Bromance, an outstanding circus trio who took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm, are coming to the Playhouse. Louis Gift talked about the show to David Bellan

Louis Gift’s discipline is free running and parkour, Beren D’Amico does martial arts and tricking, and Charlie Wheeller’s specialities are break-dancing and contortion. It’s hard to imagine how you could blend these disparate talents into a show, except by making it a series of solos, but the three of them perform together. I asked Louis Gift what started them off.

“We met at the National Centre for Circus Arts, and we just became really good friends. Our previous backgrounds were really quite different. In the first place the way we learnt these disciplines was very much learning stuff in the back garden, and throwing grit in a sand-pit. It was very much self-taught.

“But when we got to circus school, in the first year we had classes in every-thing, to try out loads of things. Some people come with an idea of what they want to do, and they try something, and that idea will change when they find that their strengths lie in unexpec-ted places. It’s really good to get the opportunity to do that, I think. We had lots of classes together – and we found we really liked acrobatics; that was out common ground. So, when it came to after-school practice time, we’d all hang out together and learn flips and different tricks and stuff.”

Not everyone enjoys their school-days, but these three had a terrific time. “Yes, we had heaps of fun. I got into all this after doing my A-levels, and I really didn’t want to do anything academic any more, I wanted to spend the next two years of my life doing something physical. Then I got into parkour. You really learn that on the streets, as you’re using the urban landscape as the basis for what you do. I started near my house. I’d find some walls, and jump from one to the other, and it grew from there.”

Beren D’Amico does martial arts and tricking. We all know about martial arts, but I wondered what tricking is. “Tricking is derived from martial arts. It’s like the demonstrat-ion side of martial arts. Beren did Tae-kwondo – you know, people hold up boards and you do kicks and snap the boards in half. When you go down the tricking route it becomes a lot more acrobatic, with a lot of flips and cool tricks put in it. Tricking has really evolved into its own sport now.”

Charlie Wheeller specialises in break-dance and contortion. So here we have three guys with six different disciplines between them. I wondered how they work together to produce a show that runs smoothly, and gives each of them a chance to shine.

“At first we had no idea. We just got into a theatre-space and started to try and think of things that would be cool or fun to perform. We did have some ideas beforehand, but the beginning it was just us thinking why don’t we try this; what would happen if we explored that idea.

“Once you get the ball rolling, a lot of other ideas pop up along the way. A lot of it will also come from mistakes – happy accidents; you do something by accident and it turns out to be really cool, and you explore whatever direction that goes down.

“Further down the road we did get a couple of other people involved. One of them was a choreographer, and the other was a stage director, and they helped us bring the theatre side of it out, and make it a well-rounded show, rather than a string of individual sections.”

Have the three of them been influ-enced by other styles of circus or dance? “Oh yes. We’re always looking at videos on YouTube of new circus acts to keep us inspired, which is a lot of fun. We’ll see a trick, and think it would be amazing if we could do that, and we try it out and see what happens. If it works then we hold on to it; if it doesn’t we put it aside for now.”

My overall impression from what I’ve seen of the show is that there’s a lot of dance in it, to the point where dance seems to underline the whole show.

“That comes from all of our backgrounds, but we think of it less as dance, more as moves that we enjoy doing; but a lot of the movement we do is dance-inspired. We do also have our individual acts within the show. That’s the circus element of the show, then we have some stuff together, and there’s a lot of acrobatics throughout the show.

“So there’s circus all the way through, but the most circus-like moments are in the individual acts. Some parts are dangerous, but we train until we feel it’s safe to perform them. When you’re doing circus you get into close physical contact for extended periods of time. You’re exploring a relationship when you’re performing, and also when you’re just hanging out as friends, and that’s why we have called the show Bromance.”

Bromance
Oxford Playhouse
Tomorrow and Saturday at 7.30pm
Tickets: 01865 305305