In an interview with dramaturg Jenny Patschovsky, circus scholar Dr. Franziska Trapp outlines a borderline between the artistic and academic worlds that she treads in her latest book "Lectures on Contemporary Circus". How can performances of contemporary circus be adequately analyzed? Can circus performances be read? What role does the aesthetics of risk play in the reception of plays? And what does this mean for its application in practice and in the creative process? Trapp criticizes the often judgmental differentiation between traditional, new and contemporary circus. Instead, she proposes a semiotic approach that revolves around the question of how meaning is created in circus. She distinguishes between levels that build on each other to produce meaning: performative, spectacular and narrative. These levels allow for new "readings of the contemporary circus" as an art form between physical practices and cultural discourse, which in turn can become a tool for the artists themselves.
Reading Circus - Franziska Trapp
