What does happiness taste like when we grow up? For FOCASA, Taiwan’s first contemporary circus company, it means sharing joy, courage, and the determination to pursue one’s dreams through performance, planting seeds of positivity in audiences young and old. Look a little deeper, and this happiness is something more grounded: an emotion that takes root and grows, strengthened through challenges and experience until it carries enough nourishment to sustain others. This is something Lin Chih-Wei, the 38-year-old director of FOCASA, knows deeply. He entered Fu-Hsing Dramatic Arts Academy at the age of ten, building a solid foundation in circus and acrobatic skills. He later worked as a stunt performer and professional entertainer, earning a good living. Yet the more he and his fellow performers experienced, the more they realized they were often relegated to supporting roles in other people’s productions. Lin became determined to prove that circus skills were every bit as capable of becoming an art form as any other performing discipline. Driven by that conviction, Lin and his partners founded FOCASA Circus in 2011. Today, the company has grown to a full-time staff of 47. Since 2023, it has staged two major editions of the FOCASA Circus Arts Festival, drawing audiences of 80,000 and 250,000 respectively, with each large-scale event representing an investment of tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars. In doing so, FOCASA has established Taiwan’s first major circus arts festival as a distinctive cultural brand—a vast, carnival-like gathering whose energy and scale are remarkable.