Next weekend (February 9-11) the Celebrity Series of Boston will present “Sacre”, a re-imagining of “The Rite of Spring” by Australian contemporary circus company Circa, at the Boch Center Shubert Theatre. Theater Mirror had an opportunity to speak with acting artistic director Benjamin Knapton, who directed “Sacre”, last week.

TM: Tell us about Circa and how they differ from other circus arts troupes?

BK: In the early 2000s, Yaron Lifschitz (artistic director and CEO of Circa) took over a troupe called Rock n Roll Circus, and that company was doing some real different circus in Brisbane, Australia at the time. Yaron has a theater background, and when he started working with the (troupe) he essentially stripped it back, taking away the fancy costumes and lighting and set design, and really started to focus on the acrobatic body and what it could do, as well as the personalities and the emotional capacity of the performance. Since then, we’ve brought back sets and lighting and we do children’s shows (“Wolfgang’s Magical Musical Circus”), but the heart of that intent is still focused on the acrobatics, the acrobatic body and who the are performers are as people. With ‘Sacre’ for instance, there’s nothing on stage, it’s an empty black space lit by this one light. And it really focuses in on these extraordinary 10 acrobats who are in the show.

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