• Company FZ

    Second generation circus pioneers. Company FZ are John-Paul Zaccarini and Flick Ferdinando – multi-skilled artists who alternate the roles of director and performer. Their most famous show was Throat (first shown back in 2002), Flick directing John-Paul in a solo that blended cabaret and dance and theatre and circus in what then, in the UK, was a shocking synthesis of styles. FZ shut up shop in 2012, but both Flick and John-Paul are remain connected to the circus world as prolific directors and mentors. As a sideline, or perhaps a mainline, John-Paul is pushing the practical application of theoretical readings of circus performance through Circoanalysis.

  • Magazine

    By John Ellingsworth on 28 June 2011 in Features

    'A squally clouded-over day, then, to accompany the revival of Greenwich Fair, a hoary old tradition in Greenwich Park which, until it was banned a century and a half ago, annually saw the erection of open-air markets, lurid theatres, bandstands, fairground rides, penny shies, and insalubrious premises (licensed and unlicensed), to accommodate a sudden competitive influx of entertainers, musicians, hawkers, and exotic beast-tamers—plus of course the roiling crowds of audience/punters/buyers/marks who came to be amused by the dreadful melodramas, fleeced by the mountebanks, and psychically obliterated by liquor.'

    A round-up of the action at Greenwich + Docklands Festival 2011, with work by Acrojou Circus Theatre, Elastic Theatre, Company FZ, and others.

    By John Ellingsworth on 30 August 2009 in Interviews

    'We go into the circus because we know that there isn’t a script. We’re not playing someone else. I know actors will say “when I’m playing Macbeth I’m not playing someone else, I’m playing the Macbeth inside”, and that’s one school of acting. But essentially we go into circus because we don’t want to do someone else’s thing. We want to do our act. So what we’re doing is telling a personal—a really personal—story there. So why do you need another story?'

    Circus and rope artist John-Paul Zaccarini talks about Circoanalysis—a blend of circus and psychoanalysis that aims to strip everything back to find the metaphors and stories at circus’ heart.