Kurt Andersen and author Cathy Day explore the spectacular, seedy, childlike joy of the circus. We’ll visit one of the last of the traveling “mud shows,” trucking elephants and acrobats to a different small town every day. We’ll play with Alexander Calder’s enormous set of circus figures — sculpture that doubles as a toy — and we’ll hear what it’s like to watch your child dangle from a trapeze by the tops of her feet.
Plus: Adam Guettel, whose musical The Light in the Piazza swept the Tony awards this year, tells Kurt how hard it is to write a musical when the great Richard Rodgers was your grandfather.
Audio coming soon.