‘I was so intrigued by street theatre and circus. It just blew my mind’

I grew up in Cavan town and I was very lucky there was a brilliant gymnastics club, Irish dancing and youth drama. That had a massive formative effect on me as a young person.

My dad was a touring musician all of his life, full of fun and performance, and his father before him, so there was a lot of music and culture at home. I was aware of that buzz of being in front of an audience from a young age.

I did a degree in French and Spanish in Galway. The streets there were electric. You would hear a crowd gathering around buskers or street theatre, and I would drop whatever I was doing and run. Not just to watch the show, but to watch the audience’s reaction and how they engaged with it all.

After college, I tried to cut my teeth in theatre and film, but I was so intrigued by street theatre and spectacle and circus. It just blew my mind. There were workshops in contemporary circus and as the scene grew in Ireland, it became a possibility for me.

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‘My brother is meeting fabulous women, but they leave because he does not want more children’

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I remember seeing the Gombeens from Galway at a festival in Co Monaghan. It was very physical theatre, beautiful, hilarious chaos and I thought, wow, how can I meet them or talk to them? I embarrassingly ran up to them afterwards and said, “If you ever need a girl ... I’d like to join you”.

I volunteered with an NGO, Clowns Without Borders, and that was a phenomenal experience. We would make a show and then tour it to refugee camps. We went to Jordan, on the border with Syria and Palestine. We don’t go with a message, it’s just to bring lightness and joy, and playfulness to audiences there.

I began to work with the Fanzini Brothers who had a plethora of really brilliant shows. That’s how I met my partner, Con. We create new work together and we’ve managed to continue to tour nationally and internationally with our new little son.

I like the democratic nature of street theatre. I love that it’s there in the public space and you can choose to stop and to watch, and to leave – the freedom and accessibility of it.

We change the rhythm and the public’s movement through a space. That is a real buzz because suddenly, this is not what was going to happen on the street that day. We change the flow, and humans have to move in a different way.

We work really hard at building people’s trust in the early part of the show, and make sure they are complicit in our play and our fun. It’s never forced upon anybody. It’s an invitation to join us. Everybody is on the street so we have to make work for your 99-year-old granny and your nine-month-old baby.

There is no fourth wall. They can see us sweating, setting up, getting ready, right through every beat and every mistake. There is nowhere to hide, but likewise, I can see the audience clear as day. I can see their reactions. When they clap and cheer and we take our bow at the end, there is a magical feeling, a chemistry, an electric joy of connection between an audience and the performers. And then we all just disappear.

We’ve toured internationally and we often don’t have a single word in common linguistically, but we’ve got this massive connection, which is quite cool.

Some days you have to dig deep, if I am exhausted and I don’t feel like being observed, particularly after I became a mum. When I started performing again this year post-Covid, I felt nervous to be watched, which I have never experienced before in my life. But once you are doing shows again every day, you are on your bicycle on this perfect hill and you are just freewheeling and really enjoying it.

I hope there is a generation of children that take for granted that we have art in public spaces and that it’s not a rarity. I hope that young people who see these shows know it’s possible as a job.

It’s very hard to measure human happiness or a good atmosphere in a community or a town, but I hope councils and planners see the need to keep spaces open so that we can do these things. A lot of people don’t feel like a theatre or opera house is their place, but if they can enjoy a show outdoors, they might still get the benefit of spending an hour in their imagination.

I love meeting people after the show, getting a big fat juicy round of applause. I love travelling to a new place, arriving in a new town and thinking, wow, we are going to do a show here and then we are going to leave. It’s just amazing. I love it.

– In conversation with Joanne Hunt