"Big Top Fitness" Uses Circus Skills to Combat Childhood Obesity

When it comes to combating childhood obesity, Tufts graduate student Christina Zagarino isn’t clowning around.

Her Fred Rogers Memorial Scholarship winning five-episode series, “Big Top Fitness,” which uses techniques inspired by the circus to get kids physically active while watching television, is hitting the Somerville Theatre on Sunday, May 15.

Zagarino, a 26-year-old child development major and up-and-coming interactive TV producer, said she was initially inspired by the so-called “Greatest Show on Earth” while working as an arts administrator who ran the circus camps for children ages seven to 11-years-old at the New Victory Theater on 42nd Street in NYC.

“I was working with actual circus performers and the kids would spend five to eight hours a day working on circus skills and then they would share what they learned in a presentation on Fridays for parents and friends,” she recalled. “I noticed that these kids were exercising and having a good time and I had the realization that the circus is very powerful. I started to think about how I could harness circus to promote physical engagement with children.”

Zagarino continued, “Because I wanted to go into children’s television, I had the idea of creating a series that could be broadcast on a national level and could reach so many more children than a camp or a workshop in a classroom.”

The result is “Big Top Fitness,” a five-part series geared toward children between three and five years old which uses traditional and contemporary circus techniques to promote physical activity in episodes called "Stretch," "Animal Shapes," "Teamwork," "Clowning Around" and "Throw, Throw, Catch, Catch."

Zagarino, who is unveiling her interactive TV series this Sunday to a crowd that includes her students from the Eliot-Pearson Children’s School in Medford, said that there’s an additional excitement surrounding her series because the Big Apple Circus is in town.

“The man who is playing Grandma in the Big Apple Circus right now, Josh Matthews, is a close friend from NYC who works at the circus camps that I ran,” she said. “He was the circus consultant on the show and helped during the script-writing process. I wanted to make sure that this project was true to the circus community. When I first started this project, I didn’t consider myself a circus person. Since I created this series, the circus community has embraced me.”

When creating “Big Top Fitness,” Zagarino said she was careful to craft the series to comfort the younger kids who may have a fear of clowns. “It’s something that I thought about a lot during development,” she mused. “The characters in the series don’t look like clowns because they’re wearing retro gym suits. I was inspired by the ‘Mister Rogers’ episode where he visits the circus and he talks about people being afraid of clowns and has an actual performer put on his makeup for the cameras. I didn’t want to have clown characters because there is that fear and stigma.”

As far as combating childhood obesity, Zagarino believes it’s important to reach out to children from all socio-economic backgrounds.

“As a kid who grew up in New York City, your physical resources are so limited in terms of moving around and exercising,” she added. “It’s important for these children who live in neighborhoods where it’s not always safe and there aren’t these resources for them to go outside and play to have a space in their home where they can move their bodies and promote physical education.”

Zagarino admitted to being a fan of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” program, but hasn’t seen the initiative to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity influence the community that she lives in now.

“I hear a lot about ‘Let’s Move,’ but I really want to see it in action,” she remarked. “I want to see these small events that they’re holding for “Let’s Move” to expand on a national level. How can we get kids involved in physical activity on a national level?””

Zagarino, who is currently writing her thesis on interactive television at Tufts and spent the summer of 2010 as an intern for the Nick Jr. production of “Dora the Explorer,” believes that physical activity is often ignored in regards to childhood obesity.

“As Americans, there’s such a cultural emphasis on food. We’re forgetting to promote the physical side of it,” she commented. “As a teacher seeing so many children affected by [childhood obesity], you notice that there are such unhealthy eating habits in our country. I love a Happy Meal as much as the next person, but if you think about it, kids are getting a reward for eating this really horrible meal.”

Christina Zagarino will screen all five episodes and present a short, behind-the-scenes film about the process of making of “Big Top Fitness” on Sunday, May 15 at 4 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre.