Ringling Brothers Eyes Comeback With Animal-Free Circus Show Transcript

Speaker 1: (00:01)
It’s a comeback story still in the making.

Speaker 2: (00:04)
Welcome, everybody.

Speaker 1: (00:06)
Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus reinventing itself.

Speaker 3: (00:10)
I feel like it’s the heart coming back to American circus.

Juliette Feld Grossman: (00:13)
We are bringing the best talent from the world into the production, and bringing it to hometowns all around America.

Speaker 5: (00:21)
I’m from the Netherlands.

Speaker 6: (00:23)
[foreign language 00:00:23] Columbia.

Speaker 7: (00:27)
We are from Ethiopia.

Speaker 8: (00:27)
Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaker 9: (00:27)
The circus comes to town.

Speaker 1: (00:29)
Gone are the three rings.

Speaker 9: (00:30)
You never know what to expect at the circus.

Speaker 1: (00:33)
The circus as your grandparents or even their parents remember it, fell victim to changing times. Feld Entertainment, which owns the circus, discovered today’s audiences did not want to see animals performing. And today’s kids do not laugh at corny clown acts.

Speaker 1: (00:53)
Will there be animals and clowns and things like that?

Juliette Feld Grossman: (00:56)
We will not be touring animals.

Speaker 1: (00:58)
That’s in the history. That’s the past.

Kenneth Feld: (01:00)
That is the past. And the great thing is that we’ve had a blank piece of paper to reimagine.

Speaker 1: (01:10)
Now the plan is to up the game with human feats that dazzle, astonish, bewilder, while, at the same time, engaging audiences with interactive social media. At times, even during the show.

Juliette Feld Grossman: (01:22)
It creates a really special memory and-

Speaker 1: (01:25)
The shift coming from a younger leadership.

Juliette Feld Grossman: (01:28)
I’ve been part of Ringling my whole life, and now we’re excited to make that real for everybody else.

Speaker 1: (01:33)
So you didn’t need to run away and join the circus. You were born into it.

Juliette Feld Grossman: (01:37)
I came home to it.

Speaker 1: (01:38)
In the warehouse with more than 70 years of circus costumes…

Kenneth Feld: (01:43)
It started 1871 and it was Barnum, and then Barnum and Bailey-

Speaker 1: (01:47)
Kenneth Feld says this isn’t the first time a pandemic has inspired big changes under the big talk.

Speaker 9: (01:54)
And now, back to the colossal circus acts.

Kenneth Feld: (01:57)
… as a result of the pandemic in 1918, because they were completely closed down. That was when Ringling brothers and Barnum and Bailey combined because they didn’t want to take a risk with all these other shows coming up.

Speaker 1: (02:09)
That was the other pandemic.

Kenneth Feld: (02:10)
That was the other pandemic.

Speaker 1: (02:12)
The new circus, still a work in progress.

Speaker 1: (02:16)
What have you learned about the audience as we’re coming out of this pandemic?

Juliette Feld Grossman: (02:21)
What we’re seeing is huge demand for people to be in person and to see things that are real.

Speaker 12: (02:26)
Ringling is back.

Speaker 13: (02:26)
Ringling is back.

Speaker 1: (02:32)
The producers who are bringing the Ringling back to this stage is also the same group of producers who do Disney On Ice, Monster Jam, Sesame Street Live. So they kind of think that they’ve figured the audience out. They are right now, still doing auditions. More than a thousand people have auditioned, about 75 will make it. And if all goes as planned, in about 16 months we’ll see the circus performing around the country. And it will not be our parent’s circus. It’ll very different, guys.

Speaker 14: (03:02)
All right. Looks cool.

Speaker 15: (03:02)
It does look cool.

Speaker 14: (03:03)
Thanks, [Carrie 00:03:05].

Speaker 16: (03:04)
Thank you, Carrie.