Feet First

The beauty of the Melbourne Fringe Festival is that it gives emerging performers the opportunity to put on a show – and you can't get a much more emerging bunch of performers than the first-year NICA students behind Alice In The Madhouse, led by performer and director Felicia Lannan.

Lannan is in her first year of study at NICA (National Institute of Circus Arts), having started out as a gymnast. She cut her circus teeth as a member of the Flying Fruit Fly Circus and commenced her NICA course at the beginning of 2012. As the Fringe Festival approached, she and some of the other first-year students began to ponder the possibility of putting on their own show. The idea was fraught with challenges: “None of us have been in the Fringe Festival before,” explains Lannan. “We've never worked as an ensemble before, either, and it's my first time directing.” However, there was also an abundance of enthusiasm and determination. “We thought, 'Why don't we just make this happen?'.”

And make it happen, they did. Lannan and her team hit upon an intriguing idea for their circus show: Alice In The Madhouse. The more research they did into Lewis Carroll's classic tale Alice In Wonderland, the more they found that it lent itself to an off-kilter interpretation. “The story is pretty creepy,” explains Lannan. “It's a lot of psychological drama, and easily translatable into horror.”

Alice In The Madhouse will showcase the talents of these young circus performers in the intimate space of Red Bennies, with inspiration drawn from the characters of the famous tale. “I see the characters as recognisable by their colour,” says Lannan, referencing the brilliant blues of Alice's dress and, naturally, the White and Red Queens. Lannan has also sought to link the various circus arts to the nature of the characters. “The caterpillar is doing rope – we string her up in kind of a cocoon shape, and she unravels herself,” she explains. “And Tweedledee and Tweedledum – we've got them in there, as clowns.”

Lannan's enthusiasm and determination is a perfect example of how an emerging artist can make the most of the Fringe Festival. She ran a successful Pozible campaign to help get the show off the ground, and considerable attention has been paid to making sure that the night is a fun, cohesive experience for the audience: “We're building the show around the Red Bennies space,” she says. Directing the show has certainly awoken a new sense of leadership and creativity within Lannan, who says that she never considered herself a natural leader but has come to love the responsibility of putting together a production. “I'd definitely want to direct again. As a performer, I know that my body is not going to hold on forever, so when I'm older I definitely want to be a director.”

Above all, Lannan is hoping to show her audience a new side of the circus arts that she so dearly loves herself. When asked why she has dedicated her life to circus, she doesn't hesitate to answer. “There's no rules,” she explains quickly. “It's not strict. Ballet and dance are beautiful, but there are rules to it, and there's definitely a stereotype to it.” The world of the circus, however, is far looser, and offers its performers far more freedom. “Circus has everything, and accepts everything. I love it.”