A Game of Shadow

This tent is more intimate, despite the vast space. The walls are white, the cieling low. Paper lanterns are anchored in the corners, round circles of light above and below them. The sign outside warns patrons to watch their step and once inside, they realize why. They enter onto a chessboard, black and white squares large enough to stand on. The doorway opens to a single free square surrounded by white pieces. The square next to the king, where there is an absence. No sign of the white queen. Opposite, across the wasteland of black and white tile, are black pillars carved like towers, bishops and knights.
You take the place of the queen. As you step forward there is the whir of clockwork, the click of gears and cogs coming alive. Knights raise their heads, pawns unsheath their swords, in one smooth and synchronized movement. Figures across the board fix their dopplegangers with identical black eyes.
Pieces move at your command, or for you who are not an aficionado of the game, at your point. They glide along the squares, stone scraping against stone. There are no ropes, no tracks on which the statues wheel, no wires or magnets. It is a mystery. One particular clockmaker suggests a theory to his companions in a french cafe they attend the morning after their visit. They do not understand the more technological aspects and remain content to be vexed by it. The enigma, they argue, is what makes it so dreamlike.
When a piece on the board is taken by the opponent, the piece seems to break apart, cracks forming down the sides as easily as if it were porcelain, instead of stone. Clockword grinds unplesantly until the statue breaks completely, pieces falling away and smashing on the tiled floor, silver gearts, weights, pendulums following in a watefall of mechanisms. They litter the boart, the statues still in play pushing fragments of their fallen comrades aside as they move.
Patrons that win stand among the ruins, wondering for a moment if they should attempt to sweep the pieces together or not. They make a note of it to inquire to the next performer or vendor they see but by then it has slipped their mind as they are entranced by some other spectacle behind the curtains.
Patrons put in checkmate are unaware at first.Pieces cease to move, they are frozen in battle. These patrons shuffle their feet hesitatnly on the spot, until a sensation fills them.
The lights of the tent dim, the vastness crowds with shadow. The burning in your feet spreads upward, then turns to a violent pain. You stumble off the square and the pain vanishes.
Abandoning the statures you exit quickly, not looking back until you are well away and only the flap of the tent and the black sign are visible.
For those that win it is a challenge, to play the game as a piece, and each game at home or in tea rooms from then on is less thrilling, less captivating. For those that lose it is a nightmare. Loss suceeded by pain. For those who have not encountered any other nightmares in the cirque it is the first seed planted, the first shadow cast by the radiance of the circus.

Art from Trafalgar Square (Getty Images)


Text by Lucie MacAulay