On This Day: Ringling Circus closes amid cost/cruelty issues; relaunches in 2023 without animals - May 21, 2017 [View all]
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
[Elephants and closure]
In 2001, a group led by The Humane Society of the United States sued the circus over alleged mistreatment of elephants. The suit and a countersuit ended in 2014 with the circus winning a total of $25.2 million in settlements. In March 2015, the circus announced that all elephants would be retired in 2018 to the [Center for Elephant Conservation (CEC)], but Ringling accelerated the decision and retired the elephants in May 2016.
Eight months after it retired the elephants, it was announced in January 2017, that the circus would do 30 more performances, lay off more than 462 employees between March and May 2017 and then close.
The circus cited steeply declining ticket sales associated with the loss of the elephants combined with high operating costs as reasons for the closure, along with animal cruelty concerns.
On May 7, 2017, its "Circus Extreme" tour was shown for the last time at the Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island. The circus's last performance before the hiatus was its "Out of This World" tour at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York on May 21, 2017.
2023 relaunch
In October 2021, Feld Entertainment Chairman and CEO Kenneth Feld and COO Juliette Feld Grossman announced that the circus would be relaunched in 2023, without animal performances. In early 2022, the circus began auditioning artists for a retooled circus. More than 1,000 acts applied, and auditions were held in Paris, Las Vegas, Ethiopia, and Mongolia.
In May 2022, Feld Entertainment announced that the circus would resume operations in the fall of 2023 with a tour of 50 cities. The circus said the new show would debut as a "multi-platform entertainment franchise". On September 29, 2023, after a six-year hiatus, the relaunched circus kicked off at Brookshire Grocery Arena in Bossier City, Louisiana.
[The Greatest Show on Earth]
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, also known as the Ringling Bros. Circus, Ringling Bros., the Barnum & Bailey Circus, Barnum & Bailey, or simply Ringling, is an American traveling circus company billed as The Greatest Show on Earth. It and its predecessor have run shows from 1871, with a hiatus from 2017 to 2023. They operate as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. The circus started in 1919 when the Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, a circus created by P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey, was merged with the Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows. The Ringling brothers purchased Barnum & Bailey Ltd. in 1907 following Bailey's death in 1906, but ran the circuses separately until they were merged in 1919.
After 1957, the circus no longer exhibited under its own portable "big top" tents, instead using permanent venues such as sports stadiums and arenas. In 1967, Irvin Feld and his brother Israel, along with Houston judge Roy Hofheinz, bought the circus from the Ringling family. In 1971, the Felds and Hofheinz sold the circus to Mattel, buying it back from the toy company in 1981. Since the death of Irvin Feld in 1984, the circus has continued to be a part of Feld Entertainment, an international entertainment firm headed by his son Kenneth Feld, with its headquarters in Ellenton, Florida.
In May 2017, with weakening attendance, many animal rights protests, and high operating costs, the circus performed its final animal show at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum and closed indefinitely.
In May 2022, after a five-year hiatus, Feld Entertainment announced that the circus would resume touring in the fall of 2023, but without animals.
Animal care and criticism
Many animal rights groups have criticized the circus for their treatment of animals over the years, saying that using them to perform is cruel and unnecessary.
From 2007 to 2011, the United States Department of Agriculture conducted inspections of the circus's animals, facilities, and records, finding non-compliance with the agency's regulations. The allegations, as brought forth by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) included videotapes of the head elephant trainer and the animal superintendent backstage repeatedly hitting elephants with bullhooks just before the animals would enter the arena for performances. A tiger trainer was videotaped beating tigers during dress rehearsals.
In March 2015, Feld Entertainment announced it would stop using elephants in its shows by 2018, stating that the 13 elephants that were part of its shows would be sent to the circus's Center for Elephant Conservation, which at that time housed over 40 elephants. Feld stated that this action was not a result of the allegations by animal rights groups, but rather due to the patchwork of local laws regarding whether elephants could be used in entertainment shows. Some of those local laws referred to were bans against the use of bullhooks. Subsequently, the retirement was moved up to 2016.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringling_Bros._and_Barnum_%26_Bailey_Circus
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The circus is back in town — but the animals aren’t
September 29, 2023
This time around, the show’s tempo is snappier, and the performance space, previously constricted by three rings and poor sight lines, has been updated to a “360-degree experience” with a large, circular, LED-lit stage and multiple video boards. There are new spins on tried-and-true classics, including a multinational triangular high-wire act that uses three connected tightropes, a Ukrainian comedy trio built around pratfalls and balancing acts, and the Double Wheel of Destiny, in which performers ride and hop between two simultaneously rotating spheres.
Will it all work? The Feld company conducted market research on its loyal fans and took ideas from its own family entertainment lineup, which includes Disney on Ice, Marvel Universe Live and Monster Jam, to create the new circus. It invested in a more immersive experience, including multilevel stages, directional speakers and two video boards to capture the TikTok audience’s attention with shots such as a tightrope artist’s feet in close-up from below. But “as much as we know about audiences from our touring properties, you never know,” said Chief Operating Officer Juliette Feld Grossman. “Are they going to engage? Are they going to laugh? Are they going to clap?”
Miser remembers “crying so bad” at the last performance, in Providence, R.I., thinking she would never get to follow in her parents’ jet stream. Then, five years later, her family got a call. “They knew how important the cannon was to Ringling history,” she says of the Felds. “They knew they had to bring it back.”
There’s at least one upside to the changes, she says: The show “smells a lot better without the animals.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/of-interest/2023/09/29/ringling-brothers-are-back-without-animals/
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