In a New Memoir, Circus Smirkus Founder Rob Mermin Shares the Mirth, Magic and Mayhem of Life Under the Big Top (2024)

In 1969, at age 19, Rob Mermin literally ran off and joined the circus. While his friends were wallowing in the mud at Woodstock, attending college and protesting the Vietnam War, Mermin was getting bonked on the head by an ornery camel named Achmed at a traveling circus in Wales. For years he toured Europe with trapeze artists, jugglers and aerial acrobats; honed his skills with legendary French mime Marcel Marceau; and slept in the back of a box truck with the circus' performing mules.

Mermin, now 74, is often asked why he chose such an itinerant and physically demanding career.

"My intention," Mermin explained to Seven Days, "was to find an unconventional lifestyle of renewable adventure. The circus seemed to be the way."

After decades of working in European circuses, Mermin returned to the U.S. and founded Circus Smirkus in Greensboro. A nonprofit international touring company whose performers include children and adults, Circus Smirkus is dedicated to promoting the skills, culture and traditions of European-style circuses.

Now retired and living in Montpelier, Mermin has compiled a collection of stories he's told orally for years about his encounters with colorful characters and unruly animals in a new book, Circle of Sawdust: A Circus Memoir of Mud, Myth, Mirth, Mayhem, and Magic.

Mermin sat down for an interview to discuss the book, his exotic career, and how his mime and clown training has helped keep his Parkinson's disease at bay.

Circle of Sawdust begins with a quote from Burlington's Free Press & Times from 1883: "It is with circus-going as it is with Sin. One sin is always followed by a long procession of others. He who goes to the Circus is Lost Forever." Why use such an unflattering quote?

One of the reasons I wrote this book was to offset the images that Americans have of circuses — that clowns and mimes are disreputable and that circus people are sleazy. My background in clowning is really in the European circus tradition. I've actually never worked in an American[-style] circus. When I came back from all my travels in Europe, I didn't tell people I was working as a clown, because a clown here in the States still has a bad reputation. Either you're a serial killer from a Hollywood movie or you're a Ringling-style clown involving very wild makeup with wild red wigs and using very broad slapstick and gestures, which Ringling clowns had to do because they played in arenas to 20,000 people.

How does the perception of clowns differ in Europe?

My experience with clowns in the European tradition was that the public really accepted them as artists. They were beloved. It's the same thing with mime. I studied with Marceau in Paris, the center of great, centuries-old mime traditions. But here in the States, mime has a disreputable reputation from the street mimes imitating and mocking people.

Is the "circle of sawdust" a metaphor of your own creation?

Yes. I latched on to that from my experience with traveling, one-ring, European-style circuses. Before a circus arrives, the field is empty. Then the circus arrives, sets up, has this magical experience and then — boom! — in the middle of the night, they take the tent down and disappear. The field is left completely clean except for that faint circle of sawdust where the ring had been. If you step into that circle of sawdust two or three days later, I swear, there's this magical cone of energy that is the aura or echo of the circus.

Did you always want to be a mime, clown or circus performer?

Mime was my first love. What attracted me to it was having watched Marcel Marceau and the power of silence. Also, I grew up watching Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, who were great mimes. I was a very quiet kid, so I was attracted to that as a means of expressing myself in the world. As Marceau would say, "The art of mime is the identification with the essence of all things."

Another thing that attracted me to the circus is that it exists completely in the present. There's nothing fake about it, no thinking about the past or future. You're either doing your act or taking the tent down or doing your chores or you're moving on to the next town.

Most modern circuses have stopped using animals, in part because of animal abuse and our shifting sensibilities about keeping wild creatures in cages. Did you ever witness mistreatment of circus animals?

A little bit. I like to say that it's not that certain animals should be banned from the circus; I think certain animal trainers should be banned from the circus.

I witnessed, in the best animal training traditions, an immense love and care for the animals. These were the performers' livelihood, and the communication between the animals and humans could be really remarkable. The best animal trainers took better care of their animals than they did their own families. The animals were the first thing they took care of in the morning and the last thing they put to bed at night. I don't think it's healthy for humans to become more and more segregated from the animal kingdom. We can learn from the animals.

In a 2015 Seven Days interview, you suggested that the circus arts were at risk of extinction. Do you still feel that way today?

No. When I started Circus Smirkus in 1987, there were no circus camps, no afterschool programs or circus schools in this country. All that has changed. Smirkus was a forerunner of the youth circus movement, which has proliferated. There are now circus schools all over the country.

How has your Parkinson's disease progressed since we last spoke in 2015?

I'm in the 11th year since my diagnosis and doing OK. My neurologist says it's due to my training in mime and circus, because circus is very physical, of course. Of all his patients, I'm the most aware of my movements and the movements that are not correct. So if my left hand starts to tremor a bit, once I become aware of that, I can say to myself, Let's take a healthy neural pathway and stop the tremor. It's the awareness and observation of the movement that allows me to overcome the limitation. I've been teaching workshops in mime to other folks with Parkinson's and to groups of physicians and physical therapists who work with Parkinson's patients.

You included a quote in the book from A.H. Kober's Circus Nights and Circus Days about traveling circuses being "an attitude to life." What is your attitude to life?

What I love about the circus is that it's not just a job. It's a lifestyle. At the end of the day, you don't go home to some other place. You live at the circus and work at the circus. And it's an attitude of overcoming obstacles with a sense of humor, which is very important.

It's a hard life. You're on the road; you're performing. Even if you're the star, when the show is over, you take off the spangled costume, put on the work gloves, and you're out there with the rest of us taking the tent down. So it's real. There's always something going on that you have to deal with. And that's where the sense of humor comes in.

Do you ever feel sad that a young person today couldn't do what you did and run off and join the circus?

I've thought about that a lot. I think they can. Some of the Smirkus students say, "Rob, we can't do that anymore because the internet is there." But I say, "Look, if I had the internet then, I would have gone online to find out where the circus is performing and find them easily." Would that hold me back? I don't know. But the basic thing is, just show up and see what happens.