Gravity & Other Myths pull off the ultimate Fringe balancing act
Homegrown circus company Gravity & Other Myths have become a break-out success story. Co-founder Lachy Binns reflects on their rise as they mount two simultaneous Fringe shows — and prepare to welcome for their one millionth audience member.
For Gravity & Other Myths co-founder Lachy Binns, life is a constant balancing act.
There’s his everyday family life, looking after one-year-old daughter Bobby. Then there’s Gravity & Other Myths, the internationally renowned circus troupe he founded in 2009 with four friends, which often sees him literally carrying several of his fellow acrobats.
These days, however, as the troupe juggles two different shows in one Adelaide Fringe season, he’s just as likely to be found balancing spreadsheets and keeping the business together.
“It took a little bit of adjusting,” Binns says. “I definitely got into this industry, and started GOM because I enjoyed performing and training.
“But there are similarities. I’m still working with a team of my close friends, and we solve problems together — it’s just the methods with which we attack the problems is more spreadsheets and Zoom meetings rather than early morning rehearsals.
“I’m enjoying a lot of the work,” he adds, “[but] it does tend to weigh on you a bit more.”
This Fringe season, Gravity & Other Myths have simultaneously presented two shows at their hometown festival. Since 2009 the company’s touring schedule has seen it grow into two separate ensembles, but this marks the first time both are in the same place at the same time — adding more logistical balls for Binns to keep in the air.
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There’s Binn’s directorial debut, the award-winning and family-friendly Ten Thousand Hours — inspired by the aphorism that it takes 10,000 hours of consistent practise at any given skill to achieve mastery. At the same time, it has also premiered new work The Mirror, which explores more existential themes with a slightly seductive side — and a touch more skin on display than most GOM shows.
With Gravity & Other Myths due to celebrate its 16th anniversary in September, this double-header will also see it pass another exciting milestone: it’s about to notch up its one millionth audience member, and it’s only fitting that it should happen at the Adelaide Fringe, the festival that helped catapult them to global attention. The team is counting tickets every day, and plan to descend on the lucky punter and “make a little bit of a song and dance about it”.
“It’s nice that it’s back at the Fringe Festival and not in some beautiful, exotic place — it’s full circle here where it all started,” Binns says.
Gravity & Other Myths co-founder Lachy Binns
The company’s first show, Freefall, premiered in the 2010 Fringe, and its second, A Simple Space, followed in 2013. The ensemble’s growing profile during the Fringe, bolstered by the festival’s Honeypot program which brings national and international programmers to see Fringe shows, helped kickstart the touring schedule that kept Binns and his friends on the road.
“The humongous benefit — and just being in the right place at the right time — was that it was a time where putting shows on was a little bit cheaper,” Binns says.
“We all lived at our parents’ houses in Adelaide, so we didn’t have to fork out big money for flights or accommodation. And the festival — and all of the fantastic mechanisms they have to promote young artists — was at our fingertips.
“I think we won the Best Circus award early on as well. So those things just catapulted us a little bit to the next level. And through that we were able to head overseas to Edinburgh, another Fringe festival with a similar capacity to really launch young artists.”
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As an aspiring performer, seeing professional shows come through town each festival season and rubbing shoulders with the performers offstage was a formative experience. Now, Binns and his team are driven to use their own success to inspire the next generation.
“It’s nice to be able to do a similar thing for some of the young artists at CirKidz now, and also for the other young, up-and-coming artists that are here doing their shows at Fringe too, ” Binns says.
Gravity & Other Myths will spread the love to the regions once Fringe wraps, touring Ten Thousand Hours to theatres in Whyalla, Port Pirie, Renmark and Mount Gambier along.
Gravity and Other Myths. Photo: Andy Phillipson / Supplied
“We spend so much of our time overseas in all these crazy places around the world, but [South Australia] needs the same kind of touring,” Binns says.
They’ll also run some workshops along the way, before having back overseas to South Korea, Dubai and New York, while also working on some exciting new works and collaborations.
Despite all the juggling, Binns is grateful to have turned his passion into a living.
“I thought I’d do this for a couple of years and then I’d go study at university and get a quote unquote ‘normal job’.
“I still sometimes have to remind myself that this is my job, and this is my career, and we’ve just got to clock the privilege. And remind myself that I am still in such a privileged, privileged position to be able to do this thing that I love with my close friends.”
Ten Thousand Hours runs until March 23 at The Peacock, Gluttony
The Mirror runs until March 23 at Octagon, Gluttony
This story is part of a series of articles being produced by InReview with the support of Adelaide Fringe