A Bee Story and The Dreamer premiere at Fringe World 2024 with Robbie Curtis and Lizzie McRae

While many performers run away to the circus, Robbie Curtis and Lizzie McRae came home to Australia and set up their own. The couple had been in a long-distance relationship — Curtis working with a circus company in Paris and McRae running a charity in Washington DC — when COVID-19 hit and they decided to return to McRae’s parents on the Gold Coast, thinking the pandemic would be over in two months. Still there a year later, they decided to buy an apartment and started Arc Circus Company, blending circus, acrobatics, dance and live music, featuring McCrae’s talent as a skilled flautist and piccolo player. “Our vision is to be a kaleidoscope of circus, dance and theatre where we mix all of them together,” Curtis says. “The big vision is to tell narrative stories through circus. There’s a bit of a responsibility for artists to (synthesize) the world and let that come out through their work and the way that comes through me is by telling stories.” A keen juggler and dancer as a kid growing up in northern NSW, Curtis was training at the Flying Fruit Fly Circus in Albury as a teenager when director Kim Walker, a former dancer for Sydney Dance Company, saw his potential and encouraged him to dance. Curtis attended the New Zealand School of Dance, going on to work with The Australian Ballet and Australian Opera as a dancer, before he returned to circus, performing with companies including Legs On The Wall, Circa, Circus Oz and Cirque du Soleil. “I think something that sums up my career is that when I was working for The Australian Ballet, I did a season at the Sydney Opera House at night and during the day I was rehearsing with Legs On The Wall, learning to do a high wire walk which I performed in Birmingham,” Curtis says. “It was this weird life where I was doing circus during the day and ballet at night.” Curtis was involved in the creation process of Cirque du Soleil’s Volta, his multi-skilled performances as a tumbler and hoop diver pushing him to be a jack of all acrobatic trades, although he also loves to mix dance and juggling. Recently married, Curtis and McRae first met in high school, where Curtis admits to having a huge crush on McRae. The feeling was not mutual at the time, and they remained good friends as McRae put aside her music to pursue an international business career, the pair reconnecting years later while Curtis was on tour in Hong Kong. While McRae was no stranger to a stage, her first professional show was with Arc for the company’s debut at Sydney Festival in 2021 with A Bee Story, a uniquely Australian physical theatre show for families. “She’s formidable and it’s amazing how she’s picked it up,” Curtis says. “It was just bonkers to have the first outing for the company there. It’s just been going from one thing to another since and it’s been amazing.” That crazy schedule has included touring six different countries, two seasons at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a sequel show to A Bee Story called Garden Party, a solo show featuring Curtis called The Dreamer and commissioned show Living Sculptures: how the birds got their colours. Following a failed first attempt to get to Fringe World in 2022 — thanks to border restrictions — the couple will finally get to debut A Bee Story and The Dreamer at Fringe World 2024. A reaction to the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires, A Bee Story is underpinned by a theme of sustainability as the joyous acrobatic show with clowning and music highlights the importance of friendship and working as a team. “It’s about two bees who lose their hive because of a bushfire,” Curtis says. “They go out searching for a new home and realise it’s hard to find a new home, so decide to go back home and rebuild. In that process, it’s about Queen Bee (McRae) and Worker Bee (Curtis) learning to work together and become friends. “It’s a hard show that’s physically demanding with a lot of acrobatics in it but has this beautiful story to go with it. It’s not just tricks. It is a meaningful theatre show and the audience gets taken on a wonderful journey.” Stage managed by McRae and starring Curtis, The Dreamer is more of a comedy cabaret family show, inspired by a Charlie Chaplin aesthetic, with elements of magic and a lot of techniques Curtis learnt during his Cirque du Soleil and Circa days. “It’s about our obsession with devices, set in this olden time era where this man is obsessed with his radio,” Curtis says. “Audiences will get a lot of bang for their buck with it. It’s a smorgasbord of physicality.” A Bee Story is at Big Top at The Pleasure Garden, Northbridge, January 19 to February 4. The Dreamer is at The Gold Digger at The Pleasure Garden, Northbridge, January 30 to February 4. Tickets at fringeworld.com.au.