The Birdman, narrator of Our Circus Presents, lives in a one-room apartment on the fifth floor of a squalid tenement block in northern Romania... Every day, the Birdman performs the same ritual: he climbs out onto his window ledge to see if he can manage to kill himself--and never does. The Birdman is a member of a loose-knit group of failed suicides, each pursuing absurd ways to end their lives: one saving up lost-dog reward money to buy enough good whiskey to drink himself to death, another hoping to contract a fatal disease by sleeping with as many women as possible. When it seems these routines will continue indefinitely, the Birdman meets a professional suicide: the dangerous and inscrutable man with orange suspenders, who makes a living by trying to hang himself whenever he sees a potential rescuer approaching. This chance encounter, which leads at last to a real death, will force the Birdman to confront the roots of his desire to escape from life, and to see first-hand that dying is more than just a rehearsal.