piste are
often branded as a combination of charity and the fulfillment of civic responsibility on the part
of funders, offering tools for self-realization to those “at-risk,” while participants themselves are
rarely privy to the discourses and grant applications that shape the programs (Fleetwood 2005).
While the fear of infantalization is evidence of the doubts surrounding what emerges from
these structures, the process continues to attract participants. 虽然, 对于一些, this is due to
a desire to learn circus skills and earn a little cash, the particular form of sociality is intrinsic to
the continued and even repeated involvement of many.
A sociality is anchored to the social circus movement practices themselves, as it is with
breakdance and hip hop (see Martin 2012). Some of these dynamics of sociality have already
been described: the requirement of collective trust, the engagement in and management of risk-
based practices (trading the risks involved in excessive consumption prior to rehearsal for the
risk management of being there to support one’s partner who may be standing on one’s shoul-
德斯, juggling). Social circus did not invent circus culture for Montréal urban youth, but is
part of what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari would call a “capture device” (1987), harness-
ing the power of circus for fundable social goals. Many participants were already hula hooping
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63
Social Circus
or juggling on their own before they found the program, but have since gained a community of
collaborators and a support system, whether skill for building or for finding further social and
artistic services.
As Randy Martin points out about breakdance and hip hop, the unique physicality embody-
ing a sociality becomes the quasi-utopian promise of collectively generated sociality that com-
plicates the spectator-performer divide, generating times and spaces “in which collectivity itself
would gain and circulate its own currency” (2012:76). While some in social circus go on to pro-
fessionalize, and a small number are able to maintain fulltime careers as performers (或者更多
frequently performer/instructors), the vast majority perform for one another — the value being
the generation of a mode of interaction for the individuals involved. 如果, as Nicole Fleetwood
suggests, “Youth’s function within dominant visual culture is as fetishized spectacle” (2005:92),
the call to express oneself is a condition not only of self-image but of being recognized and
thus rewarded as having a place in society. Within this context, the blurring of the spectator-
performer divide characteristic of the social arts embodies an ambivalent social politic.
If a key element of the social circus model rests on fortifying social and cultural agency via
the ability to express individual and collective goals and identities through engagement with cir-
cus arts, to what kind of future modes of relationality has this led? The goal is to arrive at a situ-
ation where the supports of social circus are no longer needed. For some it is months, for others
年, for some never. Some begin college and return to visit social circus; others create circus
shows and return later as instructors; still others move on to other things completely, for bet-
ter or worse. 在 2001 a group of former social circus participants launched a now fully fledged
NGO called Carmagnole, best known for their multiday annual community circus carnival,
attended and animated by both community and professional artists volunteering their time.
Carmagnole also produces cabarets throughout the year and has instigated several small circus
公司, the most enduring being Les Érotisseries (Spiegel 2016). These circus communities
create their own emergent microsocieties in dialogue with and transforming broader societies.
The Ethico-Aesthetics of Social Circus and
the Embodied Potential and Tensions in an
Institutionalized “Theory of Change”
Personal and interpersonal transformations, particularly at the level of sensibilities and modes
of relating, Guattari argues, could lead to broader social transformation; and conversely, 社会的
and political transformations could shape subjectivity at both the individual and collective level
(1995). It is important to recognize that process-based theories of change do not require attain-
ing utopian equality as a condition of success. Transformation is a process, not a destination.
What is embodied in social circus is a challenge to habitual modes of relating, one that breaks
with habits of thought and interaction, to open up new individual and collective horizons for
future social and cultural development. And indeed I found that there was a strong desire to do
所以. As one participant stated: “I want to be an artist and to use my strengths to improve society.”
The theory of change described in this article begins with individuals coming together to
create something greater. 仍然, what I found was that the realization and articulation of the
larger desired social transformation remains undeveloped among the participants of Cirque
Hors Piste. There have been numerous critics of what many have called the “NGO indus-
trial complex” (INCITE! 2007; Barry-Shaw and Jay 2012) where the need for an NGO to sus-
tain a program’s funding undercuts its ability to bring about long-standing and far-reaching
social transformation (Barry-Shaw and Jay 2012; Plastow 2015). 的确, the extent of change
that can be meaningfully seeded and brought to fruition without a complete transformation of
the hierarchies that continue to characterize systems of support (and society as a whole) 遗迹
in question.
64
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Jennifer Beth Spiegel
Community workers try their best to encourage civic engagement and reflection on current
issues relevant to themes identified by participants. But the explorations scratch only the sur-
face of concerns, remaining aesthetically sanitized. For the extra step toward not only collective
“expression” but also collective social transformation, the process itself may require not only
the shared unpacking of collective expression and its relation to personal goals, but also shared
development of pathways forward. If social circus acts as a bridge, what remains to be seen is
what can be done with the connections built through the language of circus. What kind of new
relations are yet to come among community artists, community spectators, community workers,
and instructors as guides to the arts of corporeal creation? What would happen to structures of
support and processes that guide transformation if the fluidity between these roles, as placed
center stage in theatrical form, are acted upon? What would happen if “circus lessons” become
“life lessons” not only for community creators but also for those within the broader community
who ignore, 支持, or see youth perform?
If social circus is indeed an ethico-aesthetic practice, that is to say a practice that embeds and
diffuses a way of seeing and relating through the rituals of embodiment that it invites partic-
ipants to rehearse, we can now say several things about these practices: (1) by including those
who are generally left outside of formal cultural production, they not only transform audience-
spectator relations, inviting active creative participation, but they also bring certain bodies,
voices, and street arts to the stage that would not otherwise be there, as well as audiences that
would not normally be present; (2) these “new” bodies and voices are being invited in as part of
a broader drive toward self-expression and self-revelation that itself is as much a form of culti-
vating social subjectivity in a culture that promotes self-realization and self-revelation as a con-
dition for active social and economic participation; 但是也 (3) the actual collective modes of
relating and especially the desires that are emerging have yet to be fully unpacked in order to
draw out and develop social and collective visions for the future. This latter observation is less
a critique of the practices or intentions of particular people involved as it is a reflection of the
limitations of current aesthetic, 社会的, and structural technologies deployed.
The threat of repeating existing hierarchies in an attempt to ensure a smooth learning expe-
rience for the majority of participants remains ever present. 而且, the controlled and par-
tial nature of expressing the desires for social change while emphasizing the personal suggests a
socially ambivalent “capture device” for mitigating the risky elements of youth culture and dis-
内容. 尽管如此, as a site of socially inclusive artistic creation and cultural production,
social circus has engendered community-engaged circus collectives as well as the seeding of
practices of trust and play. The emphasis on the polyphonic expression of participants as such
becomes a pivotal element in shaping the dramaturgy as well as the ethico-aesthetic and cultural
dynamic that emerges. This manifests as the embodiment of a social kinesthetic that, at its best,
models a technique and community structure for breaking with habits of alienation and instead
seeding futures that the joy of collective creation may initiate. As a horizon of futurity, the col-
lective dreams embodied by social circus remind us, if nothing else, that we still have little idea
what we are collectively capable of accomplishing together.
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