Yuck circus

Meet the perth-based group building human pyramids and flipping off double standards.

If you’ve got boobs, you know it would hurt like hell to have someone perch upon them. But it’s all in a day’s work for circus performer Georgia Deguara, proud owner of what she calls “the strongest boobs in WA”. “I just cross my arms underneath and a girl stands on them and balances,” Georgia says. “It’s a good time.”

The boob-stand is just one of Georgia’s signature moves. (She can hammer a nail up her nose, too – how’s that for a party trick?) It’s the kind of thing you’ll see her perform as part of YUCK Circus – the rowdy, funny, all-girl company she founded in Perth in 2018 with six of her circus mates. They’re a group of gymnasts, dancers, acrobats, trapeze artists and theatre nerds who can do all that rad, classic circus stuff. But they also stuff socks down their undies and joke about dick pics – not really the kind of thing you’d expect from Cirque du Soleil.

“A lot of people rock up and think they’re going to see girls in glittery outfits doing the splits and being glamorous,” Georgia says. “Then they see us in our grundies sculling a beer.” YUCK Circus – which also includes Ella Norton, Brooke Duckworth, Abbie Madden, Karla Scott, Jessica Smart and Emily Mcdonagh – aims to up-end traditional stereotypes about growing up as a woman in Australia, and being female in contemporary circus. It’s basically a piss-take of recognisable Aussie characters (like the blokey-blokes down at the pub) and circus tropes (like manly strongmen throwing dames in the air). Georgia says she “never intended to make an all-female, badass, powerhouse group”, but misconceptions about gender and the circus were something she and her pals would often chat about. “It was just the story I wanted to tell at the time,” she says.

Before you conjure up any carnie-related stereotypes, Georgia never ran away to the circus. Rather, she stumbled upon it as a super-bored 10-year-old kid in Broome. “There wasn’t much going on there,” Georgia says. “I happened to walk past the local Sandfly Circus, run by Theatre Kimberley. It was basically a shed full of kids my age doing cartwheels and flips and hula hoops. Everything was magical.”

The cool thing about circus, though, is that it’s more than just crazy flips and tricks. One minute you’re whirling around the flying trapeze, and the next you’re hamming it up for the crowd with some chuckle-inducing storytelling. “It’s a mix of sport and art,” Georgia says. “You have the opportunity to perform physically, but what was always supported in Sandfly was the comedy and personas you could explore.”

Georgia eventually left Broome to study at the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) in Melbourne, where she met a few of her future YUCK troupe mates. When they first came up with YUCK, they thought it would be a one-time performance at an annual circus and physical theatre showdown. But then they won first prize, and decided to take the show on the road. They’ve since been all around Australia and even to the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.

YUCK shows tackle tricky, awkward conversation-killers like sexting, binge-drinking, toxic masculinity and periods. “We talk about uncomfortable or taboo subjects, but in a stupid, fun way,” says Georgia, whose repertoire includes a kinda gross-but-relatable yarn about the time she pulled out a tampon and blood splattered everywhere. (“It was just like shark week,” she jokes.) The troupe also performs a splashy array of stunts that are usually left to the boys – stuff like showy flips, aerial silks, stilt-walking and human pyramids. “It’s changing, but five years ago you couldn’t find a circus troupe with different types of female bodies, or different roles for people to play,” Georgia says. “A lot of the time it’s the big boy who throws a little girl up in the air, and that’s it.”

Georgia wants to be clear, though: YUCK is less about preaching, more about parody. “It’s all just a good time – a laugh,” she says. “Audiences really dig the candour.” And not just their fellow ladies, either, despite the way the group throws women’s issues – and literal women – around. “It presents gender issues from a female perspective, but in a way that can be relatable to everybody,” Georgia says. “It's actually about us reaching out a hand and inviting people in.”