THE main principle behind NoFitState Circus’s second theatre show is simple according to creative producer Tom Rack.

“We are putting circus into theatres, not theatre into circus,” he says.

“Lots of people are adding a trapeze artist into their theatre show, or putting the spirits in A Midsummer Night’s Dream into the air.

“This is a show by a circus company presenting a circus show in a theatrical manner.”

Those who have experienced NoFitState’s free-ranging big top shows, where the audience is free to move about the space rather than sit in rows, will notice an obvious difference in style when they enter the Connaught. But Rack says he and guest directors Maksim Komaro and Holly Stoppit have taken advantage of the different set-up in the staging.

“With the audience all looking at the stage we can do more on the ground,” he says, adding this means magic, hand-balancing and lower-level wire-walking form part of the programme alongside the breath-taking aerial work.

Despite being in a theatre space the international company has resisted the urge to put a narrative all the way through the story, or add dialogue.

“We started with the idea of a cooking show which goes wrong,” he says. “We kept a simple element of that, but it’s not a narrative framework. It’s a cooking show which quickly loses the plot and disappears through a rabbit hole full of noodles. Gradually the stage gets taken over by noodles.”

The original production was created with Finnish director Komaro, who worked some darker elements alongside the silly light-heartedness of the show. And when The Guide speaks to Rack an extra layer of comedy was being added by Stoppit, who specialises in improvised clowning.

“We have been in rehearsals for four days, and all we are doing is improvising around new ideas and laughing,” says Rack, on a break from working alongside the five-strong cast who hail from Sweden, Spain and Italy.

Although the noodles look realistic there isn’t a big cooking session before each performance.

“We use a fantastic material which creates the same look and feel, but we can do a lot more with them,” he says. “We experimented with spaghetti but it became mushy very quickly. We ended up with a lorryload of this special fabric from Finland – they look great and go everywhere. A lot of the kids at the end of the show want to take some home, so we are stretching that lorryload out across the tour!”

Noodles doesn’t mark the end of NoFitState Circus’s big top tours, which have visited the Brighton Fringe twice in 2009 and 2013, as well as holding community open air performances and as part of Brighton Festival in 2010 and 2012.

“There is a growing interest in circus,” says Rack. “People are beginning to appreciate it as an art form in its own right. We will have a new show for the big top fairly soon, and we are developing another outdoor community engagement project. With Noodles we wanted to make a small piece of work in theatres where we could reach new audiences, to go to places where we couldn’t take the big top.”

NoFitState Circus: Noodles
Connaught Theatre, Union Place, Worthing, Friday, January 23, to Saturday, January 24