Stranded In The Circus Real life
Olympia Posirca has been locked down in a big top since March
I’m a 15th generation circus performer on my mum’s side, and 17th or 18th generation on my dad’s. In fact, there are four generations of my family currently stranded together in the circus that has been on Morecambe seafront since the lockdown began.
My mum, Pam, and my grandma, Doreen, who are both retired circus artistes, were visiting when the lo ockdown started and they d ecided to stay.
That’s been a comfort to me m and my husband Marian, and a our daughter, Amalia, who’s w three, and son Alexandru, A who’s one – and t o everybody in the company, c really, because my m grandma loves everyone. Everyone in the circus calls c her Oma – the German word w for grandmother – and it’s i become a daily routine for everybody to go past her caravan and give her a wave or have a chat.
It was wonderful that Gran was able to celebrate her 91st birthday in the big top in May. During her life she’s done absolutely everything in the circus: trapeze, tumbling, magic. She did the comedy car with my granddad. She went to America as one of the Digger Pugh Girls, which was a famous troupe of dancers and acrobats.
Mum used to do foot juggling, trapeze, magic and the football dogs. Then, when she married my dad, she was in the musical clown act.
I grew up in the circus and loved every second. On my third birthday my dad’s mum came to visit and as a surprise for her, my mum made me a costume and I went in the clown act.
It was only supposed to be a one-off for my birthday, but the next day I put on my costume and red nose and I was ready and waiting.
When I grew up, I took a degree in musical theatre and then the next day I was back in the circus.
I’m currently ring mistress with Big Kid Circus which is run by a Bulgarian couple, Kiril and Biliana Kirilov. This year’s show is called Cirque de Cuba and the cast includes 25 Cuban acrobats.
Unfortunately, we’d just put up the tent in
“It’s been a comfort to have Mum here”
Morecambe when we were told that we couldn’t open to the public because of the Covid-19 situation – and we’ve been here ever since!
Luckily, the whole circus is classified as one household, so we can carry on training and rehearsing without social distancing restrictions. When we reopen we have to be in the same physical condition as when we stopped, so we can’t sit around for however many months and expect the performers to do triple somersaults straight away.
Not being able to perform for the public has put the circus under tremendous financial pressure. As the Cubans aren’t British residents, they aren’t eligible for support and their
“We’re good at adapting, so I’m hopeful we will bounce back from this crisis”
restricted visas mean they can’t take other employment.
The local council has been amazing. They’ve provided us with electricity and water and said we can stay here as long as we need to. But because a travelling circus doesn’t pay business rates on a permanent building, it’s not eligible for a government grant and we won’t have any income for the foreseeable future. We’re relying on food banks. They came to us because the police told them we were too proud to ask for r food, but without the sup pport of the local com mmunity, we wouldn’t sur rvive. The people of Mo orecambe have been fan ntastic. Even Gran’s bir rthday cake, in the sh hape of a big top, was kin ndly donated by a lo cal resident.
Some of the artistes ar re working as volunteer dr rivers for the food ba anks as a way of giving so omething back. When we w can, we’ll do free sh hows in Morecambe as a thank you.
Our plan is to come c back every year and a do two charity performances, p with free f admission for NHS workers w and key workers. In the meantime, we’ve filmed our show and put it online to try and make money to pay the artistes.
It was very strange performing without an audience, especially for me and the clown, because we rely on feedback. But viewers seem to have loved it. Some people have sent us pictures of themselves having their own little circus in their living rooms while they watch, with popcorn and pretend tickets. They’ve created their own atmosphere!
So far, the video has let us give the Cubans £20 a week each for a couple of weeks and we’re hoping more people will watch it, because we don’t know how long we’ll be here unable to work.
Our biggest problem is uncertainty. If the government said, “You can’t open until August 2021,” we could plan around that and come back bigger and better than ever. But we don’t have a timeline.
In the long term, I’m