Flexible ThisSideUp defy gravity in high-energy Arts Festival show

“We are pretty flexible in mind and body,” says David Joseph of ThisSideUp Acrobatics, the Australian company who are bringing what he calls their “gravity-defying” show, Controlled Falling Project to this year’s Arts Festival.

The show which will take place in the Bailey Allen Hall at NUIG from next Tuesday to Thursday is billed as a “old science meets new circus in a heart-stopping, high-energy creative experiment”.

David plays mad Professor Archimedes who is exploring the limits of physicality in his workshop in the 1930s.

He sets tasks for three young men – his human guinea pigs – which allows them to explore the limits of physical endurance in a show that is filled with crash test dummies, blackboards and other strange contraptions.

David may be playing a nutty professor, but he’s not a sinister one. “I love my boys and I love my lab. It’s all very good and happy,” he says.

His ‘three boys’ are acrobats Casey Douglas, Christian Schoonveld-Reid and James Brown, all arts graduates of Melbourne’s National Institute for Circus Acts, who perform “astounding acrobatic feats”, according to David.

These include balancing on one hand on a stack of chairs, leaning at a 45-degree angle. In another feat – developed by Russian acrobats – two of the acrobats balance a bar on their shoulders, while a third uses it as a platform for a series of leaps and mid-air tumbles.

“It’s very exciting. There’s a lot of strength, a lot of grace and a lot of comic movements,” explains David. “It’s high impact and when you see the show you are amazed at what the human body can do.”David is an actor and musician who studied theatre and “dallied in circus and acrobatics” in his younger days, being a member of the renowned Circus Oz for three years.

About six years ago James, Casey and Christian established ThisSideUp and did several shows before embarking on Controlled Falling Project.

When they did, they asked David to choose its music. That he did and he also gave them ideas about developing the show, and so they asked him to join them and play drums.

“And things just rolled on organically from there,” he explains. The characters in the piece have developed over the years, while the acrobatics tend to stay the same unless one of the cast is injured, or if the space they are performing in isn’t high enough or the stage isn’t flat enough.

“But we tend to change the theatrical elements and the sequences between acts.”

What is unusual about Controlled Falling Project is that the “three boys are on stage for almost all the show apart from a short break”.While three guinea pigs perform “astounding acrobatic feats”, this show isn’t just about skills for skills’ sake– the theatrical elements give it a meaning, says David about the project.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.