How a drive-in circus is reviving a big-top vibe during the pandemic
SmokeShow, a unique performance group that merges circus and live music, is back
It's 6 p.m. on a damp and foggy evening in a Mount Pearl backyard, and tents and strings of light lend themselves to a circus atmosphere.
Under the tents, musicians finish adjusting their instruments, and in another corner of the yard there is a large metal tripod housing rings, chains, and a hoop which will be set on fire.
Sue Collins, whose backyard has been transformed into an impromptu big top, points out the fire extinguishers scattered around.
"We've seen this show plenty of times" she says, "and it never gets old."
Her sister, Alley Collins (she goes by the moniker Alley Oop), is a member of SmokeShow: a unique performance group that merges circus and live music, choreographing classic rock tunes to dazzling displays of fire, acrobatics, and hoop tricks.
After more than three months of shutdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, things are beginning to return to normal on the Avalon Peninsula. Alley and the rest of SmokeShow are preparing for some of the first major live performances following the lockdown.
"It was really hard to plan it all, because it was just so scary," said Alley Collins. "Our industry was kind of the first one to shut down, so all the events shut down quick, all the big things shut down, so we were all left without work — that was scary."
Back to feeling normal
After days and weeks of uncertainty, Collins said the only thing to do was to keep creative and perform however she could.
"I started making some things, and then I did a showcase for my grandmother outside of her old-age home, and so that kind of translated, people seeing videos and they started asking me [to perform], and that kind of took me out of the funk."
The group, now in their third year and comprising veteran artists and performers from across genres, have had to pioneer their own way to entertain while meeting public health and safety standards. Their performances over the weekend mark an important first step in artists and musicians returning to work across the province, and highlight new and innovative ways that people might engage with live shows while COVID-19 anxiety looms.
Their solution was to have a drive-in circus, where audience members remained safely in their cars to watch, while tuning into an FM station that transmitted the live music directly to them.
Kelly-Ann Evans said their brand of circus is the perfect way to bring people out and start feeling back to normal again. During the lockdown, the group's musicians wrote and recorded some new material, which they were eager to debut.
"We're happy to debut that song in the show, and hopefully give people kind of a new experience that they've never done, get them out of the house and excited about finding a new sense of normalcy again through something as magical as circus," said Evans. "It's just so fun."
A hot hit
With a number of soldout performances over their weekend showcase, it's evident from the some 25 cars parked in a semicircle behind Torbay's Jack Byrne Arena that people are eager to see live entertainment once again.
While the new format had its challenges to get used to, bassist Josh Ward said that it definitely works.
"It's obviously still a little bit weird — the honking instead of handclaps is sort of hard to get used to — but it's also really exciting and really great," said Ward.
"One of the girls will do something super-exciting and the horns will go all crazy, and then I can't hear the drums anymore. It gets your blood going, all this excitement, you can kind of feel it even though people are locked into their vehicles."
Like the rest of the group, Ward feels this new format might let them take their show on the road to communities across the island looking for entertainment as regulations begin to lift.
"We've mostly only done gigs out around the island, and now we've sort of proven to ourselves that we know what it takes," Ward said.
"So now I think we figured out we can kind of take this thing mobile pretty easily, we have a better grasp on how it could work, and ultimately all we really need is a parking lot."
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