An Irishman's Diary

The latest installation at the Irish Museum of Modern Art looks for all the world like a circus. Comprising two giant marquees, several heavy trucks, and a number of mobile accommodation units, it meticulously recreates the spectacle of the traditional big top. The appearance is maintained by a fragmentary narrative in which the word "Fossets" appears repeatedly. Further challenging our perception of reality is a "box office" advertising tickets at "10 euro" each.

But what does it mean? I dropped in over the weekend to find out. And - guess what? - it turns out that the whole thing really is a circus. The larger of the marquees contains 500 actual seats which, this weekend and for the next six weeks, the Fossett family hopes to fill. Those attending will be entertained in the traditional manner. There will be a clown. There will be daring high-wire acts. The sale of candy floss cannot be ruled out.

And yet it also turns out that the juxtaposition of circus and art museum is not without a point. The season at IMMA is just the latest part of a long campaign by Fossetts to have circus recognized as an art form. The recognition is already there in legislation, and this year, more importantly, it was expressed for the first time in Arts Council funding.

The next challenge, as Fossetts spokesman Charles O'Brien puts it, was "to get the other children in the playground to play with us". Fortunately IMMA is a particularly well brought-up child. When the circus enquired tentatively in October about the possibility of playing here, it was hoping for 2007. Such was the alacrity of the museum's welcome, however, that Fossets had to bring the plan forward.

In honour of the occasion, the IMMA season will mark a new departure for Irish circus. This will be an animal-free show, for one thing. In common with society at large, Fossetts has grown queasy about the use of exotic animals and does not foresee them featuring again. On top of this, the circus's not-quite-exotic camels (they were born in Ireland) all retired this year. And although horses will return at some point, they form no part of this show.

On the other hand, the run at IMMA involves that other well-known theatrical risk: working with children. The second marquee will house a pre-show experience in which, as well buying candy-floss and similar prerequisites, children will be given instruction in juggling, plate-spinning and other useful skills they can practise at home.

Only when the performance is ready to start will punters be shown through to the bigger top. It's a more continental approach, O'Brien says, instead of the old-fashioned circus where the audience "sat in the marquee for half an hour beforehand and saw all the cracks". The two-tent experience will give some of the tricks away beforehand at the expense of some of the mystique of the main event.

The show's theme, if it has one, is "balance", and there are no better people to illustrate it. Ireland's oldest circus, Fossetts has struggled to keep all the plates spinning in recent years. First, rocketing insurance costs nearly brought them down. Then three daughters of the founder took a High Court action against the estate of their dead brothers for a share in the company - a case that was settled after prompting by the judge that that the family patriarch would have been horrified to see his offspring feuding in public. But in general, O'Brien says, the money made in the good times had been subsidising the enterprise for years and was "all gone".

Without arts funding, the show could not have continued. Unfortunately, even after the principle of circus as art-form was accepted, it still presented a challenge. The Arts Council admitted lacking the expertise to evaluate it, until the part-time appointment last year of a circus arts officer from the UK. Now at last, as O'Brien says with apologies, Fossetts is "inside the tent".

The tent, meanwhile, is inside IMMA, or at least inside the spacious and ancient grounds of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, beside Bully's Acre. It's not the first time the site has hosted a big canvas-covered gathering. Almost 1,000 years ago, Brian Boru and his forces camped here before the Battle of Clontarf. But the nearby Heuston Station, the Luas and the M50 have all been added since, for much improved access.

Next year, in another departure, Fossetts will play London, as part of the ever-growing St Patrick's Day festival. And next year, of course, there will also be a general election to fight. Frustrated by local authority poster bans, the circus plans to exploit a de facto derogation for election posters by running its own candidate (a clown, naturally) in Dublin Central.

The tactic was tried in 2002, with a campaign launch featuring a good-natured custard-pie attack on an even better-natured Garda outside Leinster House. But the circus erred tactically in nominating "Ollie der Clown" who, as the name suggests, was German. You have to have Irish citizenship to stand in a general election, as was discovered too late. Fossets hope to rectify the mistake in 2007, when the candidate will run with the slogan: "The clown you can trust".