History of the Circus: From the Fairground to the Street

We perform in the street, in theatres, under big tops, in school playgrounds and even in refugee camps. Every time we set up our stage, we unknowingly repeat gestures that are centuries old. Here is the history of the circus as we see it from Marseille: less a gallery of great names than a string of bans, roads, gusts of wind and good ideas.

Before the ring: street performers who were banned from speaking

The French word saltimbanque has been in use since the 15th century. It comes from Italian and literally means "one who leaps onto a bench": the acrobats, jugglers, rope dancers and animal trainers who worked the fairs. In Paris, the two great fairs, Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent, drew crowds every year, along with their show booths.

Such success was not welcome everywhere. The Comédie-Française held the privilege of spoken theatre, the Opera the privilege of song. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, fairground performers were banned first from dialogue, then from singing. In 1719, the Comédie-Française even had all their shows shut down, except for puppets and… rope dancers.

The fairground actors struck back with a brilliant invention: placard plays (pièces à écriteaux). The actors mimed, the lines came down on large paper scrolls, and it was the audience who sang the verses to well-known tunes. Nobody on stage had opened their mouth: the law was respected.

On the boulevard du Temple, popular theatres multiplied. Nicolet opened his there in 1759; his troupe performed before the court of Louis XV in 1772 and became the "King's Great Dancers". His motto, "De plus en plus fort" ("stronger and stronger"), gave French the saying "stronger and stronger, just like at Nicolet's". A little later, the Théâtre des Funambules (1816-1862) was only allowed to stage acrobatics and mime: it was there that Deburau created his moonstruck Pierrot.

1768: a horseman and a 13-metre circle

The modern circus was born in London in 1768, when Philip Astley, a former British Army cavalryman, opened a riding school near Westminster Bridge. In the morning he gave lessons; in the afternoon he performed tricks standing on his horses in front of a paying audience.

Why a circle? Because when riding round, centrifugal force helps the rider stay upright on a galloping horse. Within a few years the diameter settled at around 42 feet, roughly 13 metres, and it has hardly changed since: it is still the size of a circus ring today.

A few lesser-known details:

• His wife, Patty Astley, galloped around the ring with her arms covered in swarms of bees.
• The first comedy act in circus history, The Tailor's Ride to Brentford, featured a clumsy tailor unable to mount his horse. It was played by Astley himself: the first circus clown was the boss.
• The word "circus" did not come from Astley but from his competitors, who opened the Royal Circus in 1782.

That same year, 1782, Astley built the "Amphithéâtre anglois" in Paris, on the rue du Faubourg-du-Temple: a round wooden building lit by 2,000 candles. During the Revolution he leased it to the Italian Antonio Franconi, whose sons founded the Cirque Olympique in 1807. In 1852 the Cirque Napoléon opened, later the Cirque d'Hiver. It was in its ring that Jules Léotard, from Toulouse, presented the very first flying trapeze act on 12 November 1859.

Marseille, the mistral and the wooden circuses

Marseille did not wait for Paris to fall in love with the ring. Nineteenth-century chronicles, gathered by circus historians, tell a story of wood, wind and flames.

1826-1828: three circuses in two years

On 31 December 1826, François Avrillon opened a first wooden circus at the end of the cours du Chapitre. Equestrian shows, fashionable since Astley and Franconi, had finally reached Marseille. The adventure was short-lived: on 4 February 1827, the roof collapsed under the weight of snow.

A new circus was immediately built on the place Royale. It opened in early March… and on 18 March 1827, seventeen days after opening, the mistral, Provence's fierce north wind, tore its roof off. Lesson learned: on 1 September 1828, Marseille inaugurated a permanent stone Cirque Olympique, borrowing its name from the famous Parisian circus of the Franconi family. It still closed its doors at the end of 1831.

Fire, then the great halls

After the wind came fire. In 1859, a circus set up at 72 allées de Meilhan; it went up in smoke at the end of April 1862, like so many theatres of the time, lit by open flames. On 7 August 1870, the Cirque-Théâtre Valette opened on the rue Paradis, with more than 3,000 seats.

1892: the age of giants

In the Belle Époque, Marseille thought big. From 1892 to 1901, a monumental circus stood on the place Saint-Michel: 40 metres in diameter, 27 metres high, 4,622 seats, lit by 400 gas lamps… around a ring that still measured 13 metres. That same year, 1892, Théodore Rancy, founder of the first French travelling circus (more on him below), built another circus with 1,800 seats. And it was Léon Doux, director of the Alcazar, the great café-concert on the cours Belsunce, who presented his "Cirque Français" there. In Marseille, circus and café-concert were already run by the same people.

As a company that sets up and takes down its stage at the mercy of the weather, we have a soft spot for these pioneers defeated by the wind.

The big top: a home on the move

Permanent circuses have one flaw: they cannot move. In the United States, canvas was first used by a circus in 1825, an innovation often credited to Joshuah Purdy Brown. According to the French National Library (BnF), this "canvas tent" was derived directly from one- or two-pole military tents. The idea crossed the Atlantic and reached England in 1838.

In France, Théodore Rancy founded a travelling circus in Rouen in 1856, touring under an "umbrella", a single-pole big top. Having made his fortune, he went on to build permanent circuses in many cities: Geneva in 1875, Lyon in 1882, Le Havre in 1887… and Marseille in 1892. The same man took the circus on the road under canvas, then set it in stone.

How a big top stands up

The principle has barely changed: tall king poles hold up the canvas, side poles support its edges, and stakes, first wooden then steel, anchor the whole structure to the ground. French circus vocabulary still distinguishes two schools: with poles in a line, the tent is called "American"; with poles arranged in a square, it is called "German". The big top grew with transport: first the railway, then lorries and articulated trailers.

The French word for big top, chapiteau, comes from architecture: it means the capital at the top of a column. According to the BnF, its meaning of "circus tent" only took hold around 1919. As for the 13-metre ring, the BnF offers another explanation besides centrifugal force: it may be the reach of the whip of the rider who keeps the horses circling. Whip or centrifugal force, both trails lead back to the horse.

Theatre takes to the road

The big top soon appealed beyond the circus. In 1911, the actor and director Firmin Gémier had a fireproof big top with 1,600 seats made, designed with American engineers, to take theatre from town to town by train. The idea of theatre going out to find its audience, rather than waiting for the audience to come, was born long before street theatre.

Barnum & Bailey, a city of canvas

Then came the sheer scale of Barnum & Bailey. "The Greatest Show on Earth" only crossed the Atlantic in 1889, for London, before setting off on a grand European tour from 1897 to 1902. In Paris, it played from 30 November 1901 to 23 March 1902 in the Galerie des Machines, the huge hall built for the 1889 World's Fair. Then it set off again, this time under canvas: from 30 March to 26 October 1902, it played in 106 French towns and 12 Swiss towns.

The logistics were dizzying: four special trains with 67 wagons, built in England, carried 300 performers and staff and 180 workers. The main tent, a six-pole hippodrome, measured 190 by 85 metres, almost two football pitches end to end.

From 12 to 21 April 1902, this city of canvas rose in Marseille, at the rond-point du Prado. For ten days, the people of Marseille discovered the most spectacular side of the American circus, then the trains left from the Prado station for the next stop.

Today, companies like ours perform under big tops, indoors or outdoors, wherever we are invited. The canvas itself has become lighter: a simple sheet stretched between trees, a square or a school playground is enough to bring a circus to life for an evening.

The clown, from the auguste to Chocolat

In the late 19th century, the circus invented its comic duo: the whiteface clown, elegant and bossy, facing the auguste, clumsy and red-nosed. According to a persistent legend, the name comes from the Renz circus in Berlin, around 1870-1874: an American acrobat, Tom Belling, is said to have stumbled into the ring badly dressed, and the audience shouted "Dummer August!", Berlin slang for "You idiot!". Historians point out that the auguste is really the result of a long evolution, but the story is too good not to tell.

In Paris, the most famous duo was Foottit and Chocolat. Rafael Padilla, known as Chocolat, born in Cuba around 1868, is regarded as the first Black performer on the French stage. The Lumière brothers filmed their acts in 1900. Then came the Fratellini, followed by the Swiss clown Grock, the highest-paid performer in Europe between the wars. In 1971, Annie Fratellini became the first female auguste in French circus.

Circus, café-concert, cabaret: one big family

In the 19th century, performers constantly moved from the ring to the café-concert stage, then to the music hall. And once again, one of the finest examples is in Marseille: the Alcazar, opened on 10 October 1857 on the cours Belsunce. Its Moorish-style hall, inspired by the Alhambra, held 2,000 seats where people drank and smoked at their tables; it boasted of being "the largest café-concert on the continent". Its audience was so demanding that success there was seen as a true consecration. Ravaged by fire in 1873 and rebuilt, it has housed the city library since 2004, which has kept its 1889 canopy.

In Paris, the Folies Bergère (1869) mixed operetta, acrobats and conjurors. In Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), you can spot a trapeze artist's feet in green boots in the top left corner of the painting. Joseph Oller, inventor of pari-mutuel betting, opened the Nouveau Cirque in 1886, whose ring could be lowered to become a swimming pool, before creating the Moulin Rouge (1889) and then the Olympia. The Chat Noir cabaret (1881), for its part, established a figure close to our hearts: the master of ceremonies who banters with the audience between acts.

This very mix is what gave birth to us: our first show, Cabaret biZ'arT, created for a carte blanche in Marseille, blends burlesque circus and madcap comedy in the spirit of those venues where everything crossed paths.

The 1970s: the circus changes ministry

One anecdote sums up the shift: until the late 1970s, the circus in France came under the Ministry of Agriculture, because its menageries were subject to veterinary control. It then moved to the Ministry of Culture. The circus stopped being a matter of animals and family dynasties and became an art form.

Things moved fast. In 1974, two schools opened in Paris, one founded by Annie Fratellini and Pierre Étaix, the other by Silvia Monfort and Alexis Gruss: for the first time, you could learn the circus without being born in a caravan. In 1984, Cirque Plume was born in Franche-Comté and Cirque du Soleil in Quebec. In 1985, the National Centre for Circus Arts (CNAC) opened in Châlons-en-Champagne. The "new circus" told stories, mixed dance, theatre and music, and increasingly did without animals. The law of 30 November 2021 sealed it: travelling circuses will no longer be allowed to keep wild animals from 1 December 2028.

Back to the street, back to Marseille

At the same time, performers reclaimed public space, where it had all begun. Michel Crespin founded Lieux publics in 1983, then created the Aurillac International Street Theatre Festival in 1986. Lieux publics moved to Marseille in 1990; the Cité des arts de la rue opened in 2013 in a former oil and soap factory in the Aygalades district.

On the circus side, the Archaos company, born in 1986 with its chainsaws, motorbikes and trucks, settled in Marseille in 2001. In 1990, its big-top shows had drawn 100,000 spectators in two months in London. Designated a National Circus Centre (Pôle national cirque), it led "Cirque en capitales" in 2013, when Marseille was European Capital of Culture, then launched the International Biennial of Circus Arts in 2015, whose very first edition drew 84,000 spectators across 24 towns. In early 2020, it was at the Silo, in Marseille, that Cirque Plume, one of the pioneers of new circus, came to say goodbye, a few weeks before the pandemic cut the end of its tour short. Marseille, which once watched its wooden circuses blow away in the mistral, has become one of the capitals of contemporary circus.

This is the world we grew up in. Our company works within the Le Morozoff collective, based on the rue Ferrari since 2011. And it was in Aurillac, in 2014, while stepping in at the last minute, that Cabaret biZ'arT was spotted by programmers. Read our story here.

Circus where you least expect it

In February 1993, schoolchildren in Barcelona asked the Catalan clown Tortell Poltrona to go and perform for their pen pals, refugees in a camp in Croatia. Those children's letters gave birth to Clowns Without Borders. Since then, the circus has also been performed where life is hardest, because laughing together there is anything but a luxury.

We have experienced it ourselves, performing as far as the refugee camps on the Turkish-Syrian border, on tours across some twenty countries. Fairground performers did the same thing with their bench: arrive somewhere, form a circle, and bring people together.

What history has left us

When we perform today, we carry this whole journey with us without even thinking about it:

• the circle, from Astley's ring to the audience sitting on the ground around us;
• wordless slapstick, inherited from the silenced fairground actors;
• the short act and talking to the audience, from the café-concert and cabaret;
• the road, from Rancy's big top to our touring vans;
• and the love of playing anywhere: street, theatre, big top, school shelter or refugee camp.

Sources

Most sources are in French.

• BnF / CNAC, circus arts portal: glossary, big tops and touring, the birth of the auguste
• BnF Essentiels, fairground theatres
• Victoria and Albert Museum, The Story of Circus
• French Ministry of Culture, circus arts fact sheet
• PREAC Cirque, historical landmarks
• Circus Parade, Marseille's circuses of yesteryear and Théodore Rancy
• Circus Parade, Barnum & Bailey in France (1902)
• AHICF, the Barnum & Bailey tour of France (1901-1902)
• City of Marseille, Alcazar library and Cité des arts de la rue
• BnF, Monsieur Chocolat, the first Black clown
• The Courtauld, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
• Artcena, from street theatre to arts in public space
• Archaos, the history of Archaos and the project; International Biennial of Circus Arts, about
• Fréquence Sud, Cirque Plume's last show in Marseille
• French Ministry of Agriculture, law of 30 November 2021