Circus Oz is performing in New Zealand during the Auckland Festival as part of their 30th birthday world tour. Starting out as a collective the company did everything, from fixing up the battered old trucks they toured in, to sewing their first canvas tent on borrowed sewing machines between shows. Now they tour with shipping containers, a gang of highly skilled supporting crew and a state-of-the-art tent. But they are still committed to that original spirit of collective creation and ownership.
Win tickets: Email editor@thebigidea.co.nz with questions for founding member Tim Coldwell to go into the draw to win a double pass to Circus Oz opening night on March 5.Circus Oz is performing in New Zealand during the Auckland Festival as part of their 30th birthday world tour. Starting out as a collective the company did everything, from fixing up the battered old trucks they toured in, to sewing their first canvas tent on borrowed sewing machines between shows. Now they tour with shipping containers, a gang of highly skilled supporting crew and a state-of-the-art tent. But they are still committed to that original spirit of collective creation and ownership.
Win tickets: Email editor@thebigidea.co.nz with questions for founding member Tim Coldwell to go into the draw to win a double pass to Circus Oz opening night on March 5.Tim Coldwell: Founding Member, Show Director
Tim is an acrobat, clown and trumpeter with Circus Oz. He is also a member of the Board of Directors, the Executive in Charge of Production, and, from time to time, tent designer, props engineer, inventor and director.
Tim left Flinders University to pursue a passion for circus. He toured with Ashton's Circus as a tent hand and with Circus Royale as a clown and ringmaster, learning all he could about the circus business, both in and outside the ring.
He was a founding member of the New Circus in Adelaide in the early to mid '70's, and taught himself a number of circus skills, notably highwire walking. New Circus conducted a number of regional tours, pioneering a fresh vision of circus without animals and with a contemporary bent. A spinoff from the New Circus, the New Ensemble Circus, performed a very successful season at Melbourne's Last Laugh Cabaret in 1977, in which Tim played a major role. Around this time discussions began between the members of the New Ensemble Circus and a Melbourne-based group called Soapbox Circus - discussions which led to the creation of Circus Oz in late 1977.
Tim is the only founding member of Circus Oz still performing with the company. He has been part of the company's development throughout its history, acting in a huge variety of roles and building up an unparalleled body of circus expertise.
He has been instrumental in developing a number of Circus Oz's unique signature acts, most notably the roofwalk act, which he first invented and performed at the Last Laugh in 1978. Tim has since performed the roofwalk in a number of different versions, including a Chandleresque film noir scene and a comic/poignant clown's dressing room scene. He has performed the act in over half a dozen languages on tour with Circus Oz, including Hindi and Danish as well as miscellaneous gigs such as Italian TV variety shows, Thai shopping malls and the Closing Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games.
When not performing with Circus Oz anywhere from South America to Arnhem Land, Tim has worked as a technical advisor and stunt performer for film and television, walked across the Torrens River on a highwire to open the Adelaide Festival, and many other things.
In between touring Tim designed and oversaw the construction of the company's spectacular, state-of-the-art Big Top, which will had its first performances in Sydney in 2002.
19/02/09