France

Performed by four men who will travel the sweat spectrum from dry to damp to sodden in the course of the gruelling 60 minutes they spend under the public eye, Un Loup Pour L'Homme's Face Nord is presented as a series of games or exercises meant to test the physical limits of the group onstage — asking more and more of them until, inevitably, they fail.

Last night, during Le Jongleur, Festival Nez Rouges’ penultimate show, I spent some time wishing Nikolaus the juggler would juggle more. Ten minutes into tonight’s festival finale, I am already wishing that Les Acrostiches would juggle less.

'It's still a tent festival, with chapiteaus by the river, in car parks, hunched low outside the gates of Auch's towering cathedral, at the head of the Parc du Couloume – among the life of the town.'

Sideshow visits the Southern French town of Auch for Festival Circa, a nine-day programme of student and professional work, and one of the big events on the contemporary circus calendar.

I think I've watched enough physical/visual work now that the concepts of narrative and character have become fully detachable from my understanding of theatre. But, still, you put something else in place: rhythm or formal patterning or just an element of raw, pulsing narrativity that can come from the drama of technical material or the intrinsic communicative power of a moving body.

'And we need a tent, a little tent, because we want to present the work in a real proximity with the public – putting them close to tragic sensations, and to fear, and all the sensations we can find in the traditional circus. Theatre now is more in the head, and we try to find physical sensations in the public, letting them react to what happens here on stage.'

A striking show at Festival Circa 2010, Théâtre d'un jour's L'Enfant Qui... is an oblique, ethereal portrait of an ill child, inspired by the early life of the sculptor Jephan de Villiers. Here Jephan and Théâtre d'un jour director Patrick Masset talk to Sideshow about their collaboration.

The press copy would have it as the sound of uncorked and irruptive champagne, or of a hissing fuse, but where it's voiced in the production the title phonetic is always this downplaying, cocky exhalation. It's Not So Great, I Dismiss This, I Dismiss You, I Could Do The Same Thing Better And Easier: Pfffffff.

Unquestionably CirkVOST have an excellent wheel. Built from dark metal, two towering rings are joined by an intricate tangled network of ropes, pulleys and looping bars. Old hanging lights cast their glow in the centre; a dark plane of netting stretches the bottom.