I’ve spent much of my career sitting in audiences. Sometimes in theatres, sometimes in circus tents, sometimes in village halls, parks, town squares or festival fields. Very often I find myself looking around at my fellow audience members rather than at the stage (apologies to the performers!). For a moment, a room or a field full of strangers becomes a community – we laugh together, hold our breath together and occasionally sit in complete silence together. We share something… before stepping back outside into the world, hopefully seeing it a little differently.
I’ve been thinking about those moments a lot while putting together my first season at Jacksons Lane. The joy of live performance isn’t only what happens on stage. It’s what happens between us.
Few artforms create that shared experience quite like circus. Of course, it can simply be astonishing. It can make us laugh, gasp, look away or leave us wondering how the human body can be so extraordinary. But the work that stays with me usually has something else beneath the surface. Through movement rather than words, it explores relationships, identity, belonging, trust and resilience. The best contemporary circus asks difficult questions without necessarily offering easy answers.
That is what has shaped this season (with a healthy dose of budgeting, travel logistics and diary wrangling thrown in, of course).
One of the real privileges of programming Jacksons Lane is being able to bring together artists from around the world. This autumn they’ll join us from Australia, Finland, Latvia, Sweden, Lithuania, Portugal, Germany, Japan and across the UK, each bringing their own ideas, influences and ways of seeing the world. Contemporary circus has always been an international conversation. Artists inspire one another, collaborate across borders and constantly reinvent the artform. It feels entirely right that a building in the heart of Haringey should be part of that conversation.
This international outlook sits so perfectly alongside an equally strong commitment to artists making work here. Jacksons Lane has never simply been somewhere to present work – it has always been a place where artists are given the time and space to experiment, to test ideas, to change direction and to surprise themselves. Audiences may only see the final performance, but behind every moment on stage are weeks of conversations, training, wrong turns, discoveries and relentless persistence.
I’m also very excited to launch Jacksons Juniors this season. There is something wonderful about watching a child experience live performance for the first time. They don’t arrive with expectations about what theatre should be. They laugh loudly, engage with the characters without embarrassment and believe completely in the world unfolding in front of them.
Just as importantly, they experience it alongside the people who matter most to them. At a time when so much entertainment is consumed individually (and I love a good scroll), I believe there is something essential about families and friends sharing the same experience. Long after the details of a show have faded, there are echoes of how it felt to be there together – and it’s often where a lifelong relationship with the arts begins. Get ’em young!
The longer I spend at Jacksons Lane, the more I realise that this building occupies a unique place. It’s known internationally as the UK’s home of contemporary circus, attracting artists from across the world, yet it’s also part of everyday life in Haringey. On any given day you might find world-class circus artists rehearsing upstairs while local families, young people and community groups fill the rest of the building… those worlds don’t compete, they strengthen one another.
I don’t think cultural organisations have to choose between being locally rooted and internationally ambitious – we understand that one enriches the other. The wider our view of the world, the more we have to bring home.
So that’s the thread running through my first season. Extraordinary artists from around the world. New voices developing work. Families discovering live performance together. Shows that make us laugh, wonder, reflect and occasionally see our crazy world from a slightly different angle.
If you’ve been coming to Jacksons Lane for years, I hope you’ll discover something unexpected. If you’ve never visited before, I hope this is the season that brings you through the doors, because in the end, that’s what Jacksons Lane is for: bringing people together to experience something extraordinary.
Angus MacKechnie | Creative Director | Jacksons Lane
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Our Annual Review 25/26
Jacksons Lane’s Annual Review looks back on a year of performances, projects and people, and the stories that lie behind the numbers. Our Co-Director, Hannah Cox, reflects on what 50 years of community and connection means, and looks ahead to what comes next.
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