From Rural Villages to Bombay Slums
The afternoon my rainbow peacock costume was finished I took a rickshaw to meet up with the circus in the end-of-the-road village of Bhopoli, and I arrived just as they were beginning their show for four or five hundred people, mostly children under three feet tall. The show went smoothly and the host organization, a non-profit homeopathic hospital that delivers medicine to villages without roads, put us up in at their hospital complex for the next couple of nights. Twelve of us stayed in their beautiful bamboo house - the night was clear, dark and full of stars, chirping crickets and appreciative Americans - and the next day we toured a nearby village and learned about the grassroots medical aid work they do.
We traveledto Mumbai (Bombay) next and here we stayed for five days at the St.Pius Seminary, a green oasis in the midst of a lot of people, honkingand exhaust. We are a very expressive group, in our appearance, styleand sound, and I think the Indian Catholic priests-in-training sangtheir own songs of brotherhood a little stronger in our presence. During this time I was introduced to the circus' cabal system, wheresmall groups meet on different topics to make choices andrecommendations to the larger group, and we had rehearsals to reworkparts of the show. The environmental themes of deforestation and waterpollution are partly shown through elemental characters (earth, water,fire and air), and we developed a stilting and flute playing role forme as the fifth element rainbow peacock character.
Ournext show was scheduled to be in a huge Mumbai project/slum, and wearrived to hundreds of kids running after our bus and yelling andscreaming excitedly at our exotic presence in their community. It wasvery chaotic and we dispatched a small team to make contact with thenon-profit that worked in this community. There wasn't a clear spaceto perform and we were concerned about security and the only flat spacethat didn't have garbage piles on it or sewage running through it wason top of the septic tank! We decided to skip our full production andinstead to do various clowning entertainments with acoustic music andalso to do our fire show on this concrete space. We knew our securitywas at some risk as the kids were very excited and more and more peoplekept arriving, but we were determined to share our circus with thesetypes of communities, and besides to leave without giving a show mayhave been risker yet.
While theothers began music and entertainment I put on my stilts and the hugeten feet wide peacock costume and walked from the bus to theperformance space. Kids cheered and followed me in this colorfulprocession to the stage area, where I circled around the insideperimeter overhead of the children while they screamed in fear andjoy. We were in the middle of many tall buildings and there werepeople everywhere in the windows and on rooftops and packed all aroundour rope-delineated stage, maybe eight hundred or a thousand possiblywere present. It was very intense and filled with energy as theyloved the show and particularly our fire performances.
Oncewe finished and bowed they swarmed the stage, screaming and wanting totouch us. This mostly overwhelmed the few men that had been setto provide us our post-show security as it was chaotic in the darknesswith all the hundreds of kids cheering and pushing their way into oursmall group. We made our best effort to stay together (which wasimpossible) and to make it to the bus safely, with all of our thingsand without being groped. Once we all boarded the bus we immediatelytook off while they slapped on the sides and chased after us screamingfor a good half kilometer. We were scared, flustered, and relieved andwere anxious for our show the next day, performing for a hundred kidson the grounds of a Mumbai mosque.
The Bhopoli village field performance.
The amazing bamboo house where we stayed.
A reflective moment at a well during the village tour we were given.
Downstairs of our dorm rooms.
The local children, as always, are great and very excited to play and interact.
There were more crows in the nearby trees than any of us had ever seen.
We tentatively looked from the back of the bus at the gathering crowds as we reached the dead end of this road and our presumed performance area.
View from the window of our 'safe room' where we gathered to decide if we would do our show.
We traveledto Mumbai (Bombay) next and here we stayed for five days at the St.Pius Seminary, a green oasis in the midst of a lot of people, honkingand exhaust. We are a very expressive group, in our appearance, styleand sound, and I think the Indian Catholic priests-in-training sangtheir own songs of brotherhood a little stronger in our presence. During this time I was introduced to the circus' cabal system, wheresmall groups meet on different topics to make choices andrecommendations to the larger group, and we had rehearsals to reworkparts of the show. The environmental themes of deforestation and waterpollution are partly shown through elemental characters (earth, water,fire and air), and we developed a stilting and flute playing role forme as the fifth element rainbow peacock character.
Ournext show was scheduled to be in a huge Mumbai project/slum, and wearrived to hundreds of kids running after our bus and yelling andscreaming excitedly at our exotic presence in their community. It wasvery chaotic and we dispatched a small team to make contact with thenon-profit that worked in this community. There wasn't a clear spaceto perform and we were concerned about security and the only flat spacethat didn't have garbage piles on it or sewage running through it wason top of the septic tank! We decided to skip our full production andinstead to do various clowning entertainments with acoustic music andalso to do our fire show on this concrete space. We knew our securitywas at some risk as the kids were very excited and more and more peoplekept arriving, but we were determined to share our circus with thesetypes of communities, and besides to leave without giving a show mayhave been risker yet.
While theothers began music and entertainment I put on my stilts and the hugeten feet wide peacock costume and walked from the bus to theperformance space. Kids cheered and followed me in this colorfulprocession to the stage area, where I circled around the insideperimeter overhead of the children while they screamed in fear andjoy. We were in the middle of many tall buildings and there werepeople everywhere in the windows and on rooftops and packed all aroundour rope-delineated stage, maybe eight hundred or a thousand possiblywere present. It was very intense and filled with energy as theyloved the show and particularly our fire performances.
Oncewe finished and bowed they swarmed the stage, screaming and wanting totouch us. This mostly overwhelmed the few men that had been setto provide us our post-show security as it was chaotic in the darknesswith all the hundreds of kids cheering and pushing their way into oursmall group. We made our best effort to stay together (which wasimpossible) and to make it to the bus safely, with all of our thingsand without being groped. Once we all boarded the bus we immediatelytook off while they slapped on the sides and chased after us screamingfor a good half kilometer. We were scared, flustered, and relieved andwere anxious for our show the next day, performing for a hundred kidson the grounds of a Mumbai mosque.
The Bhopoli village field performance.
The amazing bamboo house where we stayed.
A reflective moment at a well during the village tour we were given.
Downstairs of our dorm rooms.
The local children, as always, are great and very excited to play and interact.
There were more crows in the nearby trees than any of us had ever seen.
We tentatively looked from the back of the bus at the gathering crowds as we reached the dead end of this road and our presumed performance area.
View from the window of our 'safe room' where we gathered to decide if we would do our show.
Wow, the crowd's reaction as you left here (and your next gig in Mumbai) is incredible... So hard to understand. I remember times in Africa when children's behavior was hard for me to understand -- especially when excited -- and I never dealt with the size of crowds that you're describing here. I often felt they didn't see me as a *person* there, because I was so different, they couldn't relate to me at all. I was an odd creature to them. I wonder if perhaps the same was true of your troupe?
Fascinating reading your writings, Darren, I look forward to more.
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