In 2016-17, I worked with Bill Palmer and Pete Finegan to create Full Circle – a show which has become a bit of a surprise hit on the outdoor arts circuit and by 2019 had toured across the UK and across the world via France, the Netherlands and Portugal all the way to South Korea.
The show is hard to describe – somewhere between a strange live art piece and a traditional street ‘circle’ show. The name comes from the idea that Bill, when considering his retirement, was taking his thoughts full circle, to take stock of the first time he performed on the street and the learning he’s gained in how to attend to an audience. He was reminded of a time when Mike Lister (former co-director of Avanti), thew a small stuffed toy over the top of a large crowd of people and waited… until an unseen person threw it back.
What ensued was lots of group thinking and practical exploring of ways in which we can encourage people to trust us and to become integral in making the show function. And ways in which we could turn the dominant style of the circle show performer on its head. Most acts that you find in places like Covent Garden and other popular busking spots work hard to be entertaining and likeable. We wondered if we could be grumpy and antagonistic and yet still attract and keep large crowds. All this, while being attentive to use the ingredients that Bill had challenged us to work with, including an ever growing pile of galvanised buckets.
A crucial factor in the creation of this successful show was in the fact that we made it very slowly. Short bursts of activity at 101 Outdoor Arts Creation Centre and at the New Vic, Stoke on Trent were full of experiments and hard thinking. In between, there was time for the ideas to land in our brains and to expand into a life of their own. As such, when we eventually came to nailing it down, we managed to whip it up pretty quick prior to our first performances at Bath’s Bedlam Fair.
This show has been a pleasure to create and perform in. It’s not to everyone’s taste. Some see it as cruel (it explicitly touches on obedience to people in authority) but fortunately most find it funny and also strangely compelling and watching a group of people stand and watch a tower of buckets being extremely slowly erected, doesn’t fail to delight me.
Paschale Straiton 