Achillea Grim, left, and Harlequin Grim, right, perform juggling with a 7-foot-tall unicycle at OPB headquarters in Portland, Ore., on July, 15, 2024.
Emily Hamilton / OPB
If you see someone riding a 7-foot-tall unicycle over one of Portland’s bridges with a contortionist clown in tow, you may have stumbled across a Grim Theatre performance.
Harlequin and Achillea Grim co-founded Grim Theatre to share their love of circus with the world. They’re bringing the joy and wonder of the big top to both live audiences and viewers on social media.
They spoke with OPB host Jess Hazel about how they try to inspire others with their performances.
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Jess Hazel: What is it like to take an art form that can sometimes be seen as old-fashioned, and still connect with a modern audience?
Harlequin Grim: It’s really special. Because I think that traditional circus is something that has been forgotten for a long time. It had its heyday. The 20th century was when it peaked. But I feel like nowadays there’s this resurgence and this interest in this sort of bizarre time before the internet. And it sort of has echoes of the past in it just by looking at it. You kind of feel that connection to something older, like much older than you. It feels really special. It feels like being a walking time capsule in a sense for a tradition that sometimes feels like is just barely hanging on.
Achillea Grim: Clowns have been around forever and they were integral to society for a long time. It was the one way that people felt connected. They could tease the king and not be beheaded. And we still need that. We still need humor. We still need entertainment.
Hazel: Where do you perform both on camera and when you’re doing those live performances?
Achillea: We do a lot of performing for social media in our apartment or at parks.
Harlequin: I’m fond of bridges. I like riding my unicycle across bridges. I rode across a really tall bridge in Porto, Portugal, and I also ride across some of the bridges in Portland. So it’s really wherever the camera can be.
Hazel: When you’re out in public filming for a video, that’s an unexpected audience that might stumble into your performance. Do you get reactions from people when you’re out filming? I can imagine if I saw someone on a bridge in Portland on a unicycle that was precariously high above the water — I would probably have a reaction to that. Have any of those stood out to you?
Achillea: Some people don’t care at all. And I think that’s probably the most shocking. Some people won’t see it. They’ll, like, head down in their phone and it’s like, you don’t know that a 10-foot-person is just looming over you, they don’t know. And I think that’s probably the funniest to me.
Harlequin: I would agree with that. I feel like generally circus brings a lot of joy to people. But when it’s unexpected and unprompted and in public, you’re just at the waterfront, especially in Portland it’s very mixed. Because this city is known for its openness to strange and bizarre cultures. So, some people are like, “Ah, it’s just another day” and some people think it’s wonderful and fantastic.
Hazel: Do you have a favorite act that you’re currently performing?
Achillea: We just came up with this marionette act. It’s very dark. Ok. It’s very dark but it was for a very dark show. So we were like, “Let’s just do it.”
Harlequin: The marionette act is really special because it blends these two skills that you don’t always see together, which is the giraffe unicycle, the 7-foot-unicycle and contortion, which Achillea does. And then we custom-made these props.
Essentially, the props are human-sized marionette sticks and magnets that go on her wrists and ankles. It allows us to attach them to her on stage. And in front of the audience it’s kind of a surprising thing. Then the result is you get this really surreal moment of watching a puppeteer and their marionette. And the marionette instead of flopping around, although they do a little bit of that, the marionette does these amazing contortion shapes. All the while the 7-foot-unicycle is just inches from her balancing precariously.
Achillea: Sometimes it pokes me a little bit… just a little.
Harlequin: Yes. The audience doesn’t know that.
Hazel: Do you approach performances differently when you’re performing for an in-person audience as opposed to a camera?
Achillea: You almost take the art out of it and say, “OK, what do the people want?” Versus if it’s live, people are already there. You have your five, 10-minute slot and you can just do what you want to express. Because they’ve already paid the ticket, they’re already there.
Harlequin: One of the similarities is that people are there to watch something and be entertained. On our phones our attention span is very short. So we decide within maybe two seconds if we want to watch something. And similarly, a live performer also has to engage with their audience. It’s just how they go about engaging with them.
Achillea: Yeah, they’re sort of inverse. With social media you want to get their attention right at the beginning and with a performance, you want to build energy. So you don’t want to do your cool tricks first. You want to do those very last, for the finale.