Name:
Trudi Patient
Age:
52
Favourite discipline:
Teaching is my passion – I love watching my students’ progress, encouraging them to develop a skill or nail a trick they couldn’t do before, seeing them grow in confidence. My favourite disciplines to perform are juggling and stiltwalking.
Time/years active at Greentop:
I honestly can’t remember! Let’s say prehistory to the present! (laughs)
Favourite discipline:
Teaching is my passion – I love watching my students’ progress, encouraging them to develop a skill or nail a trick they couldn’t do before, seeing them grow in confidence. My favourite disciplines to perform are juggling and stiltwalking.
Where I am/what I am doing now:
I’m the Team Leader for Greentop’s Youth Circus
Favourite joke:
What’s white, round, and giggles? A tickled onion…!
Quote summarising the impact Greentop has had on your life:
My dyslexia means that conventional communication skills can be difficult for me. Circus has helped me to express myself and find my niche in life.
Your circus story:
I was studying for a degree in Art, and living in a shared house. At that stage, I wasn’t performing, but living where I did, my housemates gradually encouraged me to start learning circus skills and passed their knowledge on to me. I started attending the Flying Teapots juggling club whilst still at uni, and attended aerial workshops with Skinning The Cat. When I graduated in 1991 I got involved with The Egg Show, a Swamp Circus community arts project. Over 3 months I made props, backdrops, and huge, moving shadow screens. A stint with the Natural Theatre Company followed, holding workshops, and I did many performances through Loose Theatre.
Richard Gillett and I paired up while applying for a Youth Business Programme grant, and toured Scotland teaching circus skills. I was invited to come and assist at the Greentop Youth Circus after I completed a playwork course. When Greentop was refurbished as part of the Challenge Anneka TV programme in the mid-1990s, I helped with our grand opening gala, and performed as a stiltwalker in the street parade – that’s a really proud memory for me. I had however always wanted to travel, so I packed my rucksack and went off to tour the UK and Europe with a London-based troupe. We entertained crowds at a wide variety of venues, from nightclubs and festivals, to kid’s parties, shopping centres and retail parks.
In 2007 I was invited back to Greentop to apply for the Youth Circus Co-ordinator’s role – initially I declined but agreed to help out at the sessions; eventually I was persuaded to apply, and was awarded the post. There’s no such thing as a typical week at Greentop, but Mondays are usually reserved for admin tasks – we have a team meeting, discuss student, parent and tutor feedback and the registers, deal with any necessary accident reporting, lost property, and pastoral care issues. On average, I spend 2-3 days per week doing outreach work in primary and junior schools in Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster. This might be a 4-5 week project at an after-school club, or daytime workshops which aim to enhance aspects of the National Curriculum. Our service users are very diverse, and the work is both hugely rewarding and extremely challenging. My other main task seems to be loading and unloading stilts, unicycles, juggling clubs, flower sticks and diablos from Greentop into my car, from my car into the venue, back into my car after the workshop, and back into Greentop’s kit cupboards again!
In my spare time I like to walk my dog, and I distract myself with art/drawing – mainly cartoons at the moment! I love painting abstracts – I become immersed in the process, and the image is a form of communication for me. In a world where written and verbal communications are so prominent, I can often feel less articulate with words than others. With words, people can get the wrong impression or misread, however they can take from art whatever interpretation they want. I’m currently experimenting with making wire sculptures, and making art out of found objects. I like the notion of upcycling found objects into something aesthetic or useful. I try to do a pilates class for myself at Greentop once a week, and keep my own skills up (though not as often as I would like)! I’ve resolved to dedicate more time to my own practice, and I’d love to see a resurgence of floor-based circus skills to match the current popularity of aerial disciplines.