A Circus by Any Other Name

GET READY FOR A NEW WAY TO EXPERIENCE SHAKESPEARE WHEN THE CIRCUS COMETH TO TOWN 

By Dan McCarthy 

Photos Courtesy of Spirit of the Circus

Hand balancer Artem Zhaunenka

Mark Twain once wrote, while advocating for a national culture focused on small acts of thoughtful rebellion against an established status quo, that “a discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.” 

While the notion may lean more towards the politics of Twain’s day, it is no less a valid way to think about this month’s kickoff of what could be considered a Berkshire-only collaboration born of sheer irreverence and quixotic creative vision. As part of the new Bard Out of the Box series at the Tina Packer Playhouse, Sarasota’s Spirit of the Circus group and Shakespeare & Company have forged a new union to create Circus & the Bard. Together, they will stage an hour of high-flying Shakespearean storytelling from August 21–31. 

While last year saw a circus-and-thespian mashup vis-a-vis Somersaults in the Berkshires at the Duffin Theater in Lenox, this summer’s performance is totally different. The production will team four actors with six Spirit of Circus artists in a unified narrative intended to be more of a deep dive into the alchemy of text and spectacle, and one that aims to delight families, thrill circus fans, and even welcome Shakespeare aficionados. When the Bard meets the Big Top, it’s easy to picture even longtime Shakespeare purists leaning forward in their seats, yearning for more. 

“I like to follow the path of irreverence,” says Shakespeare & Company Artistic Director Allyn Burrows. “I feel like this is going to be really wonderfully irreverent, and when you go down that path, you experience those moments of simple humanity that you can't help but be moved by.” 

Which isn’t to say that this is the first time in history that Shakespeare and the circus have come together. Staged Victorian-era pantomimes of Shakespearean burlesques featuring cheeky parodies of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet have been written about (more like Shakespeare being presented through a circus-style format), and even in modern times there are UK schools performing The Tempest with a circus twist. This summer also finds the New York Circus Project transforming Hamlet into a cutting-edge acrobatic performance with artists from Cirque du Soleil and Broadway. But it’s the deeper connection to Shakespeare & Company that makes this union more personal for both camps involved. 

The Spirit of the Circus is led by cofounders Robin Eldridge, a former Shakespeare & Company dance and theater student, and Pedro Reis, who has trained aerialists, jugglers, and tightrope walkers for nearly three decades through the nonprofit Circus Arts Conservatory (CAC) in Sarasota, Florida. Eldridge was the bridge between the thespian Lenox crew and the circus team from south of Tampa. The long history between Eldridge and Burrows, whom she has known since the age of 15 from her student days, and her time in Sarasota collaborating with Reis has a payoff that Burrows says is performance alchemy. 

“It's the marriage of the physical and the poetic,” says Burrows. “So, when you have a heroic piece of Elizabethan text that's being spoken while a character is watching a hand balance move, you see the courage that goes into it. You see the reach; you see the stretch. You see the commitment, the dedication, and the absolute focus that it takes.”

“[Circus and the Bard] is going to be definitely something they've never seen before,” says Shakespeare & Company's Allyn Burrows, “certainly not from us, and certainly not in Berkshire County.” From top, multidisciplinary artist Shena Tschofen; aerialist Zoe Isadora; juggler Spencer Androli. Page 79, Karoly and Anita Zeman in a "quick change illusion."

Intensive training programs from CAC under Reis have produced world-class performers. Meanwhile, Shakespeare & Company, ranked among Newsweek’s Top 10 Best Outdoor Theater Performance for 2025, has made the Berkshires glow with Tudor-style productions for upwards of 40 years. Both are resort-town arts hubs, with Sarasota’s winter warmth mirrored by the Berkshire’s summer festival season, yet neither had offered the other’s specialty. Until now. That complementary overlap sparked the dream of text meets tour-de-force.

It began back in 2020, when Eldridge moved to Sarasota and saw that there was fertile ground to fill the void of professional Shakespeare productions in the area. She reconnected with Burrows to explore where that idea could go. By 2022, those early conversations led to action. (That was after Burrows traveled to Sarasota to put on a production of A Walk in the Woods.) Over dinner and drinks, he found himself in conversation with Reis, who seemed skeptical about the possibility of merging their worlds. But the feeling for Reis was largely that Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and the circus is the circus.

Reis couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of combining circus and Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet. The subsequent dialogue went something like this:

“Shakespeare is its own language,” Burrows explained to Reis.

“What do you mean?” responded Reis.

“Well, Shakespeare, it's literally a language,” said Burrows.

"Well, does that mean I can write Shakespeare, the language?” asked Reis.

‘Well, indirectly, yes, you can. You could write Shakespeare,” replied Burrows.

And there it was, the aha! moment that took hold of Reis. The world of Shakespeare opened up to his circus world. The rhythm of a sonnet can literally elevate an aerial act. The groundwork for text and trapeze to occupy the same ring can happen. They were two sides of the same dare.

There won’t be a master of ceremonies for the upcoming performance; the actors and circus performers drive the story. Exploring how these seemingly disparate art forms might speak to each other in questions, answers, and discoveries, allows them to be independent yet interactive. It is finding the natural poetry that emerges when celebrated text and language meet the physical tour de force of circus ebullience. The approach serves to demystify Shakespeare for families who might find traditional productions intimidating and offers circus enthusiasts a new depth of storytelling that elevates spectacle into art.

A clown will connect the circus artists with the Shakespearean actors during the one-hour production, guiding audiences to observe the actors arriving in a strange world (and in a circus town). The story unfolds as the two worlds come together before the crowd. “We're not telegraphing this stuff to the audience,” says Reis. “We have fools and we have clowns, and we have incredible moments where the unexpected is going to happen.”

The collaboration targets multiple audiences, each discovering something unique. Shakespeare enthusiasts will find themselves asking questions like "How does a circus clown and stage fool collide?" as familiar texts gain fresh perspective through physical interpretation. Accustomed to performances viewed from stadium distances, the audience will observe acts that are just six feet from the front row, creating an intimacy that transforms spectacle into close encounter. 

Perhaps most importantly, the partnership opens doors for families and newcomers to both art forms. Shakespeare and the circus both carry their own stigmas to a certain degree, and the exposure of each one’s core audience to the others could create a groundswell of not only renewed interest for both, but new audiences. 

At its heart, Circus & the Bard is not intended to be a simple collision of both genres. The fusion of both worlds must drive the elements together cohesively to ensure the suspension of reality is buoyed by the reality presented by the story. 

“The question we ask is ‘Why is this particular sonnet with this particular act? How do these entities complement each other?’” says Reis. “So, we take a hand-balancing act, a strong man, a beautiful body, and we can find the right sonnet to find the right text to be a combination, to lift up the act, to excel the text of Shakespeare and make this living picture that the audience is going to be experiencing.” 

Merging two such distinct art forms has presented unique challenges that pushed both organizations into uncharted territory. The creative team had to balance respect for Shakespeare's iambic pentameter with the pacing demands of circus spectacle, ensuring neither art form sacrificed its essence for the sake of the other. The technical requirements also become formidable. Circus rigging has to be tested and adapted for the bare-stage environment of the Packer Playhouse, while traditional Elizabethan costumes required modification to accommodate aerial work and acrobatic movements. 

Both Reis and Eldridge maintain they lean into collaboration ideas with the openminded creatives who know what such a relationship or collaboration might look like. “The circus is this sort of elusive concept that has so many associations and so much history,” says Eldridge. “The interculturality, the intergenerationally, is such a unique subculture.…It’s so much more than just the acts themselves, and it's certainly more than the three-ring circus that everyone associated it with for years and years.” 

If August's experiment succeeds, both organizations envision an annual tradition that rotates through different Shakespearean texts and circus specialties, demonstrating that innovation often emerges from the most unexpected combinations. The endeavor has already become an exercise in artistic fusion. 

“It's going to be definitely something they've never seen before,” says Burrows, “certainly not from us, and certainly not in Berkshire County.”