the Way of the Showman
Philosophical and esoteric perspectives from a modern day Showman.
Each season is different in its approach. S1 is essays. S2 is one book length attempt at Understanding Showmanship, S3 is conversations with remarkable Showfolk. The brand new Season 4 explores the relationship between Showmanship and Play.
The host, Captain Frodo, internationally renowned circus performer, director, writer, husband and dad lays out, in great detail, his practical performance philosophy for performers who seek to deepen the conversation with their audiences and themselves. You can find him, and more of his writing at: www.thewayoftheshowman.com
the Way of the Showman
131 - How Mystère Reinvented Circus for Las Vegas: A True Tale - Jay Gilligan & Captain Frodo explores Cirque du Soleil's first Las Vegas show 1 of 4
Step into the world of Cirque du Soleil's Mystère and explore its magical journey through the lens of showmanship! This episode takes you behind the scenes as we dive deep into the artistry and evolution that have made Mystère an enduring icon in Las Vegas entertainment. Join hosts Captain Frodo and Jay Gilligan as they share their personal experiences, explore the creative journey behind this iconic show, and discuss how its rich narrative seamlessly combines circus and theater.
From the early days of its production to the meticulous crafting of performances, learn about the passion and dedication that go into captivating audiences for over three decades. Mystère is more than just a show; it is a pioneering force that has redefined the circus experience, pushing boundaries while respecting its traditions. Jay, a lifelong juggler and advocate for circus arts, unpacks the emotional layers and innovative techniques that provide depth to this mesmerizing spectacle.
As we navigate through key revelations and insider stories of Mystère, we uncover how it has set the standard for future shows and continues to inspire performers around the globe. This rich tapestry of discussion leaves listeners with a profound understanding of both the show and its impact on the cultural landscape. Join us and indulge in an exploration of artistry, risk, and the evolution of performance art. Don't miss out—tune in, subscribe, and uncover the magic of Mystère!
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Greetings, fellow travelers and welcome to the way of the showman, where we view the world through the lens of showmanship. I am Captain Frodo and I will be your host and your guide along the way. And not long ago I jumped on a plane and the whole team from the Way of the Showman, which is me, moved our recording studio to Stockholm, sweden, as has happened once before, and the reason for that is that this is where we can find Jay Gilligan, the official co-host of this here show, and, as you see, we have. For those of you who are looking up and down on iTunes or Spotify, you will be able to see that it has its own sort of episode art. So when you scroll down, you can easily see.
Speaker 1:If you are coming from the juggling community, which I know there's a lot of you, if you're coming from the juggling community and you want to hear all the stuff that Jay has to say about art and life in conversation with me, you can easily find it. And if you are here for Jay Gilligan and you're also here for myself, then you're in for a treat, because this episode is, in one way, about Cirque du Soleil and specifically about Cirque du Soleil's production of Mystere, a show that opened in 1993 in Las Vegas and basically made the entire Las Vegas turned it upside down. Every show, every casino needed a Cirque du Soleil show, and actually that might even have been in the works, but Jay is going to tell you more about that in a minute. But really this is also a show very much about Jay Gilligan, about his obsessive nature, about the way that, how deeply he gets into things, and those of you who have seen Jay juggle or have seen his YouTube channel with its thousands of hours of juggling exploration Not insignificant, not just your everyday I'm having a little jam but serious explorations where he gets jugglers from all over the world to have research labs and exploring how far can we push the art of juggling and push into new props and what does improvisation actually mean within juggling, so intimidating? But the reason why he has the following that he does within the juggling community in in particular, is, of course, because of his his inquisitive and and unwavering interest in shows, something that also could be called an obsession, and this is, of course, for those astute listeners who remember, back to our first talks about reflex Obsession was one of the words that we bandied about.
Speaker 1:So, without further ado. Let's explore Mystere with Jay Gilligan. You let's explore mystere with jay gillian. So finally, after it happens, really. But we are in the same place, at the same time, in an actual real life room, are we?
Speaker 1:we're not holograms or and not that I, not that I know of in that case. Then you got a hologram going all the way from your flat where I slept in your son's bed to coming here to your studio and I'm really excited. I'm here with Jay Gilligan in the flesh. And I have been wanting for a long time to talk to you about Cirque du Soleil, but specifically talk about Cirque du Soleil's production called Mystère.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I know why you want to talk to me about that. Yeah, good, because I've seen that show 84 times now.
Speaker 1:So you've seen it live in the theater 84 times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because if you want to talk about seeing it on a video, we have to add a few more hundred numbers to that.
Speaker 1:yeah, and to. To be, to be fair, it was. I knew that you liked mystere and I probably have heard sometime that you had watched it many times or whatever, but as it is with those things, it's almost like in my youth I also watched movies many times, or whatever. Yeah, and I was not fully clued up to the fact that how strongly this was going on right now, at the moment, and when we I was playing Mad Apple in Las Vegas, yeah, and you came to stay, yeah, and on the first night after you arrived, when I was, I think, doing shows, you went to Mystere to see the show. Yeah, but then you saw it twice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you got off the plane put your family to bed.
Speaker 1:Went and saw the show twice in a row.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it plays twice. It played twice that night. Yeah, why would you just go see it one time? It's playing in the city you're in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, so that is just a beautiful question. We're going. Well, it played twice, so of course I had to see it twice. Why would you not? And I go well, for one. It's expensive and two, you had just seen it immediately beforehand. So I would like to delve into that, but that, I think, is becomes the second question. The first question, to set it up for all of our fellow travelers out there, is what mystere is sure, uh, so yeah, how about you uh start by before we go into maybe what, what, what mystere actually is and how it ended up in las vegas and and all that. But just talking about, how did you hear about mystere first?
Speaker 2:what was your first sort of yeah, I mean that's that's a great. That's a great starting point, because I have kind of a special connection with the show. I was working with Patrick McGuire. We had a duo juggling act. We were both teenagers, so we had a little duet we had made and we were just kind of doing our first performances together when, uh, there was this rumor going around that, um, michael motion was casting some jugglers for a piece he was going to make for cirque du soleil and cirque du soleil had been kind of courting, uh, michael for years to try to get him into their productions in various forms. I, I mean, he was on their radar for a long time. Obviously, like you know, they knew what was going on in North America and Michael was performing and, of course, doing this fantastic kind of circus stuff. And you could also maybe even say that Michael was in that same kind of style or at least in that direction, right?
Speaker 1:Michael Motion doing the triangle where he bounces the balls in the triangle. That could absolutely be like a feature act in any of those Golden Age Cirque du Soleil shows.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what Cirque du Soleil wanted, right. And so for years, you know, it just never worked out. That's maybe another whole podcast of how that journey went. But basically, at the end of the day, they finally got him to make a piece for this new creation Mystère that was going to be in Vegas, and so they were looking for jugglers, and of course, by that time I was already obsessed with Cirque du Soleil, because that's of the generation I am at the time and what time?
Speaker 1:what time is this?
Speaker 2:no, exactly. So I was just going to say that, that you know, I was kind of starting off into circus and performing at the exact at the kind of quote-unquote right time with the Cirque du Soleil's rise, which is a whole again other story we won't go so deep into, but we can say, uh, late 80s, early 90s, um, especially so my first quote-unquote show, my, you know, everybody has like their first show as the entry point into maybe the, the larger world of circus, and mine was Nouvelle Experience. Um, it's so funny to me. You know people who are younger than me who are like, ah, kidam was the first one and whatever, you know, curios was the first one, or or especially, you know, actually, after Kidam and after La Nuba, and that the quote unquote, the golden era of Cirque, which is in my mind defined by a creative, a core creative team, yeah, and that's why it's the golden era, cause it was the same, more or less the same creative team who made all these kind of iconic shows and uh, which.
Speaker 1:So that's from novella experience. So it's like we reinvent circus, which was was the first show they did to settle, get the name and everything. And then there was the first actual production that is in the style of Cirque du Soleil.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean this could be a Of course. I mean we can find people who want to have a very long conversation about all those details, but now you're just stuck with me and so you can't.
Speaker 1:So I'll just give my point of view, but my point of view.
Speaker 2:Let's stop this, and we hope that somebody says let me set the story, yeah, yeah, and then you can come and do it, but my point of well, yeah, but I, I mean, I know a bunch of different points of view around it, but my take on it is that nouvelle experience was the first, um, the first show where they came up with their iconic kind of uh stage design, which was the michel creed who made the set designs, and they combined a nouvelle experience, the traditional proscenium arch stage, which was this, the, the, the platform in the back, with. They combined it with the circus ring, which was the three, the 270 degree thrust stage, yeah, right, so nouvelle was the first, the first show they did where they, and that that was a physicalization of this philosophy of theirs, which was franco gregor, of combining theater and circus. So they literally took this idea of combining theater, which was the theater stage. So that's, that's your, that's your frontal viewing platform, right?
Speaker 1:with the theater is in the end.
Speaker 2:Everybody sits in classic classic theater stage right but then the Circus Ring, which was in one way known as a 360-degree stage. So they mashed up those two literal physical performing spaces and Nouvelle Experience was the first expression of that set design, kind of philosophical idea, and that arc lasted until La Nuba was the last production of the we can say the golden era of that team.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:And one funny thing, though, is so, like I say, I have Nouvelle Experience as my kind of hallmark moment of like entry into this world, and it made this impression on me. Salt and Banco for me.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Salt and Banco for you, perfect. But after you get past, like Kidamam, people aren't really like oh, you know, la nuba was my first experience, because after kidam we start to have, uh, not well, yeah, maybe not yet, but other companies coming up, I mean for the new generation. So I know, I know it's well after the golden era. But, for example, traces by seven fingers. There's so many people, so many. I call them kids, but of course they're adults now, but back in the day there's so many kids who are like oh, traces was the first thing that I saw, and it's kind of funny to see that arc then of the circus culture in the world, where cirque du soleil had this golden era and then it fell off in many different ways which you know we don't have to go into there, but we're focusing on other companies.
Speaker 2:Came, yeah right like seven, like seven fingers, and then that became the kind of touchstone or the cultural moment. Then and there's another really funny um, I I was before this, this phenomena happened, but one really strong, uh impression came because there was a TV network in America called Bravo and they started showing all the films of Cirque du Soleil at a certain point and that was the actual shows, yeah, I mean, because you know Soleil was was filming their shows I remember.
Speaker 1:I have completely forgotten this, but I believe my first actual encounter with them was this that some of those might have been shown in Norway too. Sure, no, because Soleil was filming all the shows they were releasing and selling. Actual encounter with them was this that some of those might have been shown in norway too sure no, because so they was filming all the shows.
Speaker 2:They were releasing and selling vhs tapes at first and then later on dvds. But at the same time they were also selling those shows as tv programs to different networks around the world. Yeah, and so like artete TV and Europe and stuff. But in America, which was their main market at the time, this Bravo network kind of showed their programs on a loop almost oh wow, and it influenced the whole generation or more of circus people.
Speaker 1:And again, I was already into it before that phenomena, but that phenomena certainly helped cement it into my life that you had this access to those that kind of sometimes, when you don't, when you only see it live, or you do it, then it's this one, like you go, oh it's a special thing, that's one. But by the time it starts to go on a loop with several shows in a row or whatever. It's a phenomena that is, that becomes like mythical or something when it's on tv, like that it's. This is a cultural phenomena that is bigger than one show that I saw.
Speaker 2:We're going to dive into this a lot more later on, I think now in this conversation, but also to remember back then when Bravo was broadcasting these performances this is before the internet you couldn't get video on demand. You couldn't find. I mean, of course you could buy the VHS tape from Cirque du Soleil store on, you know, or at a show. You can maybe buy a DVD or something later on was there a Cirque du Soleil store yeah, well, on online.
Speaker 2:Okay, right, so at some point it comes online when the internet starts. But back then you would get the, the VHS tape from a show, yeah, and, and from the touring, uh, you know the merch tent or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and. And I bought a pocket watch, yeah, with cercle soleil. Yeah, when I saw salt and banco exactly I have that pocket watch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great piece of merch.
Speaker 2:It blew my mind that they had all these different things, it's renee bazinet on the pocket watch, you know, it's like, you know, the baron character, renee bazinet, but uh, but so then, um, so they're holding this auditions for, for performers for michael motion's piece, and we didn't know it was for mystere. We only knew, of course, it was for cirque du soleil. This is months, months, months before the show opened. Obviously, it was in the creation they're casting for the show, and so what I was going to get to then is because I was already obsessed with soleil, with my first experience with was with nouvelle experience, and, um, I'd seen the show live. Uh, well, that eventually, that's that's also wrapped up with mr uh, history there.
Speaker 2:But, um, I, so I was working with patrick mc McGuire and he got hired to do this creation with with my promotion, and by that time, of course, I was also really dreaming about being in, as everybody I knew at the time was kind of like, oh, I want to be in Cirque du Soleil, that's a thing I would like to do. It was kind of the top of the game and kind of the thing you wanted to do in one way if you weren't, you know, in a certain direction, if you're like how to describe. I mean, certes, soleil did represent that kind of abstract art expression. You know it was, it was quote-unquote art, I mean it was whatever. It was abstract and it was in a, in a certain they did a huge thing towards making circus art.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people go look at traditional circus and a lot of people just go. Well, it's for children, it's a family thing, whatever. But Cirque du Soleil you could go there with your date or with a group of adults and it was like it was fine for kids, but it was not pandering, it was not a kid show it was okay for children, not on yeah it was sold as like high culture right, yeah
Speaker 2:yeah, and they were kind of selling it like you're the same thing, you go see a symphony, you might go see Cirque du Soleil and then it was kind of trying to elevate the culture. And I think part of that journey, of course too, was the whole crux of how Soleil started to, when they really started to climb up into the public consciousness, was the whole we, it's the animal free circus. That was the first kind of step of how to differentiate themselves from Ringling Brothers, for example, and say, well, we're animal free. And part of that, I think that idea of being animal free, was then to focus on the humans, right, and then that human is this kind of to elevate the culture and to kind of boost it up and have this, uh, veneer of like yeah you know, respectability or whatever yeah like has happened with other art forms, like theater, where it used to be booths in the front where you could close the curtains, so the prostitutes who were working every day at the same theater.
Speaker 1:You're like, basically being employed, you go around and you service the clients and it was a irrepute. It's not a nice, it was not a family affair. And now theater is different, even if it was high and lofty, but like and the same thing for classical music, right?
Speaker 2:you used to go to a classical music show, or well, you go to a music show, a concert it wasn't classical music then but, um, people were rowdy, they would scream and yell and they would. They would say repeat that part. You know if people they wouldn't. You know, if they clapped enough, the orchestra would play that part again. And now we have the, the culture. You go to a, you go to a symphony, and there's cough drops in a bowl in the lobby, because, dare, how dare you cough once during the fifth movement or whatever, of the symphony, right? So we've had that journey on a lot of different art forms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't have to delve too much deep into that. But I have some info on the beginning of that too, of how Mozart was ahead of his time because there wasn't really paid concerts watched by the people, it was being done in courts. So you had to be paid by the church or a court to be a composer in that kind of way and that some of these other composers that came a bit after that like and that's why he was making these musicals, but not musicals, operas or whatever, but like a bit more bawdy his style to sell tickets, but like a bit more bawdy his style Right, right, right right To sell tickets.
Speaker 1:He was working in these sort of more burlesque-y kind of theatres getting the actual real public who was having screaming and carrying on. Like you say, that market was just embryonic and concerts, as we think of it, didn't quite exist.
Speaker 2:Anyway, no, that's great. So then Patrick Mag McGuire he gets hired in into this uh creation, into this production, and of course I'm uh, I'm young, I'm a teenager, so I'm kind of a punk and I'm, in you know, a little bit stupid because I'm teenager. And uh, of course I get like, on one hand, jealous that I also wasn't hired, or whatever that means, though it wasn't ever, I was never in contention for that, that, that part. So it wasn't like I was all oh man, we both auditioned and he got the part and I didn't. But it was more just I, I was more angry that he kind of got poached, that we were working on this duo together and it was kind of just starting to take off and then suddenly he got hired by this big company. And it was kind of just starting to take off and then suddenly he got hired by this big company and I was a little bit like, oh man, that's, that's not so fun, like coaching my talent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just like.
Speaker 2:I was like I've been grooming this guy to be the next, uh but at the same time I mean, obviously, I mean michael motion was already my favorite juggler back then and and, uh, I knew what an opportunity it was for pat to go work with michael and cirque du soleil. So for me it was just top of the top of the top. I mean you couldn't get uh more, you couldn't mash up a better meeting of two, you know, michael motion and cirque du soleil, and then pat got to work with them, and so for me that would be just, that's just heaven yeah, and you like, you're going.
Speaker 1:You're an asshole for leaving, but of course you have to leave.
Speaker 2:Well, I was never mad at Pat. I was more mad at Soleil. They had taken him away. So that was like a real personal connection to that creation and that show and that journey which already before he was hired I was already into Michael and Soleil. So of course I had a personal connection into that process.
Speaker 1:Juggling entrance through the fact that your favorite juggler, Michael Motion, was making a piece.
Speaker 2:Finally, yeah for them. And then you know somebody who now is a part of the creation at least, and then you are personally invested with, yeah, complex emotions already yeah, and also that the yeah, and also that it affected my life personally and yeah, yeah, that's what I mean with complex emotions is right, you go I know of this show I'm a little bit angry, but I'm also intrigued and I would have loved to be asked, or?
Speaker 1:like it's all that sort of yeah, and so uh, uh, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that that's kind of my really personal connection with the show, and then I went to visit pat in vegas a couple times so they were doing creation in vegas well, no, they did a lot of the creation in in, uh, montreal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because this was the first time they were doing a custom-built theater for the show and so of course that took a long time. So there wasn't any. I mean, of course they were doing some workshops in Vegas, like in a rehearsal space, you know, rented whatever warehouse space or something, but most of it's taking place in Montreal and there's a really couple of funny stories about that and pretty much everything I know about Mystere is memories I have of what Patrick told me. Yeah, right, so whether that's so. Now you have two but we're not getting.
Speaker 1:But we have two layers of removal there right. In this interview, in this conversation, we are not looking for any kind of objective truth okay, sure the truth get in the way of a good yarn. But just letting you know these are real stories that were told to you by someone that was there and then it's been tuned in your head over the last 20 years.
Speaker 2:So one good story of creating the show in Montreal and then moving finally into the theater space once it was built in Vegas. So Steve Wynn owned Treasure Island at the time and he was building this new casino called Treasure Island. Now they're branded as TI, so in case we say TI later on in this conversation, it's Treasure Island. But a really fun moment was in Canada they used the metric measurement system and in America I guess they're using the imperial uh, you know feet you know feet and inches or whatever and so, as the story goes that I heard, um you know, the finale of muster, when it opened, was a flying trapeze act.
Speaker 2:Oh, do you see?
Speaker 1:where this is going.
Speaker 2:Where this is going, so they built a flying trapeze rig in montreal and they measured it and like it was whatever 33 centimeters from this distance to this distance, and then when they got to Vegas it was 33 inches, or something like this, I mean it it was a they, they used unusable, it was they used a numerical conversion yeah, so they were just.
Speaker 1:Everything that they had was two and a half times as big as it should have been or there's something like this yeah, there was some mistake like this. It's a mistake that we see in Spinal Tap.
Speaker 2:The Stonehenge, because there's only one dot, which means inches.
Speaker 1:Two dots means feet. So, they get a mini Stonehenge for the stage show.
Speaker 2:So I don't think the trapeze rig was so big that when you first looked at it you're just like, oh, this is ridiculous, like in Spinal Tap, right. But it was to the point where they apparently again what Pat had told me was they go to do their first training of the swinging pass and then they go to do the jump and they're just like feet away from each other on the catch and they're just like, wait, this is so weird. We're nailing this stuff up in Montreal and now we're down here and it doesn't work. And then somebody had found some sort of mathematical error, apparently on the conversion of the units of measurement but it could have been on anything, because if you it was like if the wires are too long for it exactly and it hasn't been completely 100 uniformly translated so something, something was wrong part or one section.
Speaker 2:Uh is left in, but the point but then the point being just that, yeah, they definitely weren't rehearsing in pegas because they were still building the, the theater, which again is such a powerful for me it's such a powerful moment because it was the first time that cirque du soleil had a custom-built theater for one of their productions, which these days is still pretty unique, but it's definitely not unheard of. I mean, now we have, like Joya Joya and the Mexico Dinner Theater it's its own custom space and they're just opening up another one down there and they're opening all these shows in custom spaces these days, so it's not like, well, that's crazy, but it's true.
Speaker 1:It's crazy for people like you and me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we make a new show and we don't make a new building.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we just do the same show in the corner of the room, but for them, this was the start of something big, and it was also yeah, which is significant here it was the start of something new, and they didn't know if it would be big yet.
Speaker 1:No, no, we know in hindsight. Yeah, this was something big. Yeah, exactly, there still is multiple shows and at that point there was none. But I also heard somebody say on a voice message to me when I said they wanted to talk about this mention, that they had done some shows in the car park yes, so that wasn't there it wasn't a very first circ show in vegas no, no, exactly, and this is a whole story which I only have a little bit of it in my brain.
Speaker 2:It's pretty accessible on oh, there's a bunch of podcasts. If you have the time, you should really listen to the Franco Degon Criss Angel interview that they did during the pandemic. It's one of the best interviews I've ever heard from both of them and there's a lot of Cirque du Soleil lore and process that comes out during that interview. Wow. But basically what happened was, um, you know, soleil had been courting different people in Vegas over the, or they had different people in Vegas had been like kind of checking out Soleil over the years. When they started to pop off in the in the late 80s. Uh, you know, and it all comes down to to their show in la.
Speaker 2:That was a make or break moment for soleil, which the whole other crazy story um, that uh, this guy named tom basically brought soleil to to la and was just like, well, we can't pay you any money, but we can bring you here and kind of give you an opportunity, and it was make or break. They spent all their money on one-way tickets to LA, the Soledad, from Montreal, and they're just like well, this is it. Either we go big or we go home, literally Like either the company will pop off or it will close. And that was the gamble this is the famous gamble and it paid off. And so because of that success from this one festival in LA, of course it caught the attention of people in vegas who were also trying to sniff out new ways to make money and and new forms. And also vegas was transforming at the time too. You know they're starting to open places like treasure island, which is like a pirate themed, like they were trying to make it more family friendly, more more, because it used to just be.
Speaker 2:Vegas was just built on gambling right and like kind of all the vices of whatever. And so then Vegas wanted to become a more well-rounded family destination or get new clientele in. So Soleil pops off in LA, vegas kind of takes note oh, maybe you should come here, maybe you could do a show here. So they're in the talks for a while with different people. They were gonna do originally a show at Caesar's Palace, they were gonna do a production there, and so that didn't pan out. But what happened was Steve Wynn brought Nouvelle Experience to the parking lot of the Mirage, and so that's where I actually finally saw Nouvelle Experience in person.
Speaker 1:And they set that up with the big top, yep they had a blue and gold big top.
Speaker 2:Sorry, blue, white and gold. It was a white and gold big top and it was like a test. It was like a like, a kind of a dry run of like would.
Speaker 1:Cirque du Soleil sell tickets in Vegas because at the time this is also kind of interesting when I was reading in a 20-year jubilee book which is now 20 years old uh, it, uh. It just said as well that it part of the significance of them opening there and doing that was that there wasn't really circus in vegas at that time and in fact there wasn't really entertainment of that kind, and that's yeah. Earlier, but I don't know when, but siegfried and roy, the fact that they opened changed the style from a kind of lido uh for uh, was it for for berger?
Speaker 2:yeah yeah, like the what we think jub Foy Berger yeah like the what we think Jubilee or something, maybe even yeah, like which was later. Dancing Girls yeah and Feather Headdresses and all that Big Band, big.
Speaker 1:Band and yeah, so that was like that was the style a lot.
Speaker 2:then we had Rat Pack with Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr exactly that sort of stuff and the fact that so, zigfried and roy, they made the first big production show of, of like the new. They kind of innovated that era of just like big, huge production values, of big special effects cats, I mean tigers and panthers and all this sort of stuff and big illusions and it was just, I think so from what I understand, which isn't very far, but the the zigfried and roy production was just bigger than anything that had ever come before.
Speaker 2:It was just more ambitious and just more spectacular and kind of ushered in this new era of mega spectacular Vegas show. That was this huge production thing that was.
Speaker 1:Which is totally fascinating because we think of Frank Sinatra and that now and Sammy Davis Jr. But it literally was just a big stage with two dudes going around telling jokes and singing songs and stuff Right, which to me is like yeah. But would just sell tickets like hotcakes or whatever, if they even were given for free at that point. Yeah, yeah, it's just about the gambling, but it's so like lo-fi in terms of what the production offered, or so it was the charismatic single person.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly. And then Siegfried and Roy turned it more into a spectacle.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, and then so then it was like but you're right, so there wasn't circus in Vegas, then in that way, and so then they did N, they did new bell experience in the mirage parking lot, and then that was kind of proof of concept of like, oh yeah, we can make money doing this, and that's when uh, did that go well?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's, that was like a test. And then they saw like, oh yeah, people are buying tickets to go see this thing, so we need to have this here now. And then the thing was well, I'm making this new casino treasure island, so I want to have this here now. And then the thing was well, I'm making this new casino Treasure Island, so I want to have a custom-made show into my custom-made casino, which in my mind was I mean, it was a real risk, it was a complete unknown, it was just a gamble. I mean, it's Vegas. Literally, it's just gambling of like, is this going to work or not?
Speaker 2:Even though New Real Experience had done okay, they didn't know if a permanent like nobody knew Frodo, Like it's so weird. Today, when you go to Vegas, you're like oh yeah, you know O's been there 25 years and now Mysterio's been there 31 years and you kind of get blasé about that idea. Can you imagine back in 1992 when they're building the casino and they're just like we're going to put a permanent? It was the first permanent resident Cirque du Soleil show anywhere. They didn't know if it was going to work.
Speaker 1:Which is, yeah, that's right, it's become such an institution for those of us who have been to Vegas, but the general public of the world it's. I mean, here in Stockholm maybe it's a little bit different, because you do actually have a circus building that's called that at least. It's like there was a time when one built a building for circus and they could actually see circus in it, but that is hundreds of years ago, or at least a hundred years ago. So it's not common anywhere in the world to build stages that has circus in it yeah, I see what you're saying the and the.
Speaker 2:And the flip side of that too is you have to. You have to remember back in 1992, um, you didn't make a show that played more than like two years, even two. Even to do a show for two years long was wacky in my, from my, from my world, just to say you would never make a show and think, oh, this is gonna, this is gonna last for 10 years. That that was only reserved for like cats or phantom of the opera or other broadway shows that would have like a long run of, you know, for years long. Even cirque du soleil, back then they were kind of on a two year cycle of like, well, we make a new show, we tour north america, do that for a couple years and we got to make the new show again to tour north america again, sort of what we're talking about all the time, like reinventing yourself because you're playing the same market around where you live or you know someone.
Speaker 1:And then you go. Well, I to play the places where I'm already big, or at least they've seen me. I gotta go back to the same places, so you're gonna got to come with a new show.
Speaker 2:So imagine that that's kind of the iteration you're on of your timeline and now you're building a permanent venue, the show, and when Mysterio was going to open they didn't know Would it last a year, would it last two years? And so I mean the first thing I mean. So they signed a 10-year contract at first, which was just insane. It was just insane, it was just crazy. Like who would ever think this could last 10 years there?
Speaker 2:And in fact, in that first contract with with the casino, um, mister had the, the clause that cirque du soleil had the clause that they had to change 10 of the show each year and then, the theory being it wouldn't be the same 10 of the show that changed, but rather different 10 of the show changed, so that they knew Because again they're on this cycle of like, well, we need to reinvent what we're doing to keep getting the ticket sales. So, ostensibly over 10 years it'd be a different show by the end of the 10 years. Right, like every year, they change like one little part of it, and then by the end of 10 years, though, it's a completely different show. You know, um, you know that didn't end up happening, because it became a huge success and then, of course, the show mutated and changed, but they didn't feel that pressure anymore from the market, that they were imagining that they had to keep reinventing it or whatever.
Speaker 1:I mean it's it's uh, it's been a long time, if it ever has been a time, when circus was like kind of, uh, hamlet or midsummer night's dream. Well, you know, everyone knows the story of hamlet or Midsummer Night's Dream. Well, you know, everyone knows the story of Hamlet. So we're adding a new scene every year to get people excited. That sounds idiotic, but with Circus that is the case. When I joined La Clique and we did the first season, 2006, the first season I did, it was never certain that I was invited to the next place. They played a couple of different places and when they came back to Melbourne, well, you've already played here and it was kind of spoken that you'll get a couple of little seasons or whatever.
Speaker 1:And as happened with Mystere, happened with La Clique and as happened with Mystere happened with La Clique, where Brad Halock and David Bates realized that the magic of that show wasn't just everything around it.
Speaker 1:There was also a core cast that solidified over those first few years and a lot of us then that original group stayed in that show for a decade or more. So it was also the producers of the people, of the creators of it. Like with these guys in Vegas, you realize that you have something where you can change certain things around, like we'll talk about. Of course, when you have a vision of a show and you've made it, sometimes people are injured, sometimes things happen and certain people are out, but you have enough of it to be the core of it, but that thing that doesn't actually have to change. That person doesn't need to come out and do a different act or a different thing, because that's partly why they come there. It's nice that there's some difference, but not really and that's unusual in circus that then the show plays for 10 years, 12 years or whatever that we did, or 31 years.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine being in the creation 31 years ago and the decision you made back then, yeah, like. Imagine me and you. Right now we make a show and we're just like oh Frodo, maybe you come over here and you take my hat, and then, 31 years later, you're still coming over and taking my hat, or whatever it's like.
Speaker 1:And the generation of at least of circus performers go. Oh, you know it's. This is basically one of those things where Frodo goes and gets the hat.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is what we want to create in our show, right, because you know how they do that, that chemistry that happens there, and the joke and all the beauty, poetic or whatever it was, that moment was yeah, yeah, yeah. That was often, as we know, in creation. As much as you look at something like that and you go, I could not imagine that, yeah. But then you go down to it and it literally was those two artists and Dragone looking at it and he grabs the hat and goes that's nice, Do that one more time. Right, do it one more time.
Speaker 2:And now that becomes iconic and it becomes iconic because I mean it's paul mccartney. When paul mccartney went to see the beatles love show by cirque du soleil in vegas, you know there's a moment in the documentary when he leans over to ringo and he says, oh, it's so funny. You know this song that they're playing right now. I wrote it on the back of a napkin in a bar. I scribbled out some words and now look what it has become. It became manifested in this multi, multimillion dollar production in Vegas, and he's just like the smallest beginnings.
Speaker 1:And if you haven't seen it already, the Beatles documentary Get Back where I had this extraordinary experience of seeing Sir McCartney sitting there at the piano and not knowing the words to Let it Be. And he doesn't know it because he hasn't made it. But I can hear when he's going in the right direction and I can hear when he's making a mistake and he's bringing out a song that's you can't use it in a show because it's too cheesy or it's too.
Speaker 1:You can't put let it be, or like of course, when the situation is right, then that song comes on and maybe that becomes and it just lifts the roof off like a cliche cliche has become, it's been said so much because it's such a powerful emotion. And when the cliche comes alive again the girl finally wants the boy in the end of, or fails to in the end of, romeo and Juliet or whatever, like then that thing. When that's told authentically, then it's the greatest story ever told. But it's but anyway, but but him not knowing it as well.
Speaker 1:But yeah all his weird choices being taken and now it's in the show. It's late well.
Speaker 2:So so we're kind of jumping into like this, this so far, a little bit of the business side of like wow, what a crazy risk. We're gonna solidify and concretize this show.
Speaker 1:We don't know if it's gonna sell tickets, but we're gonna build its own, its own space and and we're gonna double down on this bet and we're gonna take this risk from a business side and you're also saying, like business wise, to show this, that they don't, that apparently backstage areas and stuff for warming up and all that for the artists are not particularly well thought out or developed at this show. Because, yeah, in a in a sense, that the people, the creators of the show and the space are still hedging their bets. Yeah, because if this fails, yeah sorry, yeah, often now I think they even still do it today people, the creators of the show and the space are still hedging their bets. Yeah, because often we do have this fails.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry, yeah, often now I think they even still do it today where if you're going to build a show space, for example, you don't know if that show is going to work or not. So let's say it fails. Well, maybe it would be better to think ahead and if it did fail, we could already build into the architecture now certain uh, the way that it's built, that it could be transformed, uh easily into another type of venue. So, for example, instead of building you know, a bunch of hidden huge training rooms and dressing rooms and stuff which would be complete waste if this show fails, um, yeah, so for example, on mystere, that's why they don't really have any dressing room. I mean it it's very, very small.
Speaker 2:The training room is very, very small. There's really no backstage space in Mystere. A lot of the props in Mystere, during the show and after the shows and stuff, they're suspended in the air on ropes because there's no place to put them on the ground. They have to lift them up on ropes to have enough space backstage to maneuver the whole show. Because the architecture was like, well, we need a stage, we need some seats.
Speaker 1:Beyond that, we're not going to go crazy here we're not going to invest more than X amount of square meters.
Speaker 2:Which is the same thing for Absinthe, by the way, which has been there for what? Nine, ten, how many years now? And the dressing room is in the parking lot. I mean, the dressing room is the parking garage literally go into the parking garage yeah, some of the parking has been made into temporary yeah, temporary for 10 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it when, when absinthe first opened there, it was just supposed to be there for three months or something, yeah, and then it's just like, oh, it keeps getting extended and keeps getting extended. And so then eventually, though 10 years later, you're still in the parking garage. But when you got me through.
Speaker 1:Your friend got me into the michael jackson show and they actually said hello to the mj1.
Speaker 2:Their backstage is also not amazing okay, sure, oh, that's that's the easy story, though that's because mj1 theater was not built for mj1.
Speaker 1:Okay, before that it was mama mia, before that it was lion king, etc so they don't warm up in the way that jugglers and that I don't know, or or it was also like I mean I mean, if you're doing mamma mia, no one is needing to hang on the trapeze, nobody needs space.
Speaker 2:But it could also be like hey, let's open, mamma mia, let's build a theater. I don't know if this is gonna last. It could be the same. It could be the same thing too maybe it doesn't.
Speaker 1:It's not actually good for anybody because it's a generalized utility space, but hey, you want to see a nice backstage, go to car.
Speaker 2:So by by the time when car came around in like the mid-2000s, they knew that you know, mystere was was popping off. So they're just like, oh yeah, this is gonna work, we're gonna. We're doubling down on this coughing, and so their backstage is crazy. It's like, I mean, it's so much room, there's this rec room and there's the training room and there's the dressing rooms and the rigging rooms and it's just, it's massive. Um, so, like the later, the later, cirque de soleil shows that got custom built theaters like oh and and ca, for example, they have nice backstages, but, um, yeah, so mj1, it was a repurposed theater, yeah, and then also, but with mystere, when they originally built it, um, they're just like, yeah, well, we're, it's already costing us enough money yeah, we have a can't afford and also that the the, that, the architectural plans.
Speaker 2:They just surfaced like a couple months ago on the internet. You could find the drawings of what was going to happen to the mystere theater when it failed, like they already had the architects. Architects had already drawn up plan b and a contingency plan, just how they were going to transform it into not even in the negative way of if it failed, but when after yeah, a year or two yeah and the ticket sales dropped off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like one would expect yeah happen because everyone had seen it yeah whatever, which obviously then, 30 years later, didn't turn out. People kept coming back and back, or not necessarily coming back, but new people keep finding it and seeing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Tickets kept getting sold. Mystery of it all. Yeah, so you know that's kind of the we could say the business side of the risk of the whole thing. Yeah Well, so so so you know that's kind of the we could say the business side of the risk of the whole thing.
Speaker 1:But then on top of that, the thing that I still to this day can't kind of get got any clear image of that in my mind but how did this develop into the show so mysterious and I don't have for the full timeline here of of how it, how it went, but when I watched mysterious after having haven't seen other shows I've seen oh beforehand, and always arguably the most, uh, extraordinarily developed of the circuit imagery I remember someone saying when you watch it, just keep in mind, don't try to sort of follow the story and be irritated that you don't get it Right Because everything is going on at the same time and each character might have a thread or so.
Speaker 1:But you might just watch it and take it in as just a large dream and grab from it what you can or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So by that point it had become so fully developed, right, this artistic image that you talk about now that we saw. But Nouvelle Experience, it develops and it's interesting then to see what I saw then, mystère how I could see more what I think of as traditional circus.
Speaker 2:I get you Roots of circus.
Speaker 1:I see what you're saying, you still see that in the way that the show was built up Right, and it felt really awesome for me to go and go. Oh, my god, here it is and I could see the timeline almost of how it, yeah, stretched into, yeah, some of these other shows. So mysterious that this sort of crucible of yes yeah of. So maybe we just like sketch out some of those things, or like the artistic theme well, I think, yeah, absolutely we can do that theme.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, yeah, absolutely we can do that.
Speaker 2:And and I think what you're bringing up right- team I meant yeah, oh, the team, yeah, but that the, the um, what you're hinting, I mean, what you're touching on is this kind of I think it's still how they they market mystere is, they say, you know it is the first one and it is the kind of classic. I mean it's funny. Now they say it's the classic cirque style, but what you're talking about there is that that structure still there, whereas the later productions from soleil went into more esoteric, more abstract territory and lost some of that, that internal rhythm from the connection of the past, of the old style, of the traditional circus or whatever. Right like, we still find that structure inside there. And so the thing that, the thing that, um, yeah, we can dive into the team there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Cause this, this is really yeah.
Speaker 2:But, but, but. But it comes from that, that, that LA, the LA risk of like we're going which?
Speaker 1:show played, then Nouvelle Experience.
Speaker 2:No, no, before we reinvented the circus yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, and maybe it was, I don't know, we can look that up, but it's maybe even the one before that, but it's before Nouvelle. That's what I wanted to say. Though. They go to LA, they take this risk, it pays off. So they're going to make a new show, and instead of about me personally, but like, if I go to somewhere and I bet my entire existence and it pays off, and I kind of break through and I get another and I get a chance to make something else new, I would maybe not just take the whole risk again on the next new thing. I would maybe, you know, just repeat myself. You know what I mean. I would be a little bit conservative, or I would hedge my bets, or I don't know, I wouldn't be so bold, maybe because I just bet it all on, you know, red 32 and it, and it paid off. And now I'm going to throw the dice again. And would you bet it all again? No, maybe you would be a little bit more hesitant, right?
Speaker 2:But no, when they did Nouvelle Experience, they went crazy. They went, they went, they went, they, they went full out with all their ideas. They didn't hold back. They didn't kind of say, well, this. In la, we did this and this and this. So let's just keep that as our format and we'll just keep doing that, with little incremental. You know innovations, but you know more or less it's the same thing. Maybe different costumes or something.
Speaker 2:No, with nouvelle experience they're just like what can we do now? Like let's go to the moon, because now we broke through in la we, and they really got not an inflated ego, but they really took the pride of like we succeeded in la and now we have the chance to make something new. So what do we want to make? And they took it seriously and that's this. That's this core team of uh, you have michelle crete, again the set designer. Uh, franco dragon, who's the director. Deborah brown's choreographer, lucla forte light design. Dominique lemire costume she sadly passed away a couple weeks ago um, and then you have like renee duperre or benoit jutras, who did the composition, the music, music, and it was kind of this little core team.
Speaker 1:And they were basically as much as circus always have there has been music and there has been lights and there has been, but not in the way that they started to really take it on by the time they came to Mystere. They were really wanting to make a Gesamtkunstwerk where, like in opera, where Wagner and that way, where the, the story and the, the music and the building and the lights and everything was part. So, and the ballets and there was dancing and all the arts was, was now important.
Speaker 2:I think they, I think they already started that back from the beginning of the company and it was just that the the more opportunity had, the more they were able to manifest that vision. And I think Nouvelle Experience again because they had the level of success in LA they could even manifest it even more in Nouvelle Experience. But then when they were making this custom-built theater in Vegas, they could literally build the world out, they could build the world they were in. And that has always been kind of the hallmark of of their shows, of this idea that we're going to build a world and transport you to a different world. And of course, many of their storylines like key dom, like we, we go in, like you know, the main character, the girl, falls into the different world.
Speaker 2:I mean, we've seen this all the time this trope, but the, the, because they were building this, this, this custom-built uh theater in vegas. They could literally take the core ideas of the show and manifest them and to the entire architecture. And these days we have in our world, in many different ways, this, this, uh, buzzword, immersive oh I do, immersive theater, um, which these days everybody's doing, immersive theater, because that seems to be a buzzword that people think will sell in whatever different capacity. But just to say that Mystere Theater was literally immersive and it was maybe the first immersive experience I know of.
Speaker 2:That doesn't mean there weren't things before or parallel going on in the world, for sure, but especially in terms of circus, mean that's, they literally built out the architecture of the space from the themes of the show and you sit inside that theater. It could not be in one way more immersive in terms of the architecture. And then, secondly, the staging or the choreography of franco and debbie brown and stuff of bringing the performers out into the audience. Literally it was also. I mean literally immersive and not just a buzzword or trendy figurative. You know metaphor is actually was immersive and um, and so again, just that they took this bold risk to not play it safe and just to do the same show in LA but throw it in a theater in Vegas.
Speaker 2:But to say no now, steve Wynn's going to build this theater for us, and so what can we do? That's like. And same thing for Michael Motion. Hey, michael's going to make a piece for Cirque du Soleil and instead of him just being like, oh well, cirque's a big company, I'm getting paid a lot of money, I better lock this down and make it good. He didn't. I mean, of course. He said I'm going to make it good. But he said I'm going to make it good in a different way of saying I'm going to take the biggest risk I can and it's going to give me the biggest payoff I can have, and that's how it's going to be good. And so he made.
Speaker 1:That's okay. Do you want some water?
Speaker 2:Sorry, you have to edit that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, do you want to drink some water or something?
Speaker 2:No, I'm good. So he made For me the best piece of juggling I've ever seen. So that that piece that michael motion made for mister um, it's, it's the most iconic, it's the most uh, expressive, surprising, amazing, I don't, I can't uh give enough superlative words to it. It's my favorite piece of juggling ever.
Speaker 2:Give a couple of, just a couple of images actually from it, just so we have some sort of little Absolutely so, basically, the main premise of the technique was if you take a square sheet of metal, let's say a meter across, and you turn it so it looks like a diamond, you turn it, you know, and then you curve it along that diagonal like a diamond. You turn it, you know, and then you curve it along the diagonal into an S shape and then you roll the ball on this curved piece of metal. That's the piece, but the piece was in many sections. So the first section was without the metal shapes and it was three performers. It was Jean Bernard, steven Regatz and Patrick McGuire was three performers, it was jean bernard steven regats and patrick mcguire, and they just started off with with, uh like small size rhythmic gymnastic balls, one each doing contact juggling, from which michael motion of course made and he made a choreography with three people, uh, with this contact juggling stuff, with these larger balls.
Speaker 2:And then there was a little interlude where micro motion used a bunch of sculptural forms of bent pieces of metal, um, that the green lizard who was played by carl bauman at the time, from moses, pendleton and palabolas company, um, which was also an amazing, you know. They had, like you know, 10 or 15 of these huge, you know, six meter long, whatever curved metal poles that they lined up and intersected, and then they would kind of rock them back and forth on the floor and it looked like a physical representation of a wave, of like an ocean wave, which is, of course, then the next part of the piece is these curved pieces of metal that you roll balls on. That also is like ocean. Ocean imagery, though. Um, a lot of the, a lot of the imagery michael was researching too also kind of went back to like greek and roman mythology and the coliseum, and what did? What did pat tell me? Pat told me that him and steve and je Jean were the three stars in the belt of Orion.
Speaker 2:That's what Michael had told them. You are the three stars in the belt of Orion and just stuff like this, you know. But in case you're interested or anybody's interested, you can see the act on YouTube. Okay. We'll have to put links in the show notes sure, yeah, there's a bunch of different versions of video now on youtube the interview conversation oh yeah, with chris angel and chris angel and also to this act yeah because what's interesting here?
Speaker 1:in a podcast that has previously, with you and me, explored the extreme limits of juggling and you are famous for doing that. So when you do a gig in holland, the people who book you go. There are people here who are really excited that you are here and that they just see you as the juggler. But right in community and the world who knows who you, for you are, for who, what you are and what you do that you also explore these territories where some people look at it and go. I don't even know if it's juggling.
Speaker 2:So imagine this You're in MicroMotion. You've been pursued by Soleil for years to be in their show. Finally, you come to some sort of behind-the-scenes business agreement I don't know what that was, but it must have been heavy, I mean major for him to sign up to be on board finally and you're this guy who made this triangle juggling- thing in this crystal ball juggling thing and it's what they want, yeah, and instead of like oh, let's get three triangles with three bounce jugglers in here.
Speaker 2:No, I'm gonna research. This thing I've never done before. I'm gonna curb this piece of metal and try to roll a ball on it, and that's going to be the piece that I put on the stage in Vegas which doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:Millions of dollars is at stake and you don't settle for something that is so unbelievably innovative and unique and iconic as the triangle is, and you don't just go, but to actually him as well going. Well, if we're doing that, I'm taking it to the next level. And what is the next level? I don't know. I think it has to do with rolling balls on pieces of metal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which to me, when you say it, you go right, you have a different kind of imagination than me, but he saw a whole dimension there.
Speaker 2:It would be fun to talk'd be fun to have to talk to him more about it. I've talked to him a lot, a lot about it, but I wonder if part of it wasn't like it could also be. Um, I'm gonna leverage the cirque du soleil opportunity to explore my limits or like. I have this idea, like let's just take the money and fund it and maybe he didn't really care so much about the cirque du soleil angle or the commercial success or whatever. And there's a really fun story about that with the piece, which is that Steve Wynn, he's legally blind, so he doesn't see very well. 35 million or whatever the final budget was on paying for this show. I mean, I mean, guilla liberte got steve wind to fund the creation, like he bought the show and he built the theater, and so steve is there on opening night to to quote unquote see or to attend, because he's legally blind. He's attending the show and not seeing it so much. And after the open opening, uh, charavari, uh, the opening scene of the show, uh, this, this charavari. And then, uh, baby francoise does the red ball act. And but then the first real piece of the show, the first real major, you know, production of the show. The act is the micro motion piece. It opens the show after a red ball from baby baby francoise.
Speaker 2:And I have to say you know, obviously I saw that piece. That piece was only in the show for a couple years. Then they moved it to key dom, which is a whole other story. But when I first, when I saw the show in mystere, I have to say the people were impressed by it, and I don't mean impressed as in like by the skill or something, I mean impressed as by the emotional effect of it. They were impressed in the greatest of ways of like they were moved. They were moved, yeah, they made an impression on them and so, uh, but the thing was it was a 10 to 12 minute long piece and it was mesmerizing and hypnotic. It was this wave, rolling and circular and and repetitive and just kind of trance, like in movements, and so the audience was completely entranced, I mean for real and and. But they weren't very vocal or there wasn't a lot of clap, there wasn't a lot of sharp points of like you do your triple backflip and you're like hip-hop. It was just like this very hypnotic music and yeah, and it draws you in, but it doesn't maybe make you exclaim or react vocally or clap a lot. And so Steve just got irate and was just like what have you done? This is a disaster. I hear nothing.
Speaker 2:The show opens and then it's just silence for 10 minutes and this is a disaster and we're going to lose all of our money and this is, like you know, this is completely terrible all of our money. And this is like you know, this is a completely terrible. And it came to the point where, after that show, him and gila liberte almost came to blows outside the theater. They got in an argument and steve said um, you have to fire those three people tonight, I don't want to end the show tomorrow. And uh, I don't want to end the show tomorrow.
Speaker 2:And yeah, so Steve Wynn and Guy La Liberté are arguing about this Michael Motion piece this is the night of the premiere, right? And Steve says you have to fire them immediately. I don't want them on my show anymore. This is a disaster and how could you dare do this to me? And this is terrible. And Guy stood his ground because Guy actually believed. Well, there was two parts to it. Guy actually did believe in Michael Motion and he believed in the piece. But he also knew if he would cave in to this one moment to Steve, it would just never end right, like if Steve starts demanding things and Guy gives into it, it's just never going to end right.
Speaker 1:He will come in next week with some other idea that he has.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And so Guy said uh, the act stays in the show, and if you don't want it in your show and you don't let it be in the show, we we take everybody and go home like we will be, we will take the whole show away now. And of course that I mean he stood his ground and he won. But there was a kind of concession to the whole thing, which was that Steve then demanded there be more applause during the act, and so the way they solved it was they built in solos, so they each took a solo in the middle of the piece and so that the end of each solo they could have an applause point. And one thing I have to say about that micro-motion piece in mystere is that the first in my I'm going to say the pure, the pure original concept the pure choreography.
Speaker 2:I saw pat and steve and jean do a run through of that piece on the mystere stage wearing training clothes with no lights and no music, just in silence. I mean I might start crying again thinking about that like there was just the most. There was something so pure about that core choreography and technique and so then that had such a substance to it that when you built it out with the costume and the lights and cirque du soleil and mystere and Vegas, it just for me got better and I think that people but there was a kernel of truth there somehow that I think that people in the audience could experience every night, even in this big Las Vegas production. I mean, vegas is not the town for art.
Speaker 1:Not the time for a 12-minute emotional speech without applause?
Speaker 2:Yeah and so then. But then, of course, so that core, that rehearsal I saw, that one day burned in my brain, in my soul, and so that, for me, is the best piece of juggling I've ever seen. The piece with the solos in it, I mean, is maybe the second best piece of juggling I've seen. I mean it was still amazing.
Speaker 1:But also for me, who is interested in the spectrum from art to entertainment, it's like they added a bit more entertainment value to an art piece and it's amazing that they were allowed to and that Michael Motion allowed it and made that concession and to also acknowledge the place where you're performing the entertainment capital of the world, Las Vegas.
Speaker 1:It's like to actually go. We make art and maybe that first thing was the pure thing, but we need to take it from being an incredible conceptual contemporary classic piece to be a little bit more an element of pop music by allowing the audience to be a little bit more an element of pop music, by allowing the audience to be a little bit more participate, actually loudly into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't know behind the scenes, like how it actually shook out, like I don't know if, at the end of the day, how much the audience was digging the piece, I don't know how much adding the applause really helped out or detracted from anything. I think it really does come down to that power struggle between steve winn and gila liberte of just their egos butting up against each other. Because steve winn is pretty famous anyway, like when la rev opened at the win casino. He, you know, you had friends who were in la rev too and they never had a day without rehearsal because steve winn would just change the show every single day because it was his casino and so there, is that there's other shows in Vegas that I have been involved with as well, where this is the case Right right right.
Speaker 1:The producer or the owner or somebody comes in and has some new ideas.
Speaker 1:So there's a constant, but let's wrap it up as an episode here. But, using this, this last bit has been just about one specific act where an example of an artist who's outstanding in their field gets an opportunity to make an act and who don't rest on their laurels of techniques they've created or stuff that has gotten them the gig, basically, but to go into the future with something new, into the unknown, and literally exploring something which, in your opinion, greatest juggling act that you've ever experienced. And that was just one small aspect of it, but it's also interesting. It's the first proper act that was in the show, so it's a great way to kind of look at next, chat about further for the rest of the show, like because the, the space and all those other things. So, uh, thanks that was just absolutely amazing more to
Speaker 1:come more to come. All right, there will be three more episodes in the Mysteriobsession explorations and they will come out every Tuesday now this month. So prepare to go deep on Mysterio and into the mind of Jay Gilligan. And if you do enjoy this, it would be awesome if you just right now just click subscribe on the podcast. Wherever you're listening to this right now, just click follow or click subscribe. It'd be really awesome, best way to support it at the moment. So that's all I'm going to say for today and apart from that, just take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.