Hideaway Circus
Hideaway Circus is a production company run by creative producers and husband and wife, Josh and Lyndsay Aviner based in Brooklyn, New York. They produce live shows and also the host Hideaway Podcast, a podcast where they discuss current US circus and theatre news and interview artists and entrepreneurs in the industry. To date, they have made 65 podcasts for your listening pleasure.
I had become aware of the podcast and then had the pleasure of meeting them super briefly at the Adelaide Fringe Festival 2017 when they were presenting their show Slumber. Towards the end of last year, I sent Josh and Lyndsay a bunch of questions, wanting to know more about their background and their work. After a slight delay, here is that interview for your enjoyment.
What are your backgrounds?
Josh: I got into circus through a fantastic youth circus organization in Vermont called Circus Smirkus. One of their programs I participated in as a teenager is a summer tour for kids 18 and under; the troupe performs in a big top tent and travels all over the northeastern region of the United States. After high school, I moved to New York City and studied film directing and producing during the day, and at night I worked as a circus performer in a late night variety show at The Box. Near the end of my undergraduate studies, I started producing small variety shows and special events around the city. After college, I worked for a circus company called Spiegelworld and cast their production Rose.Rabbit.Lie. in Las Vegas. After working with them for two years, I attended graduate school for producing and managing commercial theatre.
Lyndsay: I, like many kids, was drawn to the theatre through acting and singing at an early age. I attended a performing arts program every day after school from elementary school through high school. During that time I performed in a national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and toured with a performing group all over the United States and Europe. I studied arts management as well as performing arts during my undergraduate studies before moving to New York City. When I moved to NYC I was lucky enough to have a well-known agent and worked as an actress for a bit before transitioning into to producing and fundraising full-time. I worked for off-broadway theatre companies (Atlantic Theater, Soho Rep) in fundraising as well as commercial Broadway producers before attending graduate school, in 2013, for producing and management; which is where I met Josh. We were in the same class for theatre producing and management at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
Why Circus – what drew you to it and how did you get into it?
Josh: I knew from about age 11 that I was going to work in circus for the rest of my life. After I walked out of seeing my first Cirque Du Soleil show, I just knew with total certainty that I had to “join the circus.” I spent the rest of my teenage years getting into circus, and I have Circus Smirkus to thank for helping me grow that passion. I’ve been involved since, only ever holding down a non-circus related job for about six months after high school. There was really no turning back. I guess what appealed to me about it was first the visual spectacular-ness of the performances, but later I fell in love with the community and art form.
Lyndsay: Well, I have to acknowledge that my parents actually introduced me to the circus when I was little. I have photos and old programs from years of going to see Ringling, Big Apple Circus, and the Cole Brother’s Circus. However, I definitely rediscovered my love of circus when I met Josh. Since there were only ten of us in our graduate program we became quick friends and I took the opportunity to see every single circus or circus related show with him. I started understanding the landscape of circus in America, as well as in Europe and Australia, and the amazing community of people that work in circus. Being from the theatre, I found the art of circus so freeing. There were essentially no rules, no scripts, and as an audience member you were a part of the show. It was amazing.
Josh, you’ve worked in casting for circus shows – what did you like about that job?
Josh: Casting is one of the best parts of mounting any circus or live show. You go see shows, watch videos, talk to friends and your community in search of really talented performers and collaborators. Then you get to offer your favourite ones work, which is almost always good news for them. It can be fun and challenging, particularly when there are constraints on who you can cast, examples could be: a particular nationality, specific availability, an unusual space requirement, or needing to fit a certain costume, etc.
Episode 66 – Phillipe Petit, legendary tight-wire walker
Lyndsay, you have a background in theatre; in what ways do you feel the circus industry differs and what do you like about it comparatively?
Lyndsay: While circus and theatre aren’t too dissimilar, I have found that the attitudes within each community differ greatly. With theatre, opinions on a performers talent are completely subjective. In circus, the skill level is very apparent to the performer as well as the person watching. The performer can either nail a triple backflip or not. Because of this seemingly small difference, the attitudes within the community are enormously different. The camaraderie and support is something I really like about circus.
How did your company Hideaway Circus come about (when did you start it) and where are you based?
We started Hideaway Circus, our production company, about a year into graduate school in 2015. Since we were both interested in producing similar types of work, it made sense to try and produce work together. We are based in New York City, but we’re working on projects in other cities including Las Vegas and San Diego.
What drew you to start a Podcast?
Josh: As a kid, I would listen to a lot of talk radio and books on audio cassette on the drive to school and before I fell asleep at night, so I always really liked audio as a medium. As adults, we are both avid listeners of podcasts, and had joked with friends that Lyndsay should host a talk a show. But it wasn’t until a professor, Dave Lerner, seriously suggested we start one did we take the idea to the next step. About a week later we bought some cheap microphones and recorded the first episode. Our goal with the podcast was pretty simple: talk to as many interesting people as we could and share whatever knowledge we were able to mine out of our guests with the rest of the community. In turn, it grew our own audience and legitimacy. We were also always frustrated by the lack of resources in the US to learn about circus, and thought that there had to be an audience for this kind of content- and low and behold there was.
Episode 50# – Interview with Olivia Porter
They discuss her time growing up and working in the Brisbane circus scene, touring in America with Circus Oz, contemporary juggling and how to create new material and techniques.
How do you go about getting your guests to interview?
Usually, we just shoot them an email or ask in person. Occasionally people request to come on the show, which we’ve done a handful of times when we think the guest would be interesting to our audience. Also, always at the end of each episode we ask our guest who they recommend we interview and we get lots of ideas and connections that way too.
Where do you record it?
At of our home office in Brooklyn.
Who is your target audience and how has the reaction been?
Our target audience is people who enjoy podcasts, interviews, and discussions about the circus industry and the people within it. It’s also for people who are interested in following Hideaway Circus and our various projects. The reaction has been great so far, our audience steadily grows every month, and we’ve received positive feedback from listeners. We were also recently nominated for a Theatre and Technology award for the show. We try to make something that we would want to listen to, and hope and trust that other people will be into it too.
Is the audience base growing?
Unfortunately for anyone who does a podcast, the analytics available for audio programs are pretty limited. Our audience base and downloads grow every month, but not every episode is equally popular. Guests who have big audiences typically bring those listeners to their specific episodes. The majority of our audience comes from the United States, but 25% of our traffic comes from other countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and Germany.
What are some of the challenges to getting the podcast out there & how are you going about increasing its reach?
As there isn’t a lot of financial gains to be found in podcasting, we don’t spend a lot of time trying to market it. We trust that people will find it through word of mouth or by researching circus podcasts and finding it on their own. It’s listed on all the podcast directories and a bunch of circus websites, so it is pretty easy to find. We should probably be trying harder to get people to rate us on iTunes to help push us up those charts, but it’s not all about the downloads for us.
What do you love about the medium?
The ability to hear someone’s story and point of view in their voice. The lack of visual stimulation allows the listener to engage with the conversation in a special and unfiltered way. Podcasts are also easy and quick to create, at least compared to live shows or VR experiences, so it’s nice to be able to make and release something so regularly.
What are your ‘Top 5# Tips’ in people wanting to create a podcast series?
I don’t think we have any particular top five tips, mostly because podcasts come in all different kinds: fiction, non-fiction, news, interviews, live, pre-recorded, etc. I think anyone interested in starting a podcast would be wise to listen to as many as they can find and learn about some of the basic techniques used in the form. For example, we were very inspired by the Ezra Klein Show, The Voices of VR, and A16Z when we first started out. I would also add Recode Decode, The Daily, and How I Built This as podcasts that have inspired us as we’ve been going.
What is the future and big vision for the Podcast?
We’re going to keep doing what we are doing, and probably not change it up too much. Some of the guests on our bucket list that we would still like to interview include Guy Laliberte, anyone from the Feld or Theirree families, Tom Schumacher, Lin Manuel Miranda, and Kevin McCullum (those last few are a little more theatre centric). We think we’ll be able to get at least a few on the show given enough time. We hope the Hideaway Podcast is something we can do for many years to come, the way Marc Maron has done with his show, and get to that 600 or 700 hundred episode mark– but we make no promises that we’ll last that long!
Episode 26# Featuring Joren Dawson
(Club Swizzle, Slumber, Gravity & Other Myths)
They chat with Joren, aerialist, acrobat, and sole male cast member of SLUMBER about his career and life as a touring circus performer.
Onto your live shows: How did your Slumber come about?
It started to really come about when we visited the nightclub/experimental theatre venue, the House of Yes. We had been kicking around the idea of doing a show with blood effects, an all-girl cast, and a pyscho killer, but it wasn’t until we saw the venue did the show become clear to us. We booked the theatre for a run six months later, and spent the remaining time fundraising, casting, securing visas and housing, and doing all the pre-work it takes to put on a show. We rehearsed Slumber in a mere two weeks and continued to work on it while it was playing for six weeks in New York. During that initial run we added and cut scenes, re-wrote the dialogue over and over again, and washed the blood out of the costumes night after night.
‘Circus, Dance & Blood’ are words associated with Slumber – Can you describe the show and your ideas behind it?
Slumber follows a group of girlfriends as they go to party at a local nightclub. The main character goes a little nuts after a bartender makes sexual advances on her and her friends don’t intervene to stop it. She first kills the bartender and later proceeds to murder each cast member one by one in a serious of hilariously campy blood effects. Midway through the second act, the killer (who address the audience directly a few times) lets the audience vote on whether or not she should kill everyone or if someone should kill her- the show has two alternate endings which switch up depending on the audiences’ choice. The production features six female performers (three dancers and three circus performers) and one male acrobat, often the opposite of what we see as the gender ratio in contemporary circus. The show is set to an electro-pop soundtrack and was choreographed by the amazing choreographers and our frequent collaborators Keone and Mari Madrid.
You toured it to Australia at the beginning of 2017 to the Adelaide Fringe Festival – How did it go down here and what were some of the challenges you faced bringing it to here?
Josh: It went really well, but it was a steep learning curve for Lyndsay and I. It was the first time producing work outside of the US, and my first time ever in Australia. Obviously, there are challenges working in any Fringe: the lack of tech time and the competition for audiences for example. But Slumber was well received by audiences, though we did end up adapting some of the jokes to work better for the Australian sense of humour. We had a great time spending about two months surrounded by super talented artists and really great shows. It was definitely inspiring to see so much new and fresh work. Other challenges that we faced include currency exchanges- building a show in US dollars and then selling in AUS dollars isn’t great as far as recoupment goes. We were also fairly surprised by the differences in marketing strategies employed in the US versus Adelaide. For example, no one flyers in New York- it’s totally ineffective here.
Miss Behave (Amy Saunders) is a dear old friend of mine – How did Hideaway’s relationship with her come about and how are you involved in her show in Vegas?
We’d seen Amy Saunders before in La Soiree and when she did a one night run of The Miss Behave Game Show in New York. It wasn’t until one of our close friends Bret Pfister was hired to play her assistant, did we hear about the plans to bring it to Las Vegas. We were approached by the two lead producers, Julie Richardson (Long Time La Clique & La Soiree Artistic Associate) and David Foster, who I knew from my time working at Spiegelworld. Julie asked if we’d be interested in coming aboard, and in particular help with the fundraising. We loved the show when we saw it in New York, and knew that we could definitely help out as associate producers. We raised some money from our network here, and we were able to get the show mounted at Bally’s Hotel and Casino on the strip.
*NB as this interview goes out The Miss Behave Game Show has been running on the strip for a year!
Episode 49# – Amy Saunders aka
Miss Behave, of the Miss Behave Game Show!
They call up the Amy Saunders to talk about her career as a comedian and sword swallower as well as her new show in Las Vegas, The Miss Behave Game Show
What excited you about working with Amy and getting on board with her show?
We loved the show and Amy and Brett, so it was sort of a no-brainer. Also, it’s rare that a show like that is able to make a deal with a Vegas casino for a long run, and we knew a chance like this wouldn’t come about very often. We’ve since gotten to know Amy quite well and are constantly amazed by her intellect, humour, and wit. She is for sure, one of the smartest and funniest people in showbiz. After having her on our podcast a few episodes ago, we were able to learn more about her background- which is full of hilarious stories and twists and turns. We hope to do many more shows with her in the future.
You’re also working on a circus and dance virtual reality experience – how did that come about and what drove you to explore it?
We got interested in VR while in graduate school, and Josh really started getting into it after we bought an HTC Vive and a few GoPro cameras for research. We wanted to explore it for a few reasons, but mainly we theorized that a lot of things about circus and theatre would probably hold true for virtual reality as well. VR scenes are sort of similar to performing for an audience of one. It’s less like a video where you can control where and what people are looking at, and more like a live show where the viewer actually has a lot of autonomy. We shot a bunch of experiments with the comedian and juggler Adam Kuchler that got a good reaction online, something like 11K views in 24 hours so we knew that there was some kind of public interest in it. That’s when we decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to create the first ever circus show designed specifically for viewing in virtual reality. As of now, we’ve shot 6 of the 8 scenes and hope to release it to the public in early 2018.
- *Since the interview Josh & Lyndsay have created this – the Hideaway Circus 360 VR Experience. This is the youtube 360 version but the experience was designed to be viewed in a virtual reality headset.
What are the challenges in shooting circus for VR? Got any tips for the VR heads out there wanting to do it?
There are lots of challenges! We’re constantly running into roadblocks and looking for creative solutions. For example, we’ve never gotten a clean take on the first recording of an act. Most acts we shoot take upwards of five and sometimes even ten or fifteen takes before we have a perfect one. Doing the same physically demanding act in quick succession can be very tiring for a lot of artists. Other challenges include working with cameras rigs that have multiple lenses and then having to choreograph scenes so as not to make the stitching lines between lenses obvious to the viewer. VR equipment, in general, is very new and undeveloped, so a lot of time is spent experimenting with techniques and ideas about what will and will not work in a headset. As far as tips, we suggest anyone interested buy a cheap camera and just play with it and see what you find interesting!
Whats the big dream for Hideaway?
We have lots of big dreams for Hideaway, but we’ll only tease a few here: we’re producing and directing a new dance show with Keone and Mari Madrid that is premiering next summer in San Diego. We are also developing a new adult variety show here in NYC, and of course, finishing up this VR experience. Once that’s done we’re going to continue experimenting with circus experiences in that technology space and may do more tests with AR (Augmented Reality) in 2018. Our long-term goal is to have various shows open simultaneously that allow us to fund and continue to make work that we’re passionate about. We’ll also likely remount Slumber sometime in the next 12 – 18 months, we really want to rebuild it in a bigger and better way with new acts, scenes, and blood effects. Lastly, we’re also writing a new comedy project with Spencer Novich (Blanc de Blanc, Funhouse) called Party Starters, but I can’t say too much more about it other than that it #getsthepartystarted.
Huge thanks to Josh and Lyndsay for letting us into their world.
For all the Hideaway Podcasts click HERE.
And visit hideawaycircus.com for more info
Peace & Respect,
Hamish
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