The World of Wonder Built by LadyBEAST

A look at the life of a circus artist in New Orleans

by

LadyBEAST’s latest show, performed in May 2024 and titled Vaudeville Revival, opens with famed juggler Helen Wonjila, who spins multiple hoops from her torso and limbs, tossed to her from offstage. The Lady [BEAST] of the night enters, first miming an embrace with a trenchcoat and then transitioning into an impressive aerial rope act directed toward her invisible companion. Onlookers watch as she climbs the rope, twisting herself into its coils, then allows herself to fall and spin out to nearly floor-level—a collective gasp.

“Josephine Baker”—played by performer Juno—enters next, adorned in a bright yellow, impressively sparkly (and phallic) banana ensemble. She’s accompanied by Angie Z’s live cover of “La Vie En Rose.” The emcees—vaudevillian clown duo Kitten and Lou—arrive, both terrifying and wildly entertaining. Marilyn-Monroe-esque aerialist and costume atelier Aria Delanoche gracefully ascends a roped chandelier, held up by LadyBEAST and company member Gigi Marx below. There is a dueling tap number, before the introduction of Ama May, a circus artist who specializes in cyr wheel performance. 

Finally, LadyBEAST returns with one of her most famous acts—which first earned headlines at Burning Man in 2018. Suspended upside down in the air, she mesmerizingly writhes and wiggles her way out of a straitjacket.

“Everyone remembers the first time they went to the circus, because they saw things that they believed impossible,” LadyBEAST reflected. “I was like six, and I’ll never forget seeing it and how exciting it was and overstimulating.” Now a multidisciplinary circus artist, producer, and coach, LadyBEAST has trained in seven of Houdini’s Top Ten acts (putting her own spin on them, of course), appeared in the seventeenth Ripley’s Believe It or Not! book for her bottle walking act, given a TED Talk on how spectacle and performance can be used to enact change, been featured in New Orleans Magazine’s “People to Watch,” opened her own production company, and performed with traveling circus tent shows across the country.

Originally hailing from Philadelphia, the artist behind the character and concept LadyBEAST was born to a sculptor/visual artist mother and athlete/businessman father, the latter of whom played football and was a wrestling alternate for the 1968 Olympics. Like her father, LadyBEAST also became an athlete, dominating high school track and field. Realizing that collegiate athletics would overtake her desire to create art, she switched gears. “I [became] a performance artist and a visual artist,” she said. “I’m into creating mixed media painting, so I feel like that really informs my work as I’m trying to capture these visual snapshots [on stage].”

After completing a BFA in Mixed Media and Painting at Guilford College in North Carolina, LadyBEAST lived in London for three years, curating for the traditional white-wall gallery scene. Feeling unfulfilled, at age twenty-three she left the galleries behind, and embarked on a spontaneous excursion to a tiny off-the-grid Nicaraguan island. When she moved back to the U.S., she purchased a giant box truck, which she dubbed “LadyBEAST.” The name conjures images of a tough woman, someone who is “tender but also powerful.” 

“Everyone remembers the first time they went to the circus, because they saw things that they believed impossible." —LadyBEAST

Her uncle, Russel, and a friend helped her convert the truck into a camper, which took her all across the country to participate in performance art projects and collectives.  The adventure was temporarily stalled by a knee injury, which required she use a cane for two years in her mid-twenties. After training, physical therapy, and a successful surgery, she emerged stronger than ever, unencumbered. And then, in 2012, she landed in New Orleans. 

“That’s when I realized that street performing was a hustle,” she said. As she developed her act, a fire show on Frenchman Street, she took on the name of her home on wheels. “That’s when I became LadyBEAST,” she said. “I was living in [the camper], I was touring in it… it felt like this extension of me… when I took the name, it was part of me. I feel like I’m that person now.”

Being a professional circus artist—marrying art and athleticism—is demanding, though. “You spend all day training and then you’re exhausted: where do you have the brain space to find the vision for the storytelling?” she asked. “[It] is probably one of the most physically taxing jobs because with other professional athletes, there are seasons. But as a circus artist, there really isn’t an off-season to take breaks. I have to show up to train even if I don’t want to.” 

Not unlike the circus world of the 1800s, circus art today has little regulation or physical therapy support. “So, if you had a big fall, you were dead or out of work,” she explained.  “A lot of things have happened in shows that I’ve seen, or I’ve stopped things from happening.”

Death-defying acts also require mental calm, like LadyBEAST’s 2018 Burning Man straitjacket escape, achieved while upside down and suspended from a hot air balloon one hundred feet in the air. “I had such a meltdown—crying, screaming [the day] before,” she said. “I had to get it out of the way to be able to be strong and present… and then the next day I felt totally calm. My friend told me I was too calm, that everyone else [was] freaking out, and I was like, ‘But I can’t.’ It’s not that I’m not scared, it’s that you have to be scared to do the thing, to push through to the other side.”

LadyBEAST trains in her old-world craft with any of her five coaches, three to five hours a day, five days a week: she is always high-protein snacking to “feed her muscles.” “I’m an industry professional, I have coaches. It’s a lineage,” she explained. “Mentorship and making a connection with coaches long-term… you have a tether to that person for the rest of your life.”  The rest of her day is typically filled with client meetings, artists’ rehearsals, and private coaching. Meditating, walking her dogs, and communing with nature keep her grounded, though she leads a life in the air.  

The unfortunate reality of circus life is that it requires specific facilities, often nonexistent. LadyBEAST currently trains on a rig in her backyard, or at one of two local theaters, the Joy Theater and the Marigny Opera House—where she currently holds a residency. She is in the process, though, of building out her own Bywater circus training facility, Beasttown—which she plans to open next spring.

The ground floor will serve as her husband Dominic Franceschi’s Build Fwd woodworking studio and a circus training/performance space available to artists in the area, and the second floor will consist of rentable artist studios. “The people who have coached me have been holding space for me to grow as a person, and I really wanted to be that for other people,” she said. “I love working with artists that want to evolve their craft, and I love helping people work through and overcome an injury because I’ve gone through that myself,” she said. On coaching kids, she explained, “There is innate fun in circus, [and] the idea of play is encouraged. Circus gives kids tools to play better, to learn where your limits are or what’s possible.” 

“There is innate fun in circus, [and] the idea of play is encouraged. Circus gives kids tools to play better, to learn where your limits are or what’s possible.” —LadyBEAST

For all the challenges, the payoff is greater. “This one dad still sends me videos of his daughter doing pull ups to get strong ‘like LadyBEAST,’” she said. “I met her on the road one time, [and] she was doing pull ups on my bicep to show me how strong she was. It became this thing that I didn’t realize was empowering the next generation, and it’s really important to me now,” she said. “You do all this self-work, this training, pushing yourself to your limits, fighting through the mental battle, and then there’s the reward at the end and that’s sharing what you do with people.”

Over the years, LadyBEAST has produced shows honoring the legacies of trailblazer circus performers, as well as more contemporary presentations like the September 2023 sci-fi OtherWORLDS performance, which blurred the lines between reality and fiction. OtherWORLDS highlighted some ground acts—such as contortion, dance, and various tableaus—but primarily featured aerial acts, performers suspended from chains, trapeze, ropes, hoops, and a Spanish web. One performer even trained in the old circus art of hair hanging, a rare technique that involves braiding the hair in such a way as to hang one’s weight from it. LadyBEAST says her goal is to “transport audiences” so “time and space float away." May’s Vaudeville Revival was the first in what will be a series of rotating circus acts—intended to honor old-world circus with a modern twist. The finale is a never-before-seen surprise, and I can’t spoil it. But, if you’re hoping to catch the next edition of Vaudeville Revival, LadyBEAST and her team will present a Mardi Gras show on February 28, 2025. 

For information about upcoming shows and private coaching, or to schedule a consultation for an upcoming event, visit ladybeastproductions.com and @ladybeastproductions on social media.