Up, up he shimmies to the very swaying top. But all is not well under the Big Top. Thanks to the ownership by, and bottom line consciousness of large corporations, the romance of the circus is long gone. Once there was a guy cleaning up after the elephants, now he's called a Defecation Engineer. Once there were heroes and hero worshipers, now, no one believes in heroes any more.
Heroes are relics of the past, a sideshow, nothing more than freaks.
This is the message Kevin Augustine of Philadelphia has cleverly crafted into his almost one man show, The Big Top Machine. He attempts to fulfill his dream under the Big Top. Through a series of flashbacks, Kevin acts out the hero's literal rise and fall. Kevin uses his puppets sparingly. But it's Kevin's fluid acting that dominates and drives the story toward its bitter sweet end.