ELLENTON, Florida After 146 years, the curtain will fall on the “greatest Show on Earth”: the owner of the circus Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey told The Associated Press that the show will close forever in may.
The iconic show american was adversely affected by a number of factors, according to executives of the company. The decline in the assistance and its high operating cost, as well as changes in the tastes of the public, and the long battles with groups in favor of the rights of the animals contributed to the closure of the circus.
“it’s Not just one thing,” said Kenneth Feld, chairman and ceo of Feld Entertainment. “This has been a very difficult decision for me and for the whole family.”
The company gave the news to the employees of the circus on the Saturday night, after their functions in Orlando and Miami.
Ringling Bros. you have two travelling circuses this season and will be 30 functions before may. Their main performances will be in Atlanta, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and Brooklyn. The shows finals will be held on may 7 in Providence, Rhode Island, and in Uniondale, New York, at the Coliseum in Nassau County, on the 21st of may.
The circus, with its exotic animals, its lush costumes and acrobats, death-defying, were the basis of the u.s. entertainment since the mid-1800′s. Phineas Taylor Barnum was a traveling show with animals and oddities human, while the five Ringling brothers were dedicated to the juggling and the parodies at its headquarters in Wisconsin. Eventually merged and created the modern circus. The great circus toured the united States by train, to astound the public with a wide range of attractions and exotic animals.
Towards the middle of the century, the circus was turned into something routine and in the family show par excellence, but as advanced by the TWENTIETH century, children were becoming less and less excited about the show. The film, television, video games, and the internet seized the minds of the young. The circus had no clever advertising campaigns or cartoon to promote its image.
“In many ways, the competition was the time,” he said Feld, adding that moving the sight in train and other peculiarities of circus — as a mobile school for the children of the artists — these are things of another era. “It’s a different model, that we can not see how this could work in the world today as to justify and maintain a entry affordable. So we have all that against you.”
The family Feld bought the Ringling circus in 1967. Then, the show lasted a little less than three hours. Now the function extends two hours and seven minutes and its larger segment -the performance of the tiger – lasts 12 minutes.
“Try to keep still 12 minutes to a child of three or four years”, he stressed.
Feld and his daughter, Juliette Feld, who is the director of operations of the company, recognize that one of the factors that leads to its closure is what drew millions of people to their show: animals. Ringling has been the target of activists who claim that it is cruel and unnecessary to compel the animals to appear in their functions.
The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has faced since a long time ago with the circus, soon to claim victory.
“After 36 years of protests from PETA, who have awakened the world to the situation of animals in captivity, PETA proclaims the end of what has been the show’s most sad about the Earth for the wild animals, and calls on all other circuses with animals to follow his example as a sign of the changing times,” wrote the president of the group, Ingrid Newkirk, in a statement.
Wayne Pacelle, president and ceo of The Humane Society of the United States, acknowledged that the announcement was “bittersweet” for the Felds but he added: “I Applaud your decision to turn away from an institution based in acts that are inappropriate in wild animals”.
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