Marianne Grove, Performer, Company Director, Circo Rum Ba Ba
Marianne shares her Outdoor Arts journey, from running away to join the circus in Japan, to setting up one of the UK’s most successful all-female circus theatre companies, to witnessing a fellow performer farting on stage in front of The Royal Family.
Marianne Grove is a British acrobat, clown, stilt walker, ball balancer and Musical Saw player. In 1999 she founded Circo Rum Ba Ba, a women’s circus theatre company which creates wonderfully bizarre, offbeat walkabout characters and images, designed specifically for festivals and events.
How did you first get involved in Outdoor Arts?
After finishing a drama degree at London University I went on tour with a play around the U.K. and during a period at the Edinburgh Festival saw John Lee performing on the street theatre field. I found it completely fascinating how he merged trickery with intimate and personal improvisation and vowed then and there to set up a street theatre company. It felt like the most inclusive way to create theatre. I moved to Tokyo where my parents had been working, met Tim Petter (Dream Engine) and Theresa Giffard (Circus Bumbelini) and we set up The Juggling Noodles performing mostly in the street. We were soon picked up by a Japanese Circus called Imegi Circus who performed at Noge Cho festivals all over Japan. These festivals created the possibility that the whole town could become a stage and local people and businesses seemed to have huge respect for the performers and concepts. After two years I came back to the U.K. to set up my own company here.
What is one of your earliest memories of Outdoor Arts?
What performance or Outdoor Arts experience has made a big impression on you?
Seeing the Kathakali performances in Kerala in a huge rural temple in the middle of nowhere. The dancers and drummers were whipped up into a frenzy and 100s of people seemed to arrive from the villages by bicycle and bus.
What’s the best artistic advice you’ve been given?
To be playful, to have complete belief in your character and your narrative and to love your audience.
Where do your ideas come from?
They come from my obsession with narrative and imagery. I read fiction and poetry, go to galleries, watch theatre and observe nature and then it all gets mixed into an elaborate mind soup and in the middle of the night it sometimes gives birth to a good idea!
What’s your best advice to someone wanting to work outdoors for the first time?
This is an incredible, inventive, agile sector to work in but it should never be about showing off or ego. A great set and a fantastic skill will keep an audience for a while but it is the relationship with the audience that is at the core of engagement so work as hard on becoming a performer as on learning a new skill or creating a new gimmick. An outdoor arts performer or artist needs to have conspiratorial surprise at the centre of their work.
What’s your funniest or most bizarre Outdoor Arts experience?
There are so many! Winnie who runs Circo Rum Ba Ba with me farted on stage in front of the whole Royal family then bowed and walked off causing all the Gandinis to drop their juggling clubs and the royal trumpeters to be unable to play their trumpets. During a performance of a show called The Trunk Case in Glasgow one of the performers I was working with had to hide inside a trunk for the first half of the show. A very drunk woman sat on the trunk, heckling us throughout and then urinated through the breathing holes onto the hiding performer.
What do you think are the opportunities available now for the sector?
The opportunities are enormous but it seems important to keep what the Outdoor Arts sector is about at the core of our motivation. Outdoor Arts exists to bring live, interactive arts to gathered and incidental audiences. It is the only platform that provides this opportunity for all and therefore the small intimate event is as important as the huge flagship one. There are funds to be tapped into to build relationships with local councils and town promoters and the more we are proactive about getting these bodies to value the work of Outdoor Arts, the more our creativity and skill can benefit local audiences. Our proactivity in creating these relationships opens up so much more opportunity for Outdoor Arts companies as it means we are no longer at the mercy of the large promoter or agent, can create opportunities and therefore be more experimental in our creative process to bring free to the public work into the streets.
Describe a current project or future piece of work that you’re really excited about:
We have just been working on a new ACE funded show that has Shadow Theatre at it’s core. We have been lucky to learn from shadow theatre experts Haviel Perdana and Anna Ingleby from Indigo Moon about this completely new skill for Circo Rum Ba Ba and have combined it with physical comedy. It has been humbling and exciting to learn how to manipulate shadow puppets and how to achieve theatre with torches, shapes and sound as well as with our bodies. We have just started touring the show, Shadow Shop.
Where do you think the sector will be in 4 or 5 years?
I think there will be a certain aspect of ‘survival of the fittest’ to get through the next few years…. or maybe I’ve always felt that. I think the pandemic has given us a hugely unifying opportunity whereby we have spoken to each other regularly and to funding bodies in a more egalitarian way. Large companies and solo performers have had voices within the shifting debate. The outdoor sector feels better valued and has reached a higher status where it may have previously felt like a poor relation to the other arts genres. I think we have to create in a responsive way and not forget our platform for activism and that as usual we must be maverick shape shifters.
What do you see as the biggest challenges and how do you plan to meet them?
The biggest challenges will be funding and health and safety restrictions. There are more and more applications to an uncertain pot. I think collaboration is an exciting way forward and presents a stronger and more unified front. As far as Health and Safety Restrictions are concerned, bodies such as Outdoor Arts Uk and NASA have done some great work and we need to stick together and be inventive within ny restrictions that surface.
Who inspires you in your work?
I am inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, Jack Tatti, Paula Rego, Victoria Chaplin, James Thierée, John Baptist Thierée, Dawn French, Eric Morecambe, Shappi Khorsandi, Walk the Plank, NutKhut… actually there are too many to mention!
How do you follow what’s happening in the Outdoor Arts and cultural sectors – what blogs, tweeters, websites, organisations do you recommend?
The Outdoor Arts UK roundup is brilliant and constant chatting in hundreds of dressing rooms at gigs.
What’s a favourite book/film/concert that you’ve encountered in the past 2 years?
Book…The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey. Film…Rocks. Cultural Experience…Out There Festival two weeks ago.
What non-Outdoor Arts cultural experience has made a great impression on you?
James Thiérée’s Aurevoir Parapluie and Chair…genius, brilliant, breath taking. impossible ever to forget.
Who would you have at your dream fantasy picnic?
Frida Khalo, Lyse Doucet, Nomzamo Mbatha, Daisy May Cooper and Ai Wei Wei.
Any final top tips for Outdoor Arts practitioners?
We are amazing, the most flexible and adaptable artists and practitioners there are. Keep an open mind and keep learning and let’s stay strong as a group and not just out there doing separate gigs.
