Sydney Festival Digital Archive

The Junebug Symphony by Jamies Thierre (2003)

The circus art of James Thierrée was new to Australian audiences when he brought The Junebug Symphony to the Sydney Festival in 2003. Expectations were largely guided by the fact that he was Charlie Chaplin’s grandson.

What he showed then – and several times since – is that circus could be as strange as a half-remembered dream and twice as funny as a 90-minute nocturnal fantasia that began quietly in bed spiralled into surreal chaos.

There was no plot to cling to – just doors that went nowhere, violins with legs, and performers who seemed to defy both gravity and logic. Thierrée, ever-present and supremely elastic, insisted it meant nothing in particular. Which, of course, meant everything.