Join founders Hilary Westlake and David Gale as they look back on the adult-oriented acts of Circus Lumière such as dysfunctional ventriloquism, clinically suspect and clearly fraudulent telepathy, exquisite costumes and much more…
Doors: 7:00pm
Tickets: £5-£10 (sliding scale)
Lumiere & Son Theatre Company operated as a small-scale touring experimental theatre company that produced an unusually diverse range of work including plays, music theatre, an opera, street distractions and large scale outdoor events.
In 1980, it came to the attention of the Directors, Hilary Westlake and David Gale, that none of their friends and acquaintances had ever found clowns amusing, despite the undoubted value of the clown in any healthy or, indeed, unhealthy society. The directors concluded that clowning, at least in the UK, was in decline because of a perceived need to cater to children that was regarded as vital to the survival of the travelling circus, which had been struggling to develop family audiences since the rise of television. They felt that clowning should be reunited, in a contemporary style, with its roots in danger, unpredictability and the vulgar.
Circus Lumiere toured in a five king pole 260 seater custom-made big top and presented an animal-free, modestly acrobatic show that foregrounded such adult-oriented acts as dysfunctional ventriloquism, clinically suspect and clearly fraudulent telepathy, butchery masquerading as conjuring, conjuring featuring murder, off-colour joke fusillades, the ingestion of household cleaning materials, the distressing consumption by an entertainer of his own brain, exquisite costumes, intermittent audience invasion when ticket holders were invited to touch the bodies of the clowns, all delivered at a frenzied pace with intervals of limpid beauty.
Hilary and David will talk about their work.