My name is Tyler Jacobson and I am thrilled to return to a second season of Cirque Us Stories! I
will still be performing handbalancing and hula hoops but am particularly excited to also join
Maeve directly in the contortion act this time around!
I started circus relatively late—my neighbor invited my parents to get me involved in a
summer circus camp right before I started high school and I went along without any grand
aspirations. However, the transition into high school was rough for me, and what started as just
another after-school activity soon became my refuge. 18 years later circus continues to be my
safe place, and I have enjoyed learning how to tell increasingly nuanced stories through
acrobatics.
Cirque Us Stories is a really fun show for me because it leans so directly into the power
of circus as so much more than just present entertaining tricks. When we first went into creation last
year, we only had the skeleton of an idea to figure out how to create a book-themed circus show
that could help inspire children to read more. Doug knew that we wanted to also find a way to
encourage reading a variety of stories. I thought we did a great job of balancing “acts themed
around (physical) books” and “acts themed around different genres of stories” while still also
having every act express each artist’s unique flavor. As we head into our second creation, I am
excited to see how we will refine and specify the storyline of the show while also still
highlighting this new cast’s members and stories!
One act I’m especially looking forward to redeveloping is hula hoops, now that we’ll
have the phenomenal Maia Castro-Santos on board! Last year I made hula hoop into a
flamboyant kpop act featuring music from K/DA, which is a project group formed to expand the
lore of the game League of Legends. This music for me represented a chance to legitimize both
fanfiction and video games as 21st century forms of literature, thus subtly flexing my degrees in
English literature and Cultural Studies. When we performed the show in Burlington last year,
Maia was able to come see the show, and we were super excited for a chance to geek out about
that act and music choice together, so it is a real dream come true to be able to reimagine that act
as a duo to make it even more fabulous!
This tour will be my fourth project with Cirque Us, and what keeps me coming back time
after time is the people. As a company that keeps small casts of 6-7 people, the intensity of
creation, rehearsal, performance, travel, and living together creates a really special bond that
can’t be replicated in larger companies. Additionally, Cirque Us has cultivated a beautiful
collection of contacts between the spaces we perform at, the schools we teach at, and the
generous families who allow us to stay in their homes as we tour. It’s really special to get to
continue to develop these relationships with every tour, so make sure you come say hello if our
show comes to a city near you!
// Tyler
Tickets for Cirque Us Stories go on Sale August 1st at http://www.TheCirqueUs.com
