A future up in the air

September 18, 2005

Matt Wilson has run away from the circus, but that doesn't mean he's stopped juggling. He spoke with Michelle Griffin.

In his 15 years as a circus performer, Matt Wilson has juggled chainsaws, walked the tightrope, sung arias suspended from the ceiling and bungy-jumped from the Sydney Opera House.

For the past two years, he's been Circus Oz's human cannonball, landing splat on the mat of human kindness in cities across the world. But the most difficult trick of all, says the 39-year-old father of two, is finding the right balance between the job he enjoys and the family he loves.

And that's why he has run away from the circus.

"I left Circus Oz not because I wasn't enjoying the work but because you have to get your priorities right in your life sometimes," says Wilson.

"Being in the circus is like being in a rock'n'roll band, you're constantly touring. It was causing a lot of grief. Without going too much into the nitty gritty, it's a very difficult balancing act trying to fulfil your responsibilities as a parent, as a husband and also your responsibilities to yourself and your career."

It's been three months since Wilson left his full-time job with Circus Oz, and now he's in freelance freefall, waiting to see where he lands.

In his striped top and denim jeans, he looks like Ginger Meggs all grown up and working out at the gym - wiry frame, big shoulders, close-cropped freckled head, and a grin as broad as his vowels.

Lately, he's been hanging out with his wife, costume designer Joanne, and his daughters, Jeannie, 9, and Nina, 5, doing the occasional acting gig, and working on his own solo circus show for the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Trade of the Trick is a melange of circus skills, singing and storytelling that uses the tricks of Wilson's exotic trade to explore a few existential questions.

"I wouldn't call it an autobiographical thing, although it does reflect that," he says.

"Most solo shows I've seen, people have these really amazing stories to tell about their family history or some tumultuous event and I thought, 'Um, no, nothing out of the ordinary has happened to me. So, let's go with more universal themes: what am I at now?'

"I'm using a lot of circus skills metaphorically to express the challenges you face in life: the difficulties, the joyful parts, the unjoyful parts. Basically, it's about the kind of memories you carry with you. Inevitably, people reach several points in their life where they have to examine these things again. Like I am."

Good circus acts are always a little bit autobiographical, says Wilson.

"The one fundamental difference between being a circus performer and an actor is that a lot of the time circus is an extension of your own character. Start with a clean slate and then get parts of you and work from that. At the end of the day, what you want is that people see a real human being doing extraordinary things."

He uses juggling in the act as a metaphor for life's frustrations. "It's more about learning how to juggle," he says.

"Initially, it's kind of compelling and then it's a bit frustrating and then it's really rewarding because you have a breakthrough. You're joyful and happy and then you try something harder and it becomes frustrating and then you hit this wall and it pisses the hell out of you."

The perky little cub scout Wilson played in his human cannonball routine was not too far removed from the perky little cub scout who grew up in the West Australian town of Bunbury.

The only acrobatics Wilson used to practise back then were "the dodgy backyard variety", swinging from ropes with his sister and two brothers. "Crazy things," he remembers.

"Boys trying to outdo each other." His father, now retired, was a portrait photographer; his mother, a nurse, played the piano.

Wilson didn't rediscover acrobatics until his early 20s, when the fledgling actor signed up for a circus skills program taught in Perth by Rock 'n' Roll Circus founder Lachlan McDonald.

The tricks of the trade came easily, Wilson says. "I have never been a sporty person, never that way at school. But the circus skills were a means to an end."

When the program wound up in 1990, Wilson and other graduates started their own comic circus, Bizircus. The troupe struggled, says Wilson, because the performers found it difficult to juggle the administration and the act.

By 1995, Wilson had moved to Brisbane to join Rock 'n' Roll Circus. For his next trick, he met Joanne and started a family just as he went on tour for the first time.

His daughters have grown up at the circus and they aren't anywhere near as impressed as their school friends by their dad's moves on the monkey bars. He hasn't pushed his girls to learn acrobatics, though his descriptions of family frolics sound a little more flamboyant than most.

"They love playing and doing tricks with me. You know, rolling around on the floor and doing little balances together and standing on hands."

Wilson hopes he can return to the circus again one day, if he ever masters that work-life balancing act.

"Most people would give their right arm for a job where you get to tour the world, but when you're away you miss your home and family. And when you get back, the picture you have in your head of your happy little family is challenged - it takes a while for people to adjust to you being back. You have to tread tenderly and work out where you fit back in again. Then you start missing being on the road. It's a state of constant dilemma."

Trade of the Trick is at North Melbourne Town Hall, September 23-30. Tel: 8412 8777 or see www.melbournefringe.com.au
