Word: britishized
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...Performers must also leave their passports with British embassies for up to two weeks, a regulation that doesn't suit the itinerant lifestyle of circus stars, whose contracts may see them tumbling or clowning in several countries within the span of a month...
...season started in February," says Martin Lacey, owner of the Great British Circus, "and I've got comedy acrobats stranded in the Ukraine and Mongolian horse riders who were refused their visas in Ulaanbaatar." The holes in his lineup have forced Lacey to draft last-minute substitutes. "Our Mexican clown is stuck in Mexico, so we've got a trapeze artist pretending to be a stooge just to get everybody out of trouble," he says. "It's a mess." (See 10 things to do in London...
...totally incompatible with the needs of Britain's circus sector. According to Malcolm Clay, secretary of the Association of Circus Proprietors of Great Britain, British circus schools don't produce artists at an acceptable standard, largely because their students refine skills like tightrope-walking or fire-breathing as a hobby, not as part of a lifelong career. As a result, British circuses rely on artists from countries with long-established histories of state-sponsored circus schools: they call on Argentina and Colombia for their renowned high-wire acts, China and North Korea for acrobats, and Mongolia and Russia for horse...
...pity, but this problem is all over Europe," says Arie Oudenes, managing director of the European Circus Association, a trade group that represents the interests of 120 circuses. But British proprietors believe that Britain's red tape has made their challenge more acute. The website through which foreign applicants must now register has reportedly crashed multiple times. Plus, there's a more general question of access. "A lot of families in Mongolia don't have computers," Lacey says. "These are genuine riders who tend to their horses and work with their flocks when they're not working in the circus...
...they're already taking action. On March 3, Clay testified before the House of Commons' Home Affairs Select Committee about the need to bring embassy workers up to speed on the rules and to rework technicalities. Recently, Clay says, dancers, musicians and tumblers from Zimbabwe who have performed at British festivals every year since 1998 were rejected because embassy staff felt the troupe could not prove it had sufficient funds to support itself in the U.K., despite having contracts and a spotless track record. "How can they [show sufficient funds], with Zimbabwe's appalling rate of inflation?" he asks...