Open House 2014

Directed by Orit Azaz, OPEN HOUSE is an immersive, ever-evolving large-scale circus installation where anything can happen and everything becomes an excuse
for performance and spectacle.

Flowing through the town, setting up in a city square, unfolding washing lines, flags, umbrellas and piles of bric-a-brac, there is no big top but a colony of musicians,
acrobats and aerialists exploding out of caravans - a joyous menagerie of circus chaos setting the town alive.

Building on the open hearted approach to collaboration with local communities of Parklife, and the thrilling, large scale spectacle of Barricade, OPEN HOUSE is a
daytime circus experience for public spaces, activating the city centre, high street or park for an hour, a day, a weekend or a week and transforming it into a circus
village, where passers-by become spectators and communities become spectacle.

Creative exchange

Our unique approach to community engagement, in which participation becomes spectacle, is recognised internationally as a beacon of good practice. The creative exchange residential brings together our professional performers with community members to share ideas, learn from each other and create unique routines and performance moments that imbued with the personality of the individuals involved and the area they inhabit and performed in a professional prodution environment.

Live event

The spaces we use are transformed into a circus village through the arrival of a collection of visually striking caravans, vehicles and mobile structures, modified to enable high skill aerial and acrobatic circus.

The caravans and vehicles make up the circus “village”, the magical backstage place where ordinary looking people transform themselves into extraordinary acts, and where the mystery and romance of the traditional travelling circus families collides with a contemporary urban aesthetic.

The band begins to play and the public is invited to run away with the circus for a few minutes, hours or days - watch world class aerial and acrobatic circus performance; join taster workshops and training sessions in a variety of skills; perform impromptu stunts and scenes; or just stop and watch as the daily spectacle unfolds.

This new version of Open House involved a new visual and design aesthetic as well as some new pieces of equipment that would enable us to present a wider range of high skill circus disciplines in this large scale outdoor context. Directed by Orit Azaz with circus choreography from Paul Evans, the show was produced by Ali Williams. For this version of our outdoor (mainly) urban event, we spent time developing the theatrical performance language, design elements and engagement sections of the work. the company invested a small amount of it's creative development money into the project. The structures that Tarn Aitkin made for Taking the Air were further developed. Rhi Matthews developed a new design for the set and Bryce Davies ( Cardiff Graffiti King) came and gave the adapted caravans, structres , and vehicles the once over in monochrome Zebra print. A shiny new bigger, more portable and easier to install version of Open House had arrived. This played in Cardiff, Newbury, Stoke-on-Trent, Exeter, Hull Freedom Festival and Green Man Festival.

Soundtrack