NEW YORK — Why run away to join the circus when it can come to you – at your local movie theater?

The live cinema event company BY Experience will broadcast the Big Apple Circus’ new show “Metamorphosis” from New York via satellite to big screens across the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 8.

The show, which will be held in a big top in Lincoln Center, features clowns, juggling, acrobatics, aerial trapeze and music. The show’s acts use camels, ferrets, horses and trained shelter dogs, and officials boast that the show is so intimate that no one sits more than 50 feet from ringside – except this time, for those watching from a cinema.

So far, a website offering tickets for sale list shows at Brunswick 10 in Maine and Fox Run Stadium 15 in Newington, New Hampshire.

“For many families across the U.S. and around the world, getting to a circus is quite challenging. It can be expensive. It can be out of reach in terms of location,” said Julie Borchard-Young, co-president of BY Experience.

“And not a lot of Hollywood feature films are produced for an audience as young as a 3-year-old. So we thought this was a unique way of engaging a wide-ranging audience with a performance that will engage them and maybe help them keep coming back to cinemas.”

The move is a logical extension of the push to capture and broadcast live events. First there was the opera, then came plays and musicals. Now comes the circus, with popcorn and peanuts likely at your seat since they’re also sold by the movie theater.

“It’s meant to be an introduction and whet the appetite and hopefully inspire audiences to really want to go in person and be a part of it,” Borchard-Young said of the 2-hour-show that includes a 15-minute intermission.

Three high-definition cameras will capture the show ringside. “It’s fast-paced. It’s exciting,” said Jean-Jerome Peytavi, a vice president of the 37-year-old circus. “For us, it’s great because the show traditionally is only on the East Coast. So to be able to offer the show to a constituency that we would not be able to offer in other years, that’s very exciting.”

The show will be broadcast at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time. The program will also be seen internationally on varying dates beginning Nov. 15.

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