The Generating Company is rehearsing for their new show Storm, which will be performed in a circular space with audiences surrounding the performers. There are four directors who have assembled a cast of 20 performers from the Millennium Dome show. The show is being developed through an experimental process without a script, focusing on character development and improvisation. The aim is to use circus skills and physical storytelling to reflect on everyday life in an urban setting and provoke new perspectives from audiences.

1. “Alright, everyone who hasn’t got a harness, just stay dead,” Sean cries to the air. Performers
are attaching themselves to ropes that fall from a central truss 50 feet above. They line the
scaffolding walkways 15 feet high to either side of the chamber, facing each other. “We’re
going through the rush hour again,” Sean bounds over to me, “eventually there will be a girl
taking a flower to her loved one across a high-wire running down the middle, the swingers are
going to pass each side of her.” Sean is constantly having ideas attack him, they seem to creep
in while he’s talking, illuminate his face, then send it into a far-away stare. “I think she’ll be
in colour and everyone else in grey.”
This is week one of rehearsals after a 4 week training period. Storm, a circus interpretation
of life in the city is the first show to come out of the Generating Company and opens at the end
of April. There is no script, the show is being built out of a period of experimentation. The
Circus Space in Hoxton is Britain’s stab at the international market, going into competition,
after 10 years, with the likes of Cirque du Soleil. The company started from the energy of
several people keen not to lose the momentum of the Millennium Dome Show. There are four
directors; Matt Costain, Sean Kempton, Abigail Yeates and Corrine Pierre, who have selected
20 other cast members from the Dome. Pierrot Bidon of Archaos helped lay down the initial
concept and was going to direct, but ended up proving too expensive. “We’re all learning,”
says Paul Cockle, the Company Manager. He has also come out of the Dome feeling
determined.
New circus has for a long time not been able to expand here as it has abroad, as an art rich in
experiment. Perhaps it’s because we just aren’t that physical as a nation, or maybe take
ourselves too seriously. The association with the Dome, despite the acclaimed show certainly
hasn’t helped. The Generating Company is about to see if it can turn things around. ‘‘There
are certain routes a straight actor can take. There is a structure in place there, but until recently,
circus artists have had to go overseas to train,” says Sean. The first degree in circus skills was

2. introduced by Circus Space two years ago, but France alone has over 200 schools. Strange,
seeing as we invented it, as an industry, back in the 1700s. “We are performers and deserve a
livelihood like any other,” he adds. The years of plugging away seem to have made them
belligerent. Its value and appeal now seem obvious, but money follows in small measures for
British development. Fusion is the key in new circus, aiming at a point where theatre, circus
and dance meet. What these people are doing still labours under the name circus and maybe
suffers by association. The emphasis is very much now on providing a reflection on real life,
incorporating narrative while keeping the audience on its toes in a similar way that traditional
circus did. “There’s something very romantic about the notion of travelling round in a big top,”
says Costain, “but going into a space that is part of a community and turning it around is more
what we are about.” Costain, with cropped peroxide blonde hair and a replica of a Manchester
United shirt with ‘Costain’ on the back, makes the scaffolding look like an adventure
playground as he climbs around. He trained as an actor at Rose Brueford drama college, before
converting. “I was tired of seeing intensely emotional topics depicted in a play with lacklustre
physicality. When I came across circus and aerial work in particular, I thought ‘here is
something that is real and extreme and is able to physically express those big emotions and
issues.’”
“You’re a danger freak,” Corrine informs him. Corrine is French-Canadian and trained with
Soleil in Montreal, one of their three schools in Canada. The show itself will offer us another
way of looking at personas that appear in the city. They take their locale as inspiration, asking
us to look again, by making the all-too-familiar suddenly strange. It takes place in ‘the round’
but with the audience standing in the centre, constantly having to move to keep up with the
action.
“It’s a 360 degree show with things happening above, beside and around you. Here we have
nowhere to hide, there is no offstage,” says Corrine. She could easily be referring to the

3. audience, but talks of the performers, who she compares to those in ‘box theatre’ whose “magic
is certainly more easy to do.” It certainly has more risks. The cast fling themselves around on
platforms with only the debris of a building site to protect them from a fall. The stage manager
looking on with gritted teeth. Costain feels this increases the heightened sense of reality, “you
really can fall from your trapeze and you really are committed to your work,” he says.
The aim it seems is to question what we take for granted about the roles of the performer and
the audience. The immediacy of the acts connects to something that will possibly appeal to
those who normally would not be interested in theatre. The room throbs constantly with an
energy of the recently released. The Dome show, while taking them to fame, was technically
dominated. Like animals uncaged, they strut around their new domain with the pleasure of
showing what they can really do. “We put down the concrete pillars and then guide and weave
the characters through them,” says Sean. Each performer has devised and has complete control
over their own character. Sean prompts them to develop this by calling out their numbers at
random, on which cue they have to leap into character. The structure seems to be laid down so
improvisation and innovation can come at any stage of the process. “We might push them in
a certain way. We don’t want to clutter it,” says Sean.
“We could probably make a 100 shows out of this, but everything must be shrunk to the
essence of what we want to show,” Corrine finishes off his sentence, as the group often do for
each other. Working together for two years has allowed them to leap into Storm with a
relatively short production schedule. Music is going to be a live mix by Tayo, who has
composed for the Royal Exchange and the Bristol Old Vic. As the ‘rehearsals’ progress, Tayo
will write the music to fit each character as they develop, which in turn helps the cast define
their roles. The Dome blended imagery of William Blake with Dante and I ask them about
inspiration for Storm. Sean says that it is so character based they have little in the way of
artistic cues, most of it is a “discursive process.”

4. Many of the performers from the Dome have been gobbled up by Disney and Soleil. Matt is
not coy about his feelings for multi-nationals. “I want people to come away having felt
something, and having seen something that relates to their everyday life.” British circus may
become the place for those who want to perform but fear the world of the luvvie. Certainly the
four directors have taken to it after disenchantment with more established disciplines. Abigail
Yeates worked as a cabaret dancer, then trained in contemporary dance, but found it
passionless. “I found it quite disturbing that if you were not technically brilliant then they were
not very interested in you as a human being.”
The funds have come in the form of help from NESTA, David Puttnam’s company for the
endowment of Science and the Arts. It has cost £10,000 for the show to come this far but is
dependent on the Arts Council touring allowance to get across the country. “We’ve got venues
lined up, from a warehouse in Manchester to the Theatre Royal in York. Embracing different
identities is what we are about,” says Costain. The London Development Agency has helped
fund a Professional Development Centre in the Circus Space, that will house the Generating
Company in the future. Grants have been awarded for work “with the emphasis on the creative
process rather than a finished piece.”
They are trying to express local, personal and specific problems. As writer on Circus Reg
Bolton says, “solutions to problems often drop in when you’ve managed to stop worrying about
them.” He is talking about the restorative effects of the circus arts, the concentration needed
to engage in the task. New circus incorporates the skills learnt from these activities to depict
personalities. It is still episodic and intense, but with an eye for questions about life. It offers
a place where we can look at ourselves and laugh.