Water for Elephants is a touring theatrical production that brings Sara Gruen’s best-selling Depression-era novel to the stage, staging the story of a young man who joins a traveling circus. The show mixes dramatic storytelling with circus-style physicality and period spectacle to evoke the novel’s travelling-show atmosphere. It plays at the San Diego Civic Theatre as part of a regional tour, presenting a theatrical, visually driven interpretation of the book’s central characters and circus world.