Bellingham Circus Guild approaches 20th anniversary
According to Bellingham Circus Guild performer Jules McEvoy, Bellingham may have the most circus performers per capita of any city in the United States. McEvoy, a lifelong performer, entered the realm of the Bellingham Circus Guild in the days before it had a name and a rich history.
Since 2007, the Bellingham Circus Guild has fostered Bellingham’s community of performers and entertainers with instructional classes, open studio times and frequent shows and events. As the guild approaches its 20-year anniversary, we ask: How did Bellingham become such a known spectacle in the world of circus?
Just like every great idea, the Bellingham Circus Guild began with a dream. Or, more specifically, “Dream Science.”
The Dream Science Circus was a performance group that began touring across the Northwest in 2004. It was well known for its variety shows. Performers called audience members on stage and placed the “Dream Machine” on them, and the act played out the audience member’s “dream.”
In 2007, the Dream Science Circus rented a warehouse at 1806 Cornwall Ave. — which is now the home of Irongate Estate & Vintage Depot — to practice in and to perform its touring stage show titled “Sleeping on the Ceiling.”
Inside the warehouse portion of the building, antique wooden beams rise toward the angled ceiling, draped in a soft light that streams from the tinted panels above. Blanketed in the glow of string lights and arranged with for-sale clothing and vintage goods, the towering space once hosted the likes of McEvoy, Strangely Doesburg, Wren Schultz, Della “Moustachella” Plaster and many other talented performers.
By late 2007 to early 2008, the group began to dissolve. Seeing an opportunity to continue the space’s use for practice and performance, members of the project joined with other community members, like members of the Bellingham Juggling Club, to take over the rent and form what would eventually become the guild we know today.
“We figured out a way to create the Bellingham Circus Guild,” said McEvoy, who began performing with the Dream Science Circus at its first show. “I don’t even think we were an official entity at that point. It was just a bunch of people that made decisions together to rent this space so that we could continue to do our craft.”
In 2013, after hopping around warehouses, parks and performance venues, the guild moved into its home at 1401 6th St. #102 in Fairhaven. Having found a permanent home, the guild continues to offer their space for performance, class and practice, while maintaining “Vaudevillingham,” which is its variety show – the 15th of the month, without fail – that has been running in some capacity since April 2008.
“We have been in existence for nearly 20 years,” said the guild’s marketing manager and producer Natale Luma. “And I think that (our) continuity and presence really helps solidify Bellingham as a place where the arts thrive.”
Meet the performers
Jordyn Shay, aka “Paper La Shay,” has been performing and touring for 12 years, having previously attended the School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts. Shay will begin teaching “Clown 101” through the guild on Sept. 22.
“Clown gives permission,” said Shay. “To be weird, to be yourself, to be outraged and to feel your feelings. And by feeling your feelings, you give others the permission to do so.”
A juggler, MC, acrobat and street performer, McEvoy moved to Bellingham in 2003, where his juggling career began to take off with a group called “The Juggling Jollies.”
His work would quickly embed him in the growing community of performers like Wren Schultz, who performed with the Bellingham Juggling Club through the earliest days of the guild.
Schultz started juggling as a teenager and started performing professionally with the New Old Time Chautauqua tour. More recently, he juggled at Lumen Field in Seattle during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
“The synergy between the community and the guild is just amazing,” he said. “The community supports the guild by showing up to all the shows and being so supportive. And in turn, the guild does an amazing job of providing the community with access to circus, both in the performance style, but also in the learning side of things.”
Schultz, like many others, credits much of his connection to the Bellingham circus community to his late partner, Della “Moustachella” Plaster.
Plaster, who was killed in a car collision in 2020, has been described as an integral part of not only the Bellingham Circus Guild, but the greater circus community as a whole. Plaster organized Vaudevillingham for many years on top of being active in children’s health education and an avid performer.
Accordianist Strangely Doesburg first became involved with the guild through Plaster, who invited him to perform in a burlesque Vaudeville variety show she was putting on at the Wild Buffalo in early 2008 called the “Gallus Gals Variety Show” — Gallus being an old-fashioned regional word for suspenders, and “Gallus Gals” being a play on Plaster and her performance partner’s frequent shows with a local band called the “Gallus Brothers.”
“I did the variety show, and that night I slept really well,” Doesburg said. “It was the first time I felt like I was doing what I should be doing in a long time.”
Doesburg has been performing ever since with the guild, the New Old Time Chautauqua and the experimental folk band Three For Silver.
“To me, that is the enduring allure of all performance art,” Doesburg said: “Reaching across the inexplicably vast void between human minds and making a point of connection.”
—By Jae Ranney
Internship sponsored by Puget Sound Energy