Ask a circus student

[Japanrocks12]

Have you ever been shot out of a cannon?

 

[Midgard Eagle]

Have you ever been shot out of a cannon?

Haha, not yet. Thanks for the suggestion, though, now I've got one more thing I want to do before I die .

Wouldn't you be worried that the thrower would hit you?

Well, the thing is this: you're not meant to do anything on stage that you cannot do confidently.

Most circus shows (heck, most shows in general!) are the result of endless rehearsals where the performers go through the entirety of the show, as well as certain "difficult" scenes that require extra work, over and over until every every tiniest detail either works or is thrown out or modified. If you're working on a show and find yourself having difficulties with a certain piece of the puzzle with "show time" fast approaching, you have to make a choice of whether you should keep pushing or replace it with something less difficult. Also keep in mind that since circus is about performances, you not only have to be able to do something, but to do it gracefully. You are to make your act look painless and easy, regardless of how physically demanding it can be in reality. You know how when you watch for example professional trapeze artists, they make it seem as if they're just having fun up there, that it's not difficult, painful or physically taxing the least bit? Well, trust me, it is.

I imagine this would be even more true when you perform something that could potentially injure other people. So if someone accepted having me as a target for knife-throwing, or anything else dangerous, especially as part of a show, that'd be all I needed to know he or she was confident I wouldn't get hurt. Of course, nothing is 100% safe, and accidents can happen, but some risks you just gotta take in life. If you're gonna die from a freak accident, better to die from a knife throw than from tripping over a cat.

Also on the subject of dangerous activities, how often do people get injured or killed in the line of circus duty? Have you known anyone that this happened to?

Well... just the sheer amount of physical training you do means you're pretty likely to get injured some way or another, if only from overexertion. What injuries you the highest risk of apart from that largely depends on discipline; for example, in trapeze acrobatics, light shoulder injuries are very common, while friction burns are common in aerial tissue artists (and to a degree in trapeze artists). Tight wire artists at low altitude risk injuries not so much from falling and hitting the floor, but from hitting the wire.

The risk of injury is greatly reduced by following safety guidelines, but sometimes you just get unlucky, and either way, human beings make mistakes.

Specifics about what injuries I or my classmates might has had... I'm not going to talk about here. Sorry about that.

I officially vote for this as the best thread in a long while. Great topic and great answers!

Glad to hear that. Thank you.