Finding Home at Circus Smirkus
Editor’s note: This story first appeared in the Arlington Advocate on June 7, 2018 and was written by Abbi Matheson.
Glenn Doyle, 14, new “Smirko”
Some kids dream of running away and joining the circus. One Arlington resident did just that, but with less running away and more acrobatic flips.
Glenn Doyle, 14, leaves on June 8 for the annual Circus Smirkus Big Top Tour, which spans five states and almost two months. Doyle is an acrobat with Smirkus, but he also does some clowning and juggling.
“I’m OK at partner acrobatics but I’m more of a person that likes to be thrown around and do flips in the air,” he said.
Finding a second home
Doyle started acrobatics when he was living in the Netherlands in 2013. In the Netherlands, the main sport is soccer. He liked soccer, but was smaller than most of the other players and discovered it wasn’t the game for him.
“My mom suggested gymnastics and I said ‘well that’s a girls sport,’” he said. “And then I really liked it and I was completely wrong that it’s only a girls sport because it’s also a boys sport, which many people miss-assume.”
The gym where Doyle did gymnastics had competitive acrobatics, which he picked up as well. The next season, he couldn’t find a partner to compete with.
“There are these very specific rules around the height difference between team members,” his mother, Heather Beasley Doyle, said. “In the Netherlands, there were a lot of youth circus options and we knew that acro was part of circus so that seemed like a good outlet for that and a good option.”
“I tried it out and at first I was skeptical but then I found a second home,” Doyle said.
Moving, and finding a new troupe
After living in the Netherlands since 2008, the family moved to Arlington in 2015. Doyle continued to do gymnastics and started looking for a new circus place to do acrobatics.
Then they found Circus Smirkus.
Doyle started off doing week-long Smirkus summer camps; gymnastics took up much of his after-school time during the school year. Doyle heard about the Big Top Tour through his summer Smirkus camps and for the next few years asked his parents if he could go.
“Part of why we didn’t let him audition earlier is because we weren’t ready,” said Beasley Doyle. “He was 13, 12 years old and for him to be gone, he was gone four weeks last year and that felt like a lot.”
This year, they said “yes.”
On to the Big Top
At the beginning of November, Doyle sent in his audition tape for the Big Top Tour. A few weeks later, he was invited to audition live in Vermont in January. Over the next few months, Doyle worked to develop his live act.
On Jan. 17, Doyle was selected as one of the 30 performers for the Big Top Tour.
Ever since then, he’s been practicing with other Big Top Performers in Ashland, working on their acrobatic skills. For Doyle, that meant learning to fall.
“The first couple times I remember, it was very fun,” he said. “It was very scary at first but then you get the hang of it and it’s very fun because you’re both being thrown in the air and you have a couple second of complete zero gravity.”
Right now, Doyle said they’re working on Banquine, a form of throwing people into the air. This throw can have one or two people standing on top of a base of interlocked arms.
“Multiple flips is the best. Because one is easy, two is cool, three is awesome. It gets better as it goes up. It’s easy to do and it impresses people,” Doyle said.
“It does kind of scare us, but it’s who he is. He’s going to be doing stuff like that but if he’s going to be doing that, this is a great place and way and reason for that,” Beasley Doyle said.
Going all the way
This summer’s Big Top Tour, Vaudeville, is coming to Waltham’s Gore Place from July 27 to 29. The tour also goes to Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and New York.
Doyle told the Advocate he’s looking forward to “just hanging out with [his] friends [and] hanging out with the people who [he] can compare with.”
“There are not many people in Arlington that I can compare with,” he said.
Doyle told the Advocate he used to want to go to the Olympics when he started with gymnastics.
“Then I switched over to circus and I’ve really been hooked on it. I hope to go all the way with it,” Doyle said.
His dream job? Performing with Cirque Du Soleil, performing the Russian swing act in the “O” show. A Russian swing is a large, floor-mounted swing used in circus performances to make high acrobatic jumps.
Circus Smirkus is the place to be for “going all the way.” Doyle described it as the AAA league of circus performing.
“This is the place where you get scouted out to see how you’re doing,” he said.
Arlington Advocate Editor’s note: Heather Beasley Doyle is the multi-media journalist for The Lexington Minuteman, a sister publication of the Arlington Advocate.