Leo Rising

The world of performing arts is filled with as many happy accidents as plotted successes, and Leo, a show by Circle Of Eleven and performed by Tobias Wegner, definitely falls into the former category. Featuring a dazzling display of seemingly gravity-defying dancing and movement, Leo originated as the opening act for another Circle Of Eleven show that was running short, and slowly grew in length and acclaim until it was turned into a full-length production in its own right. It sounds like a very lucky break, but Wegner, who created Leo, is somewhat used to flying by the seat of his pants.

Wegner fell in love with circus performance as a child, after attending a birthday party where the MC was the head of the local children's circus club. “When I returned home from the party, I asked my mother, 'Can I join the circus club? I don't want to play soccer, I want to do circus,'” recalls Wegner. He pursued circus as a hobby for the next ten years, but when the time came to choose a profession, it didn't really enter his mind. “I was about to go to Berlin and become a doctor,” says Wegner. “But then a good friend of mine, who'd already studied circus, said, 'Hey, I think you've got some talent and I'd like you to try and get into one of the circus schools in Europe.'” Wegner auditioned for an academy in Brussels and won one of only 12 places they offered that year. He's never looked back.

In 2008, he joined a different Circle Of Eleven production, My Life, which ran for a year at the company's home theatre. A few days before the show was due to open it was still running a bit short, and the performers were asked to volunteer ideas for an opening act. “I raised my hand and said, 'I have an old idea, from my days at the circus school,'” says Wegner. He pitched them Leo, which he describes as “…kind of this silent-movie character, based on a camera trick – the camera films one way and the screen projects another way.” The net effect is that the audience sees what appears to be a man dancing and moving on the walls and the ceiling – seemingly defying the law of gravity. Wegner got the first performance of Leo together in time for opening night, and over My Life's year-long run, the segment grew from six to 15 minutes before Circle Of Eleven suggested making it a full-length show.

Turning a 15-minute clowning act into an entire evening's worth of entertainment was a tall order, and Wegner credits theatre director Daniel Brière with Leo's biggest transformation. “[Brière] was in charge of writing – even though there's no [spoken word] – the storyline, the emotional voyage of Leo,” says Wegner. “It was quite hard to drag Leo away from this very funny aspect, because the optical trickery gives so much humour… but we found ways to use this trickery to explore other issues and emotions, and show Leo as a guy with problems and troubles.” The result is a show that has taken Wegner around the world and given him a wealth of experiences – and he's now looking forward to trading the German winter for an Australian summer, and introducing Leo to Melbourne.