Oddfellows Playhouse and ARTFARM are pleased to announce Rob Mermin, founder of the international youth company Circus Smirkus, will kick off his national speaking tour, “Circle of Sawdust: The Mud, Myth, Mayhem and Magic of Circus”, at Oddfellows Playhouse located at 128 Washington St. in Middletown.
The lecture, filled with clips from Hollywood circus feature films and personal stories, will begin at 7 p.m. and is made possible by a grant from the Middletown Commission of the Arts.
Mermin trained with the renowned mimes Marcel Marceau and Etienne Decroux, and is also a former Dean of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.
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Mermin will delight the audience with stories of running off to join the circus as a teen in the late 60’s. During the next forty years his circus adventures took him clowning with tent shows in Wales, mule wrangling in Lapland with Sweden’s Circus Scott, riding with the Magyars in the Hungarian State Cirkusz, three years with the famous Benneweis Circus Building in Copenhagen, and entertaining royalty in the circus palaces of Europe and Russia.
The CT School of Circus Arts is a circus training program for students ages 12-18. Students meet on Monday evenings and build skills as jugglers, unicyclists, acrobats, clowns and stilters. The program is led by creative artists of ARTFARM and Matica Arts. This is the only year-round structured circus training program in Connecticut and is designed to serve both beginning and experienced performers. Interested students can visit www.oddfellows.org for more information.
