_popular circus_
Let's Stop the End of the World! - Popular Circus of Climate Justice
Giant puppets! Dancing cardboard! Politics for all ages! La Casa dels Futurs proposes to bring back their political, popular and family-friendly circus. This circus created with – cardboard, fabric, paint and love – depicts the wide diversity of struggles and communities involved the fight for climate justice in Barcelona. These circus skits have been built – both the contents and the puppets themselves – through participatory processes with groups and social movements from various peripheral neighborhoods of Barcelona (Canyelles, Sant Cosme, Hospitalet). Using humour, dancing pigs, satire and poignant performance – this circus not only presents the problems of the climate crisis, but also celebrates community organization and popular power of affected communities as leaders in the fight for climate justice.
We are creating
This circus – inspired by, and co-created with members of the historic Bread and Puppet Theater (USA) – is comprised of 15 different autonomous short “skits”, each of which intends to bring a different aspect of climate justice to popular audiences to visiblize the way in which the causes and impacts of climate change affect all of us. Covering a diversity of issues – from factory-farming to drought, from gentrification to urban biodiversity, from energy-wars to the “Copa America”, from migration to airport expansion – this circus uses humour and aesthetics to translate complex issues into skits that are accessible both to children and to adults. Each time we present the circus, we work with local community groups and volunteers to co-create skits that reflect local issues related to climate justice. Our circuses are explicitly “family friendly”, as part of our strategy to bring political theater to audiences who may not otherwise be exposed to some of these ideas and critiques.
_PREVIOUS SHOWS_
commonly asked questions
_creation_
_common themes_
_Role of humor_
This circus was originally created for the Manifesta15 bianelle, and through that process a dedicated and talented group of 8 people have formed who are passionate about continuing the circus and are now leading the project. Since Manifesta15, we have already participated in a manifestation, given a circus workshop and are preparing to present the full circus for free at the 15th anniversary of the Valldura food cooperative. We are also exploring other dates to present the circus for free at community events for social and ecological justice. The involvement of more people to the circus would be wonderful for us. It would give us resources and opportunities to help ensure the continuity of the circus and to keep the newly formed motor group enthusiastic.
For each circus, we attempt to revise the different skits to make sure they are as relevant as possible (both in geography and temporality) for the audience. Currently the issues covered by the circus are: industrial farming, airport expansion, migration, forest fires, biodiversity, tourism, war in Ukraine, climate collapse, justice for Palestine, Copa America, borders, and gentrification. For performances in Sant Andreu we would like to add additional skits based upon the results of participatory workshops with existing neighbourhood groups or communities (likely topics would include the cost of living and housing).
Our circuses can be understood on two different levels: one level is the aesthetic and comic aspects of the circus, the other is the political critique embedded in the content. We have dancing pigs with top hats who shit in the Llobregat: the children laugh at the dancing pigs while the adults laugh at the sad truth about the contamination of our own drinking water. The very aesthetic of this circus – obviously made out of cardboard and garbage – is designed to be not be taken seriously, and as such promote art as an accessible and non-elitist tool for social change.
