Is circus always queer? 

Smells Like Circus | March 2022

What’s with circus?

It is hard for us to imagine how big of a cultural spectacle circus once was. There’s nothing in our era that really compares to it. Just imagine, people would wait until a travelling circus came to town and go to a massive tent to enjoy a night of excessive amazement and entertainment. There would be clowns providing bouts of laughter, talented acrobats performing dangerous and gravity-defying acts, and magicians deluding you at every turn.

This type of ‘traditional circus’ was at its most popular during the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. It revolved around the extraordinary, the exceptional, and it stood in stark contrast with the everyday lives of ordinary people, which (compared to today at least) didn’t have a whole lot of excitement to offer. They’d mostly just work a repetitive job and worry about staying alive (some things just don’t change). In the eyes of early 20th century people, circus was a world apart from their own, and not just because it proved far more exciting. 

Many norms and rules that governed society just didn't seem to have as much power over circus people. Always on the road and never really settling down, circus people were thought of as outcasts, as a close-knit band of rebels marching to the beat of their own drum. They were thought to enjoy their lives in complete freedom, unbothered by the issues and worries 'common' people experienced. 

For example, circus companies consisted of performers with different ethnicities and nationalities, with different sexualities and gender identities, all living and working together. Women, too, were given opportunities for employment. And while this (unfortunately) doesn’t mean minorities within circus companies were treated on equal foot, this did make travelling circuses LOOK different from the rest of society, where separation was often key. In a time overrun with fascist ideology, circus companies sent a strong message: one of a different reality being possible.  

Is circus even queer?

Well… there are different perspectives on this of course. Some scholars, like Charles R. Batson, consider circus practices and performances to be inherently queer. He says: 

“The queer – always already the exceptional, the odd, the outsider, the outcast – lies at the heart of circus’ practices and meaning."

He believes that this common aesthetic of the ‘exceptional’, of the ‘extraordinary’, is enough to bind circus and queerness together. By making and showing things that are out of the ordinary, circus allows us to see things in a different light. It presents us with possibilities and experiences we don’t come by in daily life and in this way transforms our outlook, giving us potency to conjure up alternatively structured realities.

While this is a valid way of looking at things - circus, as an art form, indeed has a lot of queer potentials - it falls a little short. The idea of circus always already being queer, is hard to reconcile with some aspects of the history of circus and it does injustice to lived experiences of some past, and present, circus performers. If we were to simplistically consider circus as queer, we would conceal and deny oppressive practices as well.

A space where these tensions were really amplified was in the freakshow. Freak shows, or sideshows, were a big part of circuses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It allowed people to buy a ticket to go see ‘human oddities’ like bearded ladies or sword-swallowers, or people who weren’t white, who had disabilities, or ambiguously sexed bodies. These ‘different’ bodies were theatricalized; backstories were invented to make these ‘freaks’ seem more exotic, less…normal. In this way, freak shows upheld and reproduced sexist, ableist, and racist norms.

At the same time, the freak show had subversive potential. It placed ‘different’ bodies front and center; ‘difference’ wasn’t shipped off to some remote island, hidden from the public eye. ‘The Other’ inhabited (the same) space. As ‘common people’ were curiously gazing at ‘freaks’, freaks could stare back; there was interaction. There was a potential to explore differences and similarities. Above all, it was a sign to queer people or people who felt like outcasts, that they were allowed to exist. It was a chance for them to identify with something in the real world.

So… Is circus queer? Is the freak show? You might feel like we’ve been stuck in limbo. The relationship between circus and queerness is not straightforward; it’s ultimately a complex balancing act. While circus is not automatically queer, it does have a stubborn and strong potential for queerness. Contemporary circus festivals like Smells Like Circus, and its intellectual counterpart Smells Like Dialogue, honor the queer potential and legacy of circus and strive to take this exchange further. Amongst others, they’ve invited Sideshow, a circus company that refuses to stick to one clearly defined genre. And circus artist and professor, John-Paul Zaccarini, who is redefining parts of circus’ complicated history. Shows, like Club Toulouse, that have overtly subversive and queer narratives; and creators who are moulding queer and non-white creative safe spaces within the circus world.