Circus of Life

Ockham’s Razor have made a circus show for the ages. Artistic director Charlotte Mooney talks to George Sully about This Time

feature (edinburgh) | Read in About 4 minutes
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This Time by Ockham's Razor by Nik Mackey
Photo by Nik Mackey
Published 24 Jul 2019

If you Google "Ockham’s Razor", the first few hits will be for the philosophical principle: in layman’s terms, the simplest answer is often the right one. But the fact that the UK circus company of the same name is only a few hits down the page is testament to their reputation.

Though now boasting 15 years of innovative productions, Ockham's Razor set the circus world alight with Tipping Point, debuting at Edinburgh in 2016, netting the Total Theatre Award before touring the world.

2019 brings us their latest production This Time. Charlotte Mooney, the company’s co-founder and one of the four performers in the show, is unfazed by following up Tipping Point’s runaway success. “In a funny way it relieves some of the pressure,” she says over email. “By far the hardest job, especially with a festival like Edinburgh, is building a name for the company. The fact that Tipping Point was a success will hopefully be helpful as more people now know the name Ockham’s Razor.”

Much like the principle from which they take their name, Tipping Point took a core idea at its simplest (what happens if we detach Chinese poles?), knitted it together with the notion of a "tipping point" from order into chaos, and masterfully explored its permutations.

For This Time, they explored a similar marriage of tools and theme. “We have a series of rectangular frames that can be raised from floor to ceiling,” Mooney explains. “One is coupled with a loop and enables us to perform doubles, triples and quadruples trapeze folding into and around each other.”

The interlocking parts and ability to "frame" performers opens up a wealth of performative possibilities: “The ‘frame’ becomes a doorway as we consider thresholds in our lives,” she continues. “It becomes a mirror and we delve into self reflection: how we cope with our changing self.”

But the size of the new apparatus proved near fatal in sourcing a venue for this Fringe. “Loads of promoters and venues wanted to host us but couldn’t figure out where they could fit us in,” says Mooney. “We were resigning ourselves to not coming when, at the 11th hour, we learned St Stephens Church was available to hire. 

“So we find ourselves in the somewhat scary position of setting out with our own venue. But our production company Turtle Key Arts has a proud history of running a venue – it’s how they began.”

Perhaps most interestingly, the four performers in This Time are aged 13 (Faith Fahy), 40 (Mooney and her partner Alex Harvey) and 60 (Lee Carter).

This came from a “desire to see different bodies and different ages in a circus show – to explore perceptions of strength and age in a very physical sense, alongside the physical relationships between generations: who supports who, who inhibits and controls who.”

It’s a unique demographic spread for a circus show. Where 2018’s Total Theatre-winning Casting Off by A Good Catch presented three generations of women (30s, 40s and late 50s), This Time looks at a more family-like dynamic.

While devising the show together, Mooney recalls that “many stories began to emerge about our experience of our parents and children, what experiences change us and what expectations we carry about who we are and who we will become.”

Contemporary circus is getting younger, with many new companies in their early 20s if not late teens. Mooney theorises that this stems from the public retirement of professional sportspeople in their early 30s. “There is a perception that past that age you reach decrepitude.”

This show, and others like Casting Off, loudly disprove this. “The most encouraging thing for us was holding the auditions for performers and discovering that there are a wealth of aerialists out there in their 60s and 70s, many of whom started recently.”

Reflecting on the show’s familial dynamic in 2019 has extra salience following the Brexit debate, and the resulting schisms between older and younger generations across the UK.

From their research, Mooney notes the perception that “the elder generation had broken the generational social contract with the younger":

"We are living in an era of genuine rift and betrayal. The vast majority of people live, work and socialise in narrow bands of people of similar ages and this has been shown to lead to increasing social competitiveness, aggression and anxiety. There are movements in the UK and USA which are actively looking at ways of integrating communities better—programs where teens skill share with octogenarians—which seem to show massive effects on wellbeing. 

“It was fascinating to make this show now,” she concludes, “as it’s something so personal and at the same time so political.”