THE CIRCUS IS COMING TO TOWN

A hearty mix of excitement and performance will take center stage at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center Sunday when Birdhouse Factory, a unique circus show, makes its stop in Iola.
Birdhouse Factory, performed by Cirque Mechanics, is an industrial take on the traditional circus show.
Boston native Chris Lashua, who previously had a background in BMX biking and a six-year stint spent performing with Cirque du Soleil, founded Cirque Mechanics in 2004.
Lashua worked with mechanical contraptions and his ideas kept growing until he decided to take his work and mold it into a circus show of his own.
“Machines became the central focus of what we do,” Lashua said. “We explore the relationship between apparatus and mechanics.”
Lashua and his team conjured up machines, such as a bicycle that climbs vertically, and then went in search of a story to go along with it.
“We started with mechanical contraptions and then we looked for the content,” Lashua said.
That’s when the idea of the rough industrial time of the 1930’s Great Depression came to mind.
Diego Rivera, a famous Mexican painter who painted frescos in Mexico City, Chapingo, San Francisco, Detroit and New York City, was one of the original inspirations for the theme of the show.
“Diego Rivera’s work really shows off these factories where men and women worked,” Lashua said.
Lashua took a logical and linear setting of a factory and created the non-linear chaos of a circus.
But Birdhouse Factory isn’t like most circuses.
“It’s a modern circus. There isn’t any dialogue and there is no fantasy dream world, like most circus acts,” Lashua said. 

CIRQUE Mechanics is a small company of about 14, nine of which are the artists and five make up the technical crew.
Lashua said being a smaller company works to their advantage. When new creations are sought out or when a change in the show needs to be made, it can be done quickly.
“There is open dialogue as we put the show together. It’s a collaborative spirit of what is a circus,” Lashua said. “We couldn’t afford to pay for people to invest themselves the way they do, and they don’t do it for a paycheck, but to be creative. Being a small company also encourages people to be creative.”
The company’s home base is Las Vegas, but they are a traveling group.
The crew is made up of people from all over the country and the world.
Their style of touring, which Lashua calls a “rock ‘n’ roll style,” with a few weeks on the road and a few weeks off, makes for a very close-knit group.
“When you have to rely on someone to keep you safe and from hitting the floor it becomes a different level of trust,” Lashua said. “But then we do things outside of the shows, which creates bonds.”
The show’s size also makes for more bookings.
“The show is unique in the circus community. We are small enough that if we want to change something we can have a conversation about it and change it,” Lashua said. “The circus is like a living thing, it is always evolving. We want to keep it evolving because if not it will get stale.”

ONCE the crew reaches Iola on Saturday it will take 12 hours and about 20 people to load all the equipment onto the Bowlus stage. Sunday they continue to work. They set all the equipment up, have rehearsals and put the show on that afternoon.
When they leave it will take only two hours to pack everything back up.
“It takes so much time to set up because the environment in the theater has to be completely recreated for the artist,” Lashua said.
Though the show has a nostalgic 1930s feel to it, it is still relatable to the economic hardship the country has been experiencing.
“It turned out that it became a mirror for what is going on now. It is a very relevant show,” Lashua said. “What is funny is there is more money spent on the arts during the Great Depression than now.”

CIRQUE Mechanics will be performing Birdhouse Factory at the Bowlus Sunday at 3 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased at the Bowlus office. Tickets are $24 for orchestra adults, $22 for balcony adult, $12 for orchestra students and $11 for balcony students, plus an 8.55 percent tax.
For more information contact the Bowlus at (620) 365-4765.