Fiery Jack Family – Fiery Jack, Harriet and their four children – are bringing their ‘Space Cadets’ Juggling Show to Glastonbury Festival’s Outside Circus Stage in the Theatre and Circus Fields.
Ahead of the festival, we caught up with the family (who answered our questions collectively) to find out what it’s like to be heading back to Worthy Farm and their plans for their shows.
Q&A with Fiery Jack Family
Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you got into live performance?
We are now a juggling/circus family – Mum, Dad and the four girls. Mum Harriet is a classically trained musician, and Dad Fiery Jack has been a street performer for almost 30 years! During lockdown, we took advantage of the training time, didn’t have devices or television and trained our eldest three daughters Morgan (15), Ania-Mae (13) Amber (12) with their juggling and performance skills – resulting in both Morgan and Amber becoming the British Young Jugglers of the Year in ‘22 and ‘23, with Ania as the runner up! Littlest Aria is 2 and when not napping often makes an appearance in the show!!
What’s it like to be performing at this year’s Glastonbury Festival?
We are excited to be returning to Glastonbury again this year! We are thrilled to have progressed from the riser to the outdoor circus stage this year. Glastonbury T&C is such a wonderful meeting place for performing friends from throughout the world. So many performers have supported our daughters’ performance journey and we love being a part of the circus family here!
What can you tell us about your plans for the show?
We have three different offerings for this year’s festival – on the Outside Circus Stage, we will be performing our Space Cadet LED juggling act – an out-of-this-world experience with poetry, light and sound reactive violin and, of course, juggling, performing a series of choreographed passing patterns.
We will also be performing in the Thursday parade and pop-up shows in the nighttime (Rimski’s and the juggling tent are probable locations!) with our Rockabilly Act, an upbeat electro-swing vibe for our LED passing show.
On the Thursday there will also be a first for us – just our eldest three daughters performing their acts on the Pavement Riser without Mum and Dad!!
How do you approach performing at a festival like this?
We practice! And we have fun.
With so many of us, lots of little logistics need to be managed in advance, from each girl’s hair accessories and costuming to the toddlers’ nap time schedules!
And with different daytime routines our practice time all together as a family is limited and precious!
Will you be checking out any other acts across the weekend?
We are a family and the girls have truly earned not only their performance slots but a whole lot of festival fun on top! They are all experienced festival kids and each has their eyes on different areas and acts!
Amber prefers the green fields and loves a late-night chai. Ania-Mae likes the stone circle, Fiery Jack catching up with our friends at the Oddballs Juggling Shop, Basil Brush, and Mr Spin (having busked with him in the early ’00s).
Morgan loves the pyramid stage and watching the big top acts. Harriet wants to catch Jonathan Pie. As a family, we love going to the Lizard Cafe to see the band The Burning Glass and know every word!
We also run the Fiery Jacks’ Travelling Games Museum in the Green Futures field and have a fab team teaching everything from Captain’s Mistress (connect 4!) to Viking Chess!
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