Join us on this captivating journey into the fascinating world of live entertainment. Host Adam Sternberg brings you engaging conversations with remarkable entertainers, from magicians and jugglers to aerial artists and contortionists. Discover the unique stories behind their extraordinary careers, the challenges they’ve faced, and the motivations that drive them. If you’re passionate about live entertainment or simply curious about the lives of these extraordinary performers, this podcast is a must-listen.

Episode Highlights

In this episode, Adam welcomes circus artist, director and producer Katharine Arnold, an aerialist with two decades of experience who has performed with La Clique and Cirque du Soleil and appeared as Mary Poppins in the Olympic opening ceremony. Katharine traces her path from a Brixton childhood and early ballet training to discovering trapeze at university. She explains the decision to leave a sensible office job at Bloomberg for life on tour, the variety of company experiences from collaborative outdoor shows to large scale revue productions, and the creative process behind her own company show Sophie’s Surprise 29th Birthday Party. Katharine shares candid stories about major surgery, recovery and returning to performance, the thrill of live risk, a hilarious rigging mishap involving a cable tie and her hair, and her views on sexualisation, costume and creative freedom. We also hear about training routines, the practical differences between small cabaret shows and huge productions like Cirque du Soleil, the challenges facing the London cabaret scene, and why she believes showmanship, narrative and audience interaction matter.

Key Discussion Points

• Origins and Early Training: Born and raised in Brixton; ballet from age three; school plays and early love of music and movement.
• Discovering Circus at University: Performing arts degree at Middlesex University with a physical theatre focus; Fevered Sleep visit brought circus equipment and a first taste of trapeze.
• Adult Classes and Formal Training: Evening trapeze classes at Circus Space, now the National Centre for Circus Arts; the choice to pursue circus alongside a degree.
• Career Turning Point: Working at Bloomberg briefly for financial security then auditioning for Giffords Circus and choosing the touring, performative life.
• First Companies and Variety of Work: From Giffords to an outdoor rock and roll flying trapeze show with live music, to Berlin’s Friedrichstadt Palast revue show, illustrating the spectrum from collaborative creation to highly directed large-scale productions.
• Working with Major Companies: Reflections on Cirque du Soleil as aspirational and legitimising; differences between being in original creative casts and joining established productions.
• Creating Sophie’s Surprise 29th Birthday Party: The concept of an immersive, comedic ensemble show where one audience member becomes Sophie; influences from Punchdrunk and late 90s, early 2000s pop culture; audience games, karaoke and direct interaction.
• Choreography and Music First Process: Katharine describes how music often drives her choreographic choices and how she builds acts around musicality.
• Act Construction and Subversion: Examples include the plastic surgery parody act that unexpectedly morphs into a moving hoop piece set to a Postmodern Jukebox cover of Creep.
• Injury and Recovery: Open account of major abdominal surgery during the pandemic to remove a tumour and the long rehabilitation that followed, plus the emotional impact of thinking performance might be over.
• Training and Maintenance: The difference between building strength as a beginner and...

Join us on this captivating journey into the fascinating world of live entertainment. Host Adam Sternberg brings you engaging conversations with remarkable entertainers, from magicians and jugglers to aerial artists and contortionists. Discover the unique stories behind their extraordinary careers, the challenges they've faced, and the motivations that drive them. If you're passionate about live entertainment or simply curious about the lives of these extraordinary performers, this podcast is a must-listen.

Episode Highlights

In this episode, Adam welcomes silhouette artist Charles Burns a performer–artist whose entire show fits into a pocket: paper and scissors. From a bruising boarding-school experience to art college and the Covent Garden piazza, Charles charts how drawing led him to live silhouette cutting, why imperfection makes entertainment memorable, and what it felt like to interrupt Queen Elizabeth II (successfully!) to cut Her Majesty’s profile. He explains his mirror-free, one-line cutting technique, the psychology of likeness, why some people “don’t look like themselves” in profile, and how lockdown sparked his global Zoom silhouette studio. We also hear about AI silhouettes, Disney’s influence on the American style, and an 18th-century automaton “artist” with a human under the table.

Key Discussion Points

• Origins & Early Training: Growing up in Somerset; boarding at Ampleforth; bullying; sanctuary in the art room with sculptor-teacher John Bunting; discovering that drawing was the foundation.
• Art Education: Foundation at Exeter; time at the École des Beaux-Arts (Lyon); degree at Wolverhampton; art as communication vs. art-therapy.
• Artist vs Performer: Why most artists perform (and most performers create art); Charles sits “on the cusp,” literally performing portraits in front of an audience.
• Covent Garden Beginnings: Late-1980s street portraitist; a visiting Spanish cutter inspires the switch to silhouettes.
• Technique & Tools: Pocketed papers, white backing sheet, cutting largely in one continuous line; right-profile preference for a right-handed cutter; rotating the paper, not the scissors.
• Work & Temperament: “One of nature’s self-employed”; office life felt like returning to school politics.
• Neurodiversity: Son’s diagnosis led to Charles’s own autism-spectrum diagnosis in his 40s; reframing meticulous preparation as a strength.
• Everyone Can Draw: Fear often comes from bad early teaching; skill = motivation + hard work; drawing as the base of all visual art.
• Royal Encounter: Cutting Queen Elizabeth II at a Ritz Golden Jubilee party—nerves, etiquette, and simply stepping in; other high-profile sitters mentioned by Adam include Nelson Mandela and President Clinton.
• Capturing Likeness: Children who won’t sit still; poor lighting at events; self-image vs. profile reality; audiences often “rescue” a likeness because they see you as others do.
• Entertainment Over Perfection: Some silhouettes are better than others—human variability is part of the show; the joy of imperfection and the retelling (magicians’ lesson).
• Live Demonstration: Charles cuts Adam’s silhouette on-air—narrating chest→chin→nose→glasses→hair; occasional “back-cutting” fixes; speed builds with warm-up.
• Human vs. Machine: Low-tech authenticity matters; guests often expect equipment and are astonished it’s “just scissors.”
• AI & Automation: Experiments with AI-generated silhouettes; yes, a laser could cut them—but the human...

Join us on this captivating journey into the fascinating world of live entertainment. Host Adam Sternberg brings you engaging conversations with remarkable entertainers, from magicians and jugglers to aerial artists and contortionists. Discover the unique stories behind their extraordinary careers, the challenges they've faced, and the motivations that drive them. If you're passionate about live entertainment or simply curious about the lives of these extraordinary performers, this podcast is a must-listen.

Episode Highlights

In this episode, Adam welcomes dancer, choreographer, and creative polymath Anthony Johns. From childhood tap shoes in Portsmouth to BBC studios, West End stages, Pinewood sets, and arena-scale royal spectaculars, Anthony’s life traces six decades of British variety at its most glittering and gritty. He shares priceless lessons from mentors, the power of ballet as the “maths and English” of dance, and the old-school craft of performing to the whole house - not the mirror.

• Origins & Early Training: Growing up with two sisters who danced; a childhood accident, shyness, and finding confidence through classes. Tap at five, jazz soon after, and secretly at first - ballet, the technical foundation he calls essential “poise, posture, and strength.”
• First Stage Sparks: Local festivals, “Hello, Dolly!” solos, and a family who took him to everything from lavish musicals to the Royal Ballet; memories of Nureyev, Antoinette Sibley, and Anthony Dowell.
• West End Breakthrough: Cast at 13 in Gypsy (1973) with Angela Lansbury and Bonnie Langford at the Piccadilly Theatre; the realities of child-performer licenses, nightly commutes from Epsom, and matron Mrs Langford’s mantra: scan the audience and sparkle.
• The Performer’s Gaze: Why mirrors can stunt stagecraft; learning routines faster without them; the difference between today’s mirror-trained focus and the old pros who “bring you in.”
• Film Set Education: Bugsy Malone at Pinewood custard-pie chaos, backstage legends (hello, Chitty’s Child Catcher cage), and candid on-set memories of Jodie Foster and fellow young stars.
• TV & The Young Generation: Joining the BBC’s Young Generation at 16; working on New Year spectaculars with Dame Vera Lynn, Shirley Bassey, Petula Clark, and more; later presenting children’s TV segments and choreographing for BBC training shoots.
• Choreography Philosophy: Let instinct lead often the first idea to music is the truest; concept-driven work and designing the whole picture (movement, costumes, mood).
• “Forbidden Blackpool”: A bold, pre-burlesque, Moulin-Rouge-tinted concept show built around a keyhole motif; role reversal with boys in feathers, girls in suits; Anthony’s own costume designs and nightclub-cabaret vibe inside a large theatre.
• Defining Variety: From comics and dancers to sopranos and specialty acts “educational but entertaining” and how Sunday night Light Entertainment once shaped family rhythm.
• Dougie Squires & 43 Years of Life and Work: Meeting at 18; a partnership that spanned TV series, stage tours, and later the Royal pageants.
• Royal Spectacles: From the Queen’s 40th at Earl’s Court (Cameron-scale stages, thousands of horses, and Salad Days for Her Majesty) to Windsor galas with Helen Mirren and Tom Cruise; priceless Evelyn Laye waving anecdote.
• The Working Life: Why long runs weren’t for him after rapid-turnover TV; keeping the mind alive with new routines; passion over mortgage-logic.
• Advice to Young Performers: Perform from the heart, cultivate generosity, learn every backstage craft you can (even sewing a zipper), and remember your job is to make the star and the audience...