House of Yes’ Lady Circus

You’ve really turned your dreams into a reality. What advice do you have for anyone trying to do that for themselves?

Kae: Fundraising. It will save you a lot of time if you have money to start with. Find that money however you can – beg, borrow, or steal! Do it. We couldn’t have done this if we didn’t have the money to start it up. You’ll make it back and pay back your loans.

Anya: One of the most important things is to be accessible to as many people as possible. The more people in your network, the easier it is to fundraise or find other resources, delegate tasks, and get help. If you want to do something really avant-garde, how do you tie that in to something more accessible? Doing things that are super “out there” is great, but your audience will be very specific and you won’t be able to sustain yourself. You have to really balance out what you’re doing.

How have you done that?

Anya: We have the circus troop, the workshop, and the community space/venue. We want our space to be useful and somehow important to everyone and their mom. We have some things our friend’s 10-year-old can come to, and some borderline X-rated sex nonsense. We have music. We have DIY arts and crafts, but not too much, because we don’t want to be pigeonholed. It’s all about covering as much ground as possible, all the time. I think it’s great that people walk through the door and never know what to expect.

The House of Yes performance space (image via Brooklyn Vegan)

How do you two know each other?

Kae: Anya and I met in Rochester, where we grew up. I went to FIT and she came to New York a few months later. We thought, “Let’s make a creative space to live and work out of.” We found a large basement space, finagled some stuff with our landlord, and started a collective. It was pretty disgusting – full of mold, painted ridiculous colors. But it was really fun. We had that basement space for two years, and then Anya got a space in Ridgewood that became the House of Yes. I moved in 6 months after that, set up my sewing studio, and it became a collective of 8 people living and working.

Your previous space burned down, right?

Kae: Yeah, that space burned down in April of last year, 2008. We found this place on Craigslist and started building again. It was in awful shape – a dirty, dusty warehouse. There was a very tacky, dingy office space with fake wood paneling and linoleum floors. We had to put in a lot of work. Thankfully, people really pulled together and started collaborating. Volunteers came by to build, and we had a lot of help, financially, from people who felt bad for us when the old place burned down.

Aerial performance (image via Brooklyn Vegan)

Why did you choose this space for your new location?

Kae: It’s perfect, because it happens to have a 30-foot ceiling. It’s one of the only places like this in Brooklyn.

Anya: When the old space burned down, and we saw this building, we just went for it with the aerial studio.

Kae: When we started the old House of Yes, Anya and I would talk about how in five years we should have a theater and a costume shop. When we lost our old place, we ended up doing this much sooner than we ever expected. It was born out of necessity. To be able to afford the rent of this place, we had to get it together. The other place was more of a collective/ party space where people lived. Nobody lives here – it’s a business-oriented space.

What’s been the hardest part of turning this into a business?

Kae: The hardest part is finances. Trying to keep ours straight, and trying to find funding. And balancing everything. Between promoting, getting our name out there, and getting things done in here, and finding time to be creative and work on projects that don’t make money – it’s a lot.

Anya: You have to do a lot of entrepreneurial stuff, PR, and constantly think about how every single person you know can fit in to making this possible. Keeping track of all that, constantly scheduling and multitasking, is really hard.

Lady Circus in action (image via Brooklyn Vegan)

How do you hope for this to grow?

Kae: We’ve set it up now, but we’ve only been operating professionally for less then a year. It really has a lot of room for growth. We want to have more people come here, both to see shows and to perform. We’re at this nice spot where a lot of people know about us, but a lot more people could.

Anya: We want to write and produce more shows here. And we’re constantly tightening everything up – upgrading the lighting, getting new sewing machines. It’s great to have made a facility where artists don’t have to freak out and worry about hanging lights. They can come in and focus on their art instead.

It’s fantastic that you’ve created that! Most artists either aren’t able or just don’t want to take on the responsibility of setting up the structure.

Kae: It’s a real job, and it’s not always fun. I do jobs I don’t want to do. But without that, we would have been kicked out months ago because of not paying rent. I don’t want to sweep the floors, but it has to be done, and then we can move on to the creative things we want to do.

Anya: It’s still way better then a regular job because it’s really engaging. Whatever I’m doing, I’m actively using my brain. One of our interns has a “real job”, and she’s always telling us to give her more work because she’s so bored.

Kae: We’re always having creative input, whether it’s what color we’re going to paint the wall, or how to word the promotional material. We’re figuring out how to let the world know what we do, and what image we want to put out. Like any small business, it’s your voice.

Anya performing in the Karnival of Kuriosities