Hybrid audiovisual performance by WHS

Mechanical Circus

Mechanical Circus presents recorded image and sound as circus tricks. The performance travels from live presence towards mechanically reproducible recordings, blending performers into projections and sound into a physical, pre-electric machinery.

Mechanical Circus – audience interaction with pre-cinematic viewing device

Synopsis

Mechanical Circus presents recorded image and sound as circus tricks. The performance travels back in time and simultaneously moves from live presence to mechanically reproducible recordings. Spoken word is replaced with audio records and live performers blend into a film projection. Contemporary reality is left behind as the performance moves gradually deeper and deeper towards the border zones between imagination and memory.

True to the spirit of past times the performance is realised without electricity network connections. All the lights and sounds used in the performance function without mains current — or are generated by winding a hand-operated dynamo on stage. The intimate atmosphere is built around small-scale tricks such as juggling with shadows, with candles and with images projected using old Laterna Magica magic lanterns.

The soundscape is based on mechanical sounds reproduced with gramophone records, phonographs and various types of music boxes. Over a hundred years old rare vintage objects have a new life on stage in their original function. Live performers negotiate their role with machines that repeat their parts with the same precision night after night.

Mechanical Circus moves in the uncharted spaces between a museum, an exhibition, a story and a performance. It creates new lives and memories for its protagonists – both human and mechanical – in the minds of the spectators.

Mechanical Circus – two audience members leaning into a wooden viewing device
In Mechanical Circus the audience encounters rare pre-cinematic devices at close range. Viewers literally lean into a wooden viewing machine to share an image that exists only in that moment, in that room. The performance can be accompanied by an exhibition – a fictional museum of early image and sound technology – extending the experience beyond the stage.

For presenters & programmers

Mechanical Circus is aimed at venues and festivals interested in hybrid formats between performance, installation and museum. The work is particularly suitable for intimate theatres, old cinemas or spaces where an accompanying exhibition can be installed.

Technical overview

  • Duration Approx. 20–45 minutes, no interval. Exhibition 24/7
  • Format Hybrid performance / exhibition · object theatre, contemporary circus & pre-cinematic media with different themes.
  • Stage Gallery style space or similar. Flexible in the terms of space.
  • Sound Quality stereo PA; mechanical sound sources (gramophone, phonograph, music boxes) are part of the score
  • Lights Flexible light rig; show is designed to work with limited power and local equipment
  • Exhibition Optional “fictional museum” of objects and protagonists can be installed in the foyer

Context & audience

Mechanical Circus speaks to audiences interested in visual theatre, experimental circus, analogue media and the history of cinema and sound. It can be programmed in contemporary circus festivals, hybrid art events or in collaboration with film and media museums.

A more detailed technical rider, touring history and press materials are available upon request:
contact@w-h-s.fi

Credits

Concept & performance: WHS (Ville Walo, Anne Jämsä & collaborators)

Visual & object design: WHS

Production: WHS Teatteri Union

WHS CONTROL
TRACK
Side B · Mechanical Circus Contact: contact@w-h-s.fi