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Franzen Brothers Circus Tiger Attack Video

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We also learn that in the heyday of the American circus, every show had its own shade of red—the official color of the circus. Brian Franzen tried to continue his father’s legacy, but in late 1997 the circus tent folded for the last time. Brian continues to provide animal acts for other performances. Wayne Franzen died on May 7, 1997, moments after a 6-year-old Bengal tiger attacked him in a performance in Carrollton, PA. He was 50. He was buried in Luther Memorial Cemetery in Russell, WI on May 12, 1997.

The Salvation Army used to be a great resource, but there are not a lot of vintage clothes out there anymore because they have become really trendy. By the way, it should be noted that while props and set pieces are related, and often called the same thing, a prop is something an actor will handle, while set pieces are items that are on the set to fill it out. We thought there was really a need to remain true to the story and to the actual events, to the circus as Liz experienced it. We remained pretty true to things as they occurred and really tried to follow that in terms of construction and design. What I gave to him were a lot of photographs Liz had from her time in the circus.

The brothers are a pair who are famous for training animals. Notorious for their cruelty to animals, Ringling Bros. crumbled in 2016. Due to the pressures of animal rights activists and decades of protests against the cruelty inflicted on circus animals,ticket sales plummeted, leaving Ringling with no choice but to accept defeat. For Liz’s Circus Story, as in any major studio or theatrical production, you have to learn the content, familiarize yourself with what the storyline is and the characters. It involves working with the director and the talent, watching rehearsals, working with the set designer, so I know how to organize myself and the resources I have available to work with. As far as the studio is concerned, we have a very specific environment we work in in terms of dimension—a specific number of circuits on a particular number of grids that give us access to lighting positions.

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They also had no enrichment or places to swim, despite being aquatic animals – trainers told the investigator that they had no time to set up enrichment, despite being camped out for nearly a week. Bass echoed Matthews’ sentiment, explaining that Ghandi “was just being a tiger.” While trainers often claim their animals are “tame,” Bass added, it’s just not possible to override a tiger or lion’s wild instincts. Pamelyn Ferdin, former child star who was the voice of Lucy on Charlie Brown, abandoned her meat-eating ways for an ethical vegan lifestyle. She even went to jail this year on behalf of enslaved animals after a judge found her guilty of displaying a vicious elephant hook at a circus demo.

Lacey’s family has been breeding tigers for generations in the entertainment industry. While circus animals may seem domesticated and relatively obedient inside a circus arena, these animals are wild and, given the opportunity, will follow their natural instinct to attack and escape. And once we get in the studio with everybody in here, we need to walk through the scene once or twice—making sure the actress doesn’t give the performance. All she’s doing is saying the lines and marking where she’s going. This can be a difficult concept for stage actors to understand—that they have to marshal their energy. In TV and film, it takes time for everything to fall into place.

Tiger Air Forum

They can do a quick cut from one scene to the next and move the story along. It would have been very abrupt to try it that way on stage. For television, Liz’s Circus Story needed to be 56 minutes long so it could air as an hour-long program—a little more than half the length of the original stage production. The story was tightened to focus more clearly on how Wayne Franzen’s pursuit of his dream inspired Liz.

Yourofsky is well-known for his acts of civil disobedience; he once chained himself underneath his car and blocked the entrance to the Detroit Animal Control Center. In fact, he travels all over the nation preaching his message of animal liberation and leading the Michigan animal rights group he founded, ADAPTT. “Praesto et Persto.” Latin for the term, “I stand in front and I stand firm,” 29-year-old animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky wears the tattoo on his right forearm like a blazing badge of courage.

So the public should not think that only smaller circuses do the abusing and not Ringling Bros. The animal rights community has videos which clearly show Gunther Gebel-Williams, Ringling’s head elephant trainer, and others hitting and abusing elephants. These malicious acts have been caught on video, and I have watched them until nauseated. Benson’s Wild Animal Farm was a New England landmark attraction established by John T. Benson. Benson purchased the property in 1922 as a place to quarantine imported animals before they were sold to zoos and circuses.

I went out and looked for trunks, but didn’t find anything that was specifically what we wanted. This was the first time I had the opportunity to work with Bob, although I had seen the work he had done for other productions and was impressed with it. After school in the shop, Wayne built the ring curb for the circus, painted it bright blue, and wired it with red and yellow lights. Liz also looked to her mentor, Warren Hammack of Horse Cave Theatre, for help. “Warren and I went through scene by scene, discussing the purpose of each scene.

Although the animals are often brutally trained before they’re forced into such unnatural situations at circuses, their wild instincts simply can’t be muffled, Bass said. It isn’t clear whether the animals sustained any injuries from the fight, but the situation reiterates the potentially deadly impacts that circus life can have on big cats. However, as is often the case, the show owners are downplaying the incident to avoid repercussions.

Get the day’s latest Coronavirus news delivered to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter. “They said this animal grabbed him by the neck and just dragged him all around,” said the Rev. Blane Resko of St. Benedict Catholic School, which was holding the circus fund-raiser. Wayne Franzen recently was featured in a CNN report on the decline of the circus, his ex-wife said. Federal and county wildlife officials are investigating the attack. “They said this animal grabbed him by the neck and just dragged him all around,” said the Rev. Blane Resko of St. Benedict Catholic School, which was holding the circus fund-raiser. “My father should have known better,” Brian Franzen said.

And you have to be thinking about what you’re doing because the camera will show that. Then you bring the camera operators in and you go through the show, block the shots scene by scene, number each of the shots. For example, in the first scene there might be 25 shots, and each camera has so many of those. It takes a little bit of time for them to get familiar with the production, to get the angles right.

“You don’t turn on the Discovery Channel and see elephants walking throught the jungles of Tanzania in sequined suits,” he said. He said elephants are kept in chains between performances and lions, tigers and bears are kept in cages, a state he believes is not only cruel, but completely unnatural. “Elephants in the wild walk miles a day,” Yourofsky said. The horrifying moment a young lion was attacked by a tiger, who grabbed it by the throat in the middle of a performance in a Russian circus, was caught on camera. The incident took place in Moscow during a performance by the Zapashny brothers.

It is impossible to use positive reinforcement with purely wild animals like elephants, lions, bears and tigers. Violence is the only way to make wild animals perform unnatural tricks. Training sessions are comprised of beatings in order to establish superiority. Blackjacks, hooks, iron bars, whips and sticks are used to beat the pride out of animals.

After rehearsing the new, shortened script, Liz gave a performance for Hunt’s students at Butler County High School—some of whom remembered seeing Franzen Bros. Generally with a script, there’s a tradition behind it, a structure; the playwright has really conceived of how it should be done. With this, the story came with it, and that was about it.

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