AUSTRALIANA Performing Arts –

Mark St Leon presents a comprehensive, entertaining and visually stunning history of circus in Australia. His interest was sparked by his insatiable curiosity about his own family’s celebrated past in Australian circus. You will read how a colonial circus industry developed out of its Old World roots; how the saga of circus is woven into the historical fabric of modern Australia; how circus in Australia absorbed influences from as far afield as America, Japan and Europe; how Australia has been visited by some of the world’s major circus companies; and how Australia’s circus people have coped with unrelenting social, cultural, technological and economic change.

Full contents:

• Genesis
• The Astleys of the antipodes
• Gold, gravel and grit
• Dust and spangles
• Foreign exchange
• Wirth’s Circus
• Road shows
• Oz circus.
• First Edition.

  • x, 273 p. : ill. (chiefly col.), facsims., ports. ; 28 cm. #010625