As a schoolboy he secretly hated his drab, ordered world; now, at the age of forty, he is finally fleeing from a life he can no longer handle when he stumbles upon the circus. Not knowing why, only that he must, he follows after it, determined to build a new home and family.

The Trapeze Artist draws together the past, present and future of one life to create a work of startling dexterity and vision - a haunting and heartbreaking account of a child, a boy, a man, desperate to free himself from the suffocating weight of his desires, his family and his grief. It speaks of what it is to grow up gay in a straight world, to be unable to communicate with those you love, and above all, the longing to break away, and to swing higher and higher...