Peculiar Families Festival will bring together artists from four countries through six performances that will showcase the finest tricks of circus families from all over Europe in an intense four-day program. It is no coincidence that this caravan landed in Split. They know about the city through more than 10  years of dedicated work of the contemporary circus collective ROOM 100 on the development of the circus scene in Croatia, the Balkans and beyond.

 

Through its program selection, the Festival is a gathering place for artists and audiences looking for high quality, innovative, critical and engaged contemporary circus performances. The venues of the Festival, Youth Center Split, Puppetry Theatre City of Split and the mountain Mosor will serve as a place for creating an intimate relationship between the artists and the audience, the existing and the new ones, which will become aware of the world of contemporary circus art, its history, development, significance, genres and trends.

 

The Festival is called “Peculiar Families Festival”, referencing the creative and complex community of circus artists and their audiences. Contemporary circus art is much more than just an art form. The specific requirements for physical capacity, the character of the interdisciplinary between performing and conceptual art, as well as the conditions of production, often characterize not only the work but also the life of circus artists. For these reasons, vigorous, intimate and trustworthy cooperation between the members of the collective is created. The magic of the circus is when that energy is transferred to the audience. Festival’s goal is to create precisely that effect and break down borders between the audience and artists, the city and the circus tent, the family as a community and a necessity. The boundaries of body and mind are common to all; circus artists are just turning those boundaries into a creative process, expressing through them the metaphors of everyday life. With its name, this Festival recognizes the complexity and intimacy of everyday human relationships and wants to talk openly about all the different aspects of life choices that ultimately make us all the “circus artists” in our environments.

 

The Festival program is available at https://peculiarfamilies.org/en/home/.