CIRCUS AS
ADAPTATION
From Performer to Occupational Therapist
BY SARAH ARRIGO
WITH THE SUPPORT OF MARIE CARON, MOTR/L
If you asked me two years ago what
I was doing with my life, I would have
answered enthusiastically: “I just
got back from training in Montreal,
and now I’m finalizing a contract to
perform in Europe for nine months!”
After an accident and a life-changing
surgery, however, I was forced to
alter my relationship to circus. It was
a difficult transition—I’ll spare you
the sob story—but what surprises me
is the result. When people ask me
today what I’m doing with my life,
I respond just as enthusiastically as
before: “I am applying to graduate
school for Occupational Therapy!”
Occupational therapy is a health field
that helps people with physical and
mental disabilities complete daily
tasks and simple actions. “Occupations”
aren’t just jobs. An Occupational
Therapist could teach a stroke victim
to re-learn how to bathe herself
or help two Autistic children play a
game together. She might teach
somebody how to flip a coin or work
an iron. The training is appropriately
diverse. Occupational Therapists
train in Anatomy and Physiology,
Neuroscience, Occupations, and
Psychology, among other fields.
On the surface, of course, occupational
therapy seems like another world
from my performing days. If anything,
circus performers—hyper-capable
physically, with hyper-developed
proprioception and muscle tone—are
the opposite of the patients an
Occupational Therapist would see.
And yet, the deeper I’ve gotten into
the field, the more I realize how
the unique traits and attitudes I
developed in circus help me enrich
the lives of non-performers.
As Jill Magilo and Carol McKinstry,
initiators of evaluation tools for
a “Circus in Schools” program, put
it, “in assessing the capacities of
individuals and planning programs to
improve function and occupational
performance, circus trainers
and occupational therapists have
complementary skills” (Magilo
and McKinstry 2).
What’s more, I’ve also come to feel
that by expanding the applications of
circus to other fields, such as health,
I’m enriching the art of circus as
a whole. The art’s unique strengths
have allowed me to re-discover circus
in a new context, with lessons I can
bring back to the circus itself.
One of the reasons I have always
loved circus is for the unique way it
cultivates relationships between
things—between bodies, objects, and
the environment. As performers
and participants, we thrive on tests
demonstrating our physical limits:
the flying trapeze; flips, twists, and
catches. As circus people, our lives
too are full of little physical rituals.
We tape up our wrists and hula
hoops so we can practice. We climb
to rig aerial equipment. Both on
stage and off, the circus is, in many
ways, a celebration of the human
body abilities to overcome all odds.
“Developmental circus” captures this
same circus spirit, but in service
of a very different mission. The term
“Developmental Circus Arts” (DCA)
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