Join the one-of-a-kind circus history and circus creation academic Louis Patrick Leroux for an exploration of circus apparatus, history and, more generally, meaning-making in circus creation. Doctoral students Milena Pereira dos Santos and Keely Whitelaw collaborate with Patrick to bring their collective knowledge and research to our series!

Anyone interested in the circus and its workings! 

What is the role of the circus apparatus both in terms of dramaturgical meaning-making and in the artist’s own experience of engaging with the apparatus as a tool, an obstacle, a partner, or a combination of these functions? 

How artists create movement with a novel apparatus, and how naming the object as a tool, pattern, or prosthetic affects the ways in which relations become perceptible. 

How the object is always taken up into the bodily schema such that the body and the afforded conditions are altered. 

The unique circus circumstance that the collaborations that are chosen are reflective of the emergent modes of subjectivity, and the resulting techniques become another dimension in which to apply dramaturgical cues and concerns.

Patrick, Keely & Milena are thought and research leaders working with Circus Artists and Academics TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF IT ALL. 

** RECORDING AVAILABLE ** for one week afterwards

(Burning questions can even be added it in advance to be answered live!)

About our Circus Smart Speaker Series speakers: 

Louis Patrick Leroux is an Associate Dean of Research and a Professor who holds a joint position in both departments of English and Études françaises at Concordia University, Montréal.

His research spans from theatre to contemporary circus and has involved research-creation and

cultural discourse analysis. He is founding director of the Montreal Working Group on Circus

Research and has regularly taught at the National Circus School of Montreal. He has been a

Visiting Professor/Scholar at Duke University, Charles University, Prague, the Centre national

des arts du cirque in Châlons-en-Champagne, Universidad de Chile, Université de Toulouse and

Recent and forthcoming scholarly books include: Contemporary Circus with K. Lavers and J.

Burtt (Routledge, 2019); Cirque Global: Québec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries, with Charles

Batson (McGill-Queen’s, 2016); Le jeu des positions. Discours du théâtre québécois, with H.

Guay (Nota Bene, 2014), Estie toastée des deux bords : Les formes populaires de l’oralité chez

Victor-Lévy Beaulieu with S. Dubois (PUM, 2022); Le cirque social: son rôle, ses pratiques,

pédagogies et ses aspirations with J. Rivard and M. Perahia, (PUL, forthcoming 2023) and

Réagir, créer, persévérer. La culture québécoise au temps de la pandémie with H. Guay and S.

Bouliane (PUM, 2023). He has also published a dozen books of plays in French and English.

Milena Pereira dos Santos is a circus and dance artist member of NanoCirco (Campinas, Brazil). She is currently a doctoral student, through a cotutelle arrangement, in both the Humanities Program at Concordia University and the Performing Arts Program of the University of Campinas, Brazil.

Keely Whitelaw is a circus artist, coach, and researcher. She is currently in her second year of the Interdisciplinary Humanities doctoral program at Concordia University, where her work considers the primacy of movement in the embodied knowledge of circus technique acquisition and creation.

Circus Apparatus & Meaning-Making in Circus Creation