The Circus Amok season has begun. If you haven’t seen Amok, well.. now’s your opportunity!

http://www.circusamok.org

Thurs, Sept 1 Riverside Park (Manhattan), 6pm

Fri, Sept 2 Fort Greene Park (Brooklyn), 6pm

Sat, Sept 3 Coney Island (Brooklyn) 2pm & pm

Sun, Sept 4 Marcus Garvey Park (Manhattan) 4pm

Monday, Sept 5 McCarren Park (Brooklyn) 1pm & 4pm

Thursday, Sept 8 Styvesant Cove (Manhattan) 6pm

Friday, Sept 9 Herbert Von King (Brooklyn) 6pm

Saturday, Sept 10 St. Mary's (Bronx) 4pm

Sunday, Sept 11 Prospect Park (Brooklyn) 1pm & 4pm

Thursday, Sept 15 Union Square Park (Manhattan) 1pm &
4pm

Friday, Sept 16 Sunset Park (Brooklyn), 5pm

Sunday, Sept 18 Highland Park (Queens), 4pm

Thursday, Sept 22 Bedford Playground (Brooklyn), 5pm

Friday, Sept 23 Washington Square Park (Manhattan),
5pm

Saturday, Sept 24 Rufus King Park (Queens), 2pm & 5pm

Sunday, Sept 25 Tompkins Square Park (Manhattan), 1pm & 4pm
ABOUT THE CIRCUS

Lovers and losers, seekers and cynics, doers of great deeds and couch potatoes alike, as you bicker and bargain on the slippery surface of capitalism, as you bemoan the sorry state of welfare gone workfare gone warfare, as you battle the bladderbrain rogues of the
social imagination, fling yourselves into the
outstanding, uplifting, underpaid arms of our
one-ringing ever-swinging circus RUN amok!!

WHO WE ARE

Circus Amok is a New York City based circus-theater
company whose mission is to provide free public art
addressing contemporary issues of social justice to
the people of New York City. The group has been
together since 1989 bringing its funny, queer, caustic
and sexy, political one-ring spectacles to diverse
neighborhoods from East New York to the East Village.
The company is comprised of seven ring-performers, a 7
member live band, 3-roustabouts, and a
trucker/technician extraordinaire. The performers in
the ring are trained in traditional circus skills -
tight rope walking, juggling, acrobatics, stilt
walking, clowning - as well as experimental dance,
theater, and gender-bending performance art and
improvisational techniques. Over the years the
traditional circus techniques have been combined with
dance, lifesize puppetry, music old and new, and
dramatic monologues creating new meanings for circus
while continuing to entertain the crowds of all ages
throughout the city streets, gardens, parks, and
playgrounds.

Circus Amok performances prove that diverse audiences
can join us in envisioning a more empowered life of
community interaction while enjoying a queer
celebratory spectacle. But most of all, Circus Amok
brings a seventeen-act-in-59-minutes joyful
extravaganza of acrobatic artistry, satiric skill, and
good old-fashioned circus fun free to neighborhoods
throughout New York City.

Pleasure pranksters and apocalypse seekers alike,
close your eyes, hold on tight, 'cause the Quality of
your Life is about to take a remarkable turn, hovering
on the edge reason, dissolving at the tips of your
fingersƒ. It's Amazing! It's Out-a-Sight! It's
AMOK!!!! CIRCUS CIRCUS HELP HELP!!!!

A DAY AT THE CIRCUS

A day in the park looks something like this: a big
Circus truck pulls into a site. Ten strong-muscled
women and men unload the Circus regalia. People
gather, watching and questioning, as they lay out a
brightly colored circus ring, unfurl painted
backdrops, lay out yards of blue acrobatic mats, hang
up flashy costumes, assemble several sets of
scaffolding, and orient the hand-built sets and
glittering bandstand to catch the sunlight. As
audience members interact with the company they are
unlearning homophobia while learning how to juggle.
After finishing preparations, donning costume and
make-up, and warming up a few tricks, the band strikes
up and all head out on parade gathering a crowd as it
winds through the neighborhood, jugglers and stilters
careening with banners streaming behind them. The
parade returns to the ring and the show begins,
running amok!

Friends and neighbors of all persuasions, crackpot or
persnickety, motormouth or teletubbie. To your left,
spectacular antics, uncommon athleticism, perilously
perched fantastic feats. To your right, the bearded
lady escapes straight jacket and chains, the man in
the furry bra dances the can-can, mayhem on the
move!!!!

Clowns break into a hula-hoop routine to decry tax
loopholes. We watch a soaring acrobatic treatise
against entitlement cuts called the Disappearing
Safety Net Act. Guerilla gardeners vault over and over
run the developers. It's unpredictable! It's impolite!
It's intelligent, raucus, campy and all happening to
the rollicking sounds of the Circus Amok Band playing
klezmer ,hardcore, jazz ,polkas, cumbias, and mountain
melodies. There's an erotic adagio, a tragi-comic
lecture, terrifying and hysterical animal acts - huge
condors soaring, elephants in delicate balance, lions
chasing and swallowing the mayor. The rope walker is
carefully balanced between dream and reality,
stripping down to his tutu and finishing the number
prancing the rope on flashy 2-inch heels. The
knife-throwers are reciting statistics of the AIDS
crisis, the stilters are dancing through the
minefields of gentrification, the women are lifting
the men into the final amok pyramid, and audiences are
laughing and thinking.

After the show, as we pack up we talk some more with
the crowds. The kids who earlier had questioned the
who, where, and why of us are now helping us pack and
spinning cartwheels as the Amok performers lead
acrobatics workshops in the ring.

Boys and girls, adults of all ages, set your sockets
wide and wondrous, set your ears wary and wily, as we
vault, as we somersault, as we bungle and bugle our
way into the next Splendid! Prophetic! Pathetic!
Utopic! Diabolocal! millenNium. Will we make it? Can
we fake it? Is it dire? FIRE FIRE HELP HELP!!!!

A BRIEF HISTORY

(some excerpted from Mark Sussman's A Queer
Circus:Amok in New York) Circus Amok performed
annually in various experimental theaters in Manhattan
from 1989 to 1993. In 1994 the Circus decided to take
to the parks and community gardens to start an open
conversation across community lines with people in
other neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs.
Since that time the Circus has dedicated itself
entirely to producing free performances in outdoor,
public spaces. From an initial outdoor touring season
of six shows, Circus Amok has doubled the number of
performances. Each year Circus Amok chooses a loosely
defined theme around which it creates its wild and
provocative acts. The very first was 'The Ozone Show:
A Circus of Environmental Destruction,' performed at
Performance Space 122 in October 1989. Since that
first project, Jennifer Miller, Circus Amok director,
has collaborated with a crew of performers, most of
whom she has trained in the traditional arts, lingo
and folklore of the circus. The crew of performance
freelancers who regularly choreograph, dance, write,
design and teach includes Cathy Weis, Scot Heron, Rick
Murray, Alessandra Nichols, Jennifer Monson, Sarah
Johnson, Tanya Gagne, and band leaderJenny Romaine.
All accumulate circus, dance and musical skills during
the downtime between performances (rehearsal time is
February through May, all performances happen in
June), training regularly at Miller's williamsburg
loft which functions as Circus studio, storage,
office, and construction space.

Past Shows

* 1989 The Ozone Show

* 1990 Spies are Us

* 1991 The Survival Show

* 1992 I am you, the hypothalamus story

* 1994 NY: Ground Under

* 1995 NY:Ground Under II

* 1996 $$$ Money Amok $$$

* 1998 Quality of Life

* 1999 Quality of Life II

* 2000 COME AND SEE FOR YOURSELVES

Fellow travelers, zealots and pantywaists of all ages,
races, mental conditions, and unmentionable
proclivities, untether your grasp on the known, swing
cockeyed into the two faced and the double handed.
feel the rumble tumble erupting from the depths of
your unconscious, make a ruckus, run amokus, Help help
it's CIRCUS AMOK!!!!