Touring with CirqueUs and One Man’s Trash has been a wild adventure to say the least. It’s not easy to pull a show together from scratch in only three weeks, but working with such a creative and supportive team has made it all a great experience. Apart from the circus of it all, I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed the travel days! We’re usually split up with four people in the car and two in the van. While the car rides are always a fun time filled with banter, rides in the van have also provided space for us to get into some really profound conversations. While we do have a pretty ambitious tour schedule, there’s also enough time for little adventures to be had as well. So far we’ve had detours through Niagara Falls, the Circus World Museum, and even a random indoor theme park by the side of the road in the middle of Wisconsin! We’ve found to our surprise as well that we have a penchant for ending up in mirror mazes, which I had never been to before.
In addition to all the amusement, this tour has taught me a lot about myself as well. Despite considering myself a fairly open book and being on a tour full of friends, I’ve found there are still plenty of doubts that creep into my brain. I am also someone who thrives on 1-on-1 interactions, and I also have a tendency to fade myself out within small group situations, but having a cast this small makes nearly everything into a group activity. Nevertheless, everyone has been super supportive and willing to meet me wherever I’m at when we do happen to find some quieter times, and that’s been a really welcome difference compared to many other tours I have worked on.
What I have enjoyed most about getting to perform One Man’s Trash has been performing such intimate shows. We get so many chances to directly connect with the audience, and you can hear and feel how they get emotionally invested in the stories we’re telling, whether that be the triumph of finding a lightbulb or the melancholy following any of the conflicts in the show. We’ve consistently had standing ovations night after night, which I know we might get from the level of our acrobatics alone, but as we chat with people after the show, it’s clear that what really brings the circus magic is our willingness to express and emote on stage. I think there’s a lot of talk about how the performing arts can be therapeutic for audiences, and there’s certainly a magic to the community we all get to make for those 90 brief minutes of the show.
~Tyler Jacobson
