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
133 - Does Meeting Your Heroes Kill the Mystery? Jay Gilligan & Captain Frodo explores Cirque du Soleil's first Las Vegas show. part 3 of 4
When does unmasking the magic behind a theatrical masterpiece enhance rather than diminish its wonder? Join Captain Frodo and Jay Gilligan as they peel back the curtain on Cirque du Soleil's Mystere, revealing the fascinating evolution of this groundbreaking Las Vegas production over its remarkable 31-year run.
Franco Dragone emerges as the passionate, sometimes volatile creative force who shaped Mystere through improvisation and emotional imagery rather than traditional storytelling. "I work with images and emotions," he would say, crafting scenes that resonated on a visceral level rather than an intellectual one. The conversation reveals how his creative vision about "the origins of the universe" translated into the show's iconic elements - from the giant inflatable snail named Alice to the baby with the red ball who captures audiences' imaginations.
Behind every theatrical wonder lies human reality - sometimes beautiful, sometimes troubling. Dangerous falls from stilts in fog-slicked conditions, and the clown who was fired after cutting the wrong powerful man's necktie during a pre-show bit. Yet these stories don't diminish the magic; they highlight the extraordinary commitment required to create something that transcends ordinary entertainment.
Most compelling is how Mystere has evolved while maintaining its essence. Original elements have been modified or removed, performers have changed countless times, and budget cuts have reduced the cast size. Today's performers bring new relationships and chemistry to characters that didn't previously interact, breathing fresh life into a production that refuses to become a museum piece. As Jay reflects, "It's the difference between making a movie and making a show...the show is happening actually for real, every night."
Discover why meeting your heroes doesn't always destroy the mystery - sometimes it reveals something even more magical: that ordinary people, through extraordinary dedication, can create experiences that continue to resonate with audiences for decades. Subscribe now for our final episode on Mystere, where we'll explore what we can learn from knowing one thing deeply.
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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 as we continue to explore Jay Gilligan's obsession with mystere. But, of course, this is just a jumping off point to understand art itself, and the deeper we delve into it, the more we learn both about Jay and about mystere. But I would of course like to look at it, and we're going to do that today. But we do it even more so in the final of these episodes, episode four, which comes next week, where we look at the show as a sacred object. And what can we learn from really knowing a whole lot about one thing?
Speaker 1:This is a theme, of course, that echoes throughout all of the 140 episodes or so of the Way of the Showman.
Speaker 1:By mastering the craft of performance, by being someone who faces the other way to the audience with something enjoyable and enlivening to show to the others, we become masters of this one particular thing because we spend so much time thinking about it, and it's with this in mind that I would like to look at Mystere not just as a specific show in a specific casino in Las Vegas, but rather as a picture of performing itself. I hope you can join along with me and Jay as we explore Mystere in just such a way. So last time we ended up talking about the world that has disappeared and trying to put people into the frame of mind of what it was like to actually experience this for the first time in 1994, which when it opened at Christmas 1993, you were still within the first months of it before it's been there for a year of it happening. So you saw, experienced the michael motion act in the show. Yeah, uh, as it was in its pure form.
Speaker 1:yeah, before they had taken the applause moments came in and then, when later, was it that the applause moments came in?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think it was pretty, pretty quickly, because there was 94. Yeah, there was the fight with Steve Wynn. Yeah yeah, it was some ego trip.
Speaker 1:Amazing. And of course, the guy La Liberté. He's the head of everything, but from the microscopic stuff that I know he is not necessarily a hands-on kind of guy that is in the creation room and is telling I think, no, no, arms needs to be further up or further down yeah, I think already by then he's he's more in the in the bar hanging out making the power deals, like already then back then.
Speaker 1:I think that was his vibe, I don't know for sure which is, you know, it's at the time when I remember, when I had my first encounters with managers or whatever, and having this epiphany we're working with sc Scott Maidment from Strut and Fret that he thrives in that situation too, when it's after the shows and talking to the people and making the deals, in the moments where I am cringing and at the time, just want to be backstage and hang out and people are 100% Like I didn't feel comfortable there and he has his. He's a creative guy and does amazing stuff as well now, but at that time he wasn't doing as much hands-on producing as what he's doing now. I mean, that's probably a generalization, but anyway, just seeing somebody who thrives at just that thing and Cirque du Soleil started just after Cirque du Soleil and their shared, their divergent ideas of what a show is has led Cirque du Soleil to where it is now, which is quite obscure and really, and Cirque du Soleil gone in the other direction because they did have someone like him who brokered multi-million casino building deals. Yeah, yeah, which you know.
Speaker 1:I I don't know any, really any stories about him either, but it's like as much as he can say this is my thing and I created it, maybe in some ways at least, that golden era that I also fell in love with. It was in particularly one creator, because of course it was the sound and it was the staging and everything. But the thing that I where my heart lies most is with the performers and the actual expression of circus in a way that I didn't understand and that was franco dragon, yeah, who was the creator of all of that?
Speaker 1:So you got some stories about actual creation, when somebody was there and was directed and how they came up with. We have spoken a little bit about the baby with the red ball that has been mentioned and you mentioned almost like a sort of joke on the trip advisor thing and it was a big baby and a big snail.
Speaker 1:I don't get this I hate it yeah, so just some of those kind of images is that are iconic for this show and what the yeah, what the hell is going on there, yeah, yeah no well so.
Speaker 2:So with frank code, I don't. I don't have too many, uh, behind the scenes stories. The only thing I can say in general that I remember because I also I've forgotten more about mister than you will ever know, like literally just over over 31 years. My memory is terrible. I used to know way more than I know now. I didn't write it down, but I do know that he's not easy to work with. Apparently it's like the rumor, like he likes to yell and scream a lot.
Speaker 2:Um, I did start to interview people for a new project I'm working on about the creation of new male experience. I've interviewed two or three people who went through that creation and the stories about franco, I have to say, are not very pleasant. Just to say, and it's the same, pretty much same era as mystere and I know in general, um, he has this reputation. He had this reputation of just screaming at people and the. You know if we want to look for more like maybe fun or concrete evidence or whatever the creation was like.
Speaker 2:I mean, one thing mystere did, besides filming sorry, cirque du soleil did, besides filming all of their shows, was that they um often made behind the scenes documentaries, even going back all the way to nouvelle experience, and most of those you can find on youtube these days, though some are kind of obscure, um, but there's a lot of footage of franco, um, in the creation of like key dom, for example, but also there's I lot of footage of Franco in the creation of like Kidam, for example, but also there's I have a couple of clips of Franco staging the micromotion piece in Mystere, and mostly it's just Franco on a microphone on the stage and the actors are always improvising, the performers are always improvising, the performers are always improvising and it's franco kind of screaming out directions and kind of franco surveying the scene as it's playing out and then kind of encouraging people to okay, yeah, frodo you're giving me that look like, look more, more, more, look over here.
Speaker 2:No, no, now, now go over there and kill the rabbit and like kind of in the moment, so he I know he generally liked to to work with improvisation and um, kind of in the moment, so he, I know he generally liked to to work with improvisation and um, kind of build the, build the scenes from what the performers were giving him in the moment. I don't think he was so preconceived, for sure he had images he started with. But then there's all these interviews with him, but basically he always says like I wanted to come from the performer and I want to see who you really are. And he has all these theater exercises. And I don't know much about Franco. I know he came from this theater background and he has this whole devising technique and I'm sure other people are really technically into that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just saw that he was working with theater students also in Belgium in Belgium and that he was at also, like before they got on to work with him that he was working at a circus school in Belgium as well yeah, introducing theater to them. So he did have a specific kind of experience with crafting, mixing theater and circus, and that was one of the big things that he had.
Speaker 2:But in all the documentaries I've seen of him working, he always says I work with images and emotions and basically he just works with images that evoke emotion. And again it's that kind of nebulous like it provokes an emotion, but like maybe not so concretely with a concrete meaning, but it's rather it's provoking some sort of something inside of you when you see the image. Whether it's provoking some sort of something inside of you when you see the image and then you're kind of in your own mind maybe putting things together or at least riding that wave of the feeling or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the interesting thing then is that I don't know so much about him, but I did work with him on the show when he was the director. What show it was what. When he was the director? What show it was? What are you talking about In? And now Was it Mystere. I should have researched this.
Speaker 2:You were in Mystere.
Speaker 1:No, it was Franco Dragone directs Captain Frodo in the show. Never realized no.
Speaker 1:It was not, it was in 2007,. I think it was on the second year that La Clique, as we were called then, went to Montreal for the Just Pour Rire, just for Laughs, festival. Yeah, and the first year there had been a show where they also have this huge gala, three and a half thousand seats gala or whatever. Yeah, which is that first year that I was there. I was, I asked ahead of time and signed two contracts to both be in the french version of that and in the english version of it, and the english version of that show anyway, one was hosted by john cleese, so I was in the show that was hosted by john cleese of course and then the second take of that thing was hosted by, uh, george costanza, who now I'm from seinfeld, who I now can't.
Speaker 1:I don't know why jason alexander.
Speaker 2:Jason alexander, yeah, yeah, so he, jason Alexander, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So he hosted that second show and then the next year this cabaret show, so grand TV spectacle that was put on by Joubert, the guy who owns the festival, and all this, and it was a circus-style show directed by Franco Dragon. Huge production to do. I don't know how many shows they did there, but it was always sold out and filmed to be on TV as well. So with a bigger budget, because even at 3,500 theater with several tiers, it was huge. Even then, I'm sure, once you hire Franco Dragone or you hire John Cleese who comes out and is going like, well, you know, I have just had this terrible divorce which has led me to be here at this stage in some hack town in the middle of nowhere, having to plow through this comedy one more time. And it was brilliant, he was brilliant, but anyway.
Speaker 1:Then the next year we got there and it was all these performers that we knew from before and some that we met that was in town to be in this big circus show, and then La Clique was playing and kicking ass. We got to Montreal and our show was like the second coming of christ, because cirque had just been doing all their things and all and and and. Then we came in with this screaming authenticity, yeah, that our show had, yeah, this individuality of the different performers and everything, and we were lauded in the, which is why we came back and did the second run the year after. So it was very good the first year and the second year we were always afraid how was it going to go on. The second return it was just as good and it was amazing.
Speaker 1:And Frank had started their creation over at the big theater, okay, and we were doing our small show and he had had and we knew from knowing people, otto Wesley the magician, the crazy German magician, and Danny and Adina who did the crazy roller ball act. They were the people that we knew before it started and they invited us to come and look and told some stories and gone. Oh, it's rough. So what you were saying about yelling and all of that, it was like that wow, and we met some japanese.
Speaker 1:Was it a japanese diablo guy who we got to talk to because of dennis in the show, one of the english gents who speaks fluent japanese and about whatever. Anyway, just halfway through some of these rehearsals there was just being screamed and this dude was fired on mike and told that, yeah, to just go home. Yeah, and they did. Yeah, they got him a new ticket and sent him home before the show had happened. Yeah, and then at some point, after franco had seen la clique, then he came back I'm just telling a story or whatever. But then he came back the next day and then he said I don't want this, what you have given me okay.
Speaker 1:So what we're going to do is that we are, um. So what we're going to do is that we are everything that's in the second half and I'm rejumbling the things, taking the people out of the first half and we're putting them into the second, and then La Clique will be the opening half of this show. I see, wow, and Joubert, who had hired us and everything, and we all negotiated new deals and whatever. So for that we did this. It wasn't all of the shows, it wasn't all of La Clique. I see it was a bunch of us me, david O'Meara and the English gents Wow, this is incredible.
Speaker 1:So we went over there and did versions, usually almost straight. But the reason also why it ended up being in the first half was that we had shows. Yeah, we had an already existing season, sure. So then Joubert lined up cars to drive us from one theater to the next. So we warmed up in our space and did everything and put costumes on Right, got picked up, driven over to the big theater, go in the back, walked straight in and do all the stuff. Yeah, and order was a little bit with. We could have the bath late because he closed the thing. I was early on in the first act in the first half I see, so we were.
Speaker 1:So there was lots, several cars, yeah, taking us back and forth to fit it in. Amazing.
Speaker 2:So did Franco ever say anything to you then after that kind of major surgery on his thing?
Speaker 1:No, so they were doing the thing well, how are you normally introduced? And I said, well, I just came up, but the thing here now is that he treated me with complete respect for the whole thing. Wow, in every way, like he just sort of accepted and had found me as this sort of jewel of like. I saw it in this place, I want that on my stage, which felt, of course, yeah, unbelievable at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and still does, and he brought it in. And he the main thing was that he didn't, because there was another crazy scene that happened beforehand and the only direction that he did for me was that he didn't want me to shout and say here comes Captain Frodo, because that was not his style.
Speaker 1:So the previous scene ended and there was a hat stand and there were some things in there and I was to go in in my tennis costume with the rackets and sort of hide behind the thing, because there was a bit of a madhouse theme of the first thing. So there was people in white coats and like lunatic asylum kind of thing, so they were taking people in and out and whatever.
Speaker 1:I can't remember the details because, no, we didn't get any video, didn't get any, so't get any. So we did these 10 shows or something, in here, whilst we were already doing a sold out season and the other thing. So he directed me to come over, but he was sitting in the audience and he had an assistant that was on stage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he would yeah, yeah say things, yeah, and then, without talking more to to dragon, he would sort of translate and go, oh, he should try some of these things. So maybe the whole thing with me only lasted like maximum half an hour or so of where he told me to go in and looked at my act a little bit oh funny, didn't do any changes of it. Also because he that was the scope of the show he was to create the framing and not create, yeah, individual acts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he was also so then he focused more attention on the second act, which I never actually got to see. Yeah, the second half, yeah, which was now half the performers, pretty much so about what happened in those other ones which from my friends there I knew that it was rough, yeah, and Otto.
Speaker 1:Wesley ended up performing with us in Paris a lot, his crazy magic or whatever, yeah, and he was also untouched by Dragone. I see so somehow the authenticity of him and I don't know if it's me that I attracted towards and cultivate the friendships with the people where you feel like there is something here that is genuine right and that also that dragon saw that. So he was him and his funny wife krista, who they accentuate her ugliness and eccentricity in her act. She's such a weird she and weirder even when she's in the show like that. He just bought it and and it was fine and they were like in this bubble and not being screamed at, but when he saw something that he didn't like.
Speaker 1:I think it was unpleasant and the fact that he comes in and can do that, that he says this doesn't speak to me. I want this show and I take it here and I put it inside my creation because I want this kind of stuff, and then we can take them on another journey in the second half. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:So that's my story with I mean there is this documentary about Soleil where Franco's being interviewed and he says ah, sometimes they say I scream too much, and then it cuts. So I mean he was obviously self-aware too, of like, yeah, of what he was doing.
Speaker 1:I don't know but sometimes that also as much as I've been in other shows or so where people have been like that and I have been the guy of being Dragone's assistant right when somebody is stomping their feet quite literally and yeah, and being angry, yeah, and on bad occasions people have been crying, yeah, then I have been there needing them to pick up the pieces and to continue the thing, but also my nice guy approach of doing it. I'm also then using that in difficult situations when an artist is holding on to something which is not as far as me and the producer then are, it's not serving the whole Then I can also use that as the good cop, bad cop routine.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah to the point that every now and then they would. It would come when I would say something for soiree or for the show, a production, where I would say something and then the performer might say is this coming from you, right, right, or is it coming from from management? Yeah, yeah, and I can then go. Well, management says these are the criterias, like working with dennis's bubble act right well he did.
Speaker 1:He did one show before I started creating with him and it was a long thing and he didn't say anything and whatever. And then the Brett had in his mind he's gone, like it needs to be three, four minutes, tight, just the way that it is. And then we were talking a lot with Dennis and we tried to make it. And bubbles is a slow thing and I kind of went well, we need to cut it so that it is shorter. It can't be longer than the tennis act because it's such a slow thing in the whole show and whatever. But if we make something which is six minutes, even if it's the first one, like on the first showing to him, show it so it feels significantly shorter If you didn't add in one more bubble or so later because they need to get to feel the thing, and if it's kicking ass, no one is going to ask anything yeah.
Speaker 1:But if they're unsure about it and it feels slow on top of it, then you go. So then I had my tactics of talking directly to artists and going. We're doing now, which is like I'm speaking, my action plan, because I believe in what you're doing, but I also believe that there is something in it. There's a reason why I am selling 300 tickets during this whole season of my solo show. Yeah, and this dude in the same festival sells 35 000 well, I mean so, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2:That's so cool. You got to work with franco and I don't know about him screaming, but there is a story that maybe kind of ties that together with you. Were talking about the snail earlier. Yeah, because there's a snail in the in mystere called alice and originally when the show opened, there were three babies actually.
Speaker 1:Uh, now they they kind of quickly cut the third baby because there's now, there's two, there's a big baby there, and then there's a little girl, baby, girl, baby. Yeah, but there used to be three babies so girl baby is a little more acrobatic, isn't she? Yeah?
Speaker 2:yeah, so when the show opened, there was three baby carriages on stage when the show. When you come into the theater now, there's two, two baby carriages there baby carriage hallway as well.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, anyway, and so and so um, but so then the, the snail, you, it grows in size during the original version of the production, um, which they basically cut out of the show now.
Speaker 2:But basically it was a little toy pull toy, like on the floor on wheels, like a little snail with a little rope on it that the baby girl uh would pull around during the show. And then at one point you would see in the transition before the half dome, for the hand-to-hand from the Eve and Mario did this act when it first started, the show's first started, and then it was actually the I always say their name wrong the Lorador brothers, labrador brothers from saltimbanco, oh, yeah, they hand it. Marco polo, um, big, strong, slow, yeah, the strong, yeah, but so then the, the snail head would peek out of the pit and it would kind of show its head. So they had a little. They had a little uh prop that was basically a head, a snail head on a stick, and the snail head was, you know, a couple meters, three meters big, I mean it was huge snail head and they would kind of from the pit they would and then show the the face to the audience, like all of a sudden the snail is growing larger.
Speaker 2:And they had other kind of deconstructed snail parts too. They had a tail at one point, I don't know, but anyway. Then at the end of the show comes like kind of the punch line to the entire show is a gigantic snail and gigantic.
Speaker 1:How Like? What's the size of this snail?
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know Like well yeah, how embarrassing that you asked me. I should know.
Speaker 1:I should know the measurements, yeah, but is it no? No, is it too high? Or is it a three high of people? Or is it a four high?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like three high.
Speaker 1:I mean it's's like you know, like six meters, six meters and then like seven meters long or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's an inflatable shell, so it's like a. It's like a kind of a.
Speaker 2:The slug part of the snail is like a construction yeah, like a hover boat kind of yeah with, like the wheels underneath it or something, and then the, but the shell itself, this big spiral shell is it's inflatable. And then, yeah, so the snail's name is Alice, and so Benny LeGrand used to be Wayne, this clown Wayne, whose stage name is Benny LeGrand. Benny LeGrand was in a bunch of Cirque du Soleil shows in the early years and he used to be the clown in the show in Mystère for many years. He actually got fired for a really funny thing, or not funny thing, apparently, but his pre-show and I witnessed this in person many times going to see the show his pre-show consisted of walking around the theater when the audience was coming in and he had a big pair of scissors.
Speaker 2:And I mean a big pair of scissors but like real scissors, not like a prop, but like actual sharp scissors yeah, so just a foot long, not like novelty size made out of plastic, but like serious scissors and he would walk up to men who were dressed in a suit and a tie, which people used to do back in the early or like back in the 90s, to go see a show, like you, kind of dressed up to go see Mystere, it was kind of that kind of thing, and it was like it was a top ticket price and it was a night out on the town.
Speaker 2:It was like a serious thing, you know, and he would walk up to a guy who was wearing a suit and he would put the scissors underneath the knot of the necktie and snip the tie. He would cut the tie. That was the bit, that was the gag, that was it. And then he would walk away and of course people would see it. I mean they had a spotlight on him and stuff and of course people would see it. I mean they had a spotlight on him and stuff. It was, you know, opening show, animation, stuff, wow, and that was the bit, though that was the gag, that's confronting.
Speaker 2:And then one day he snipped the wrong guy's necktie.
Speaker 1:And was it someone famous, or just somebody powerful, or somebody who was it?
Speaker 2:was somebody powerful and rich who sued uh treasure island and sued mystere and sued cirque du soleil for damages, yeah, or whatever it was, and then basically the, the fallout was basically like in the end he was placated, this guy scapegoated by I mean, I mean the guy who got the necktie, he, he was kind of like calmed down. The bargain was they would fire Benny LeGrasse. So that's how Benny got fired.
Speaker 1:So he was doing his job, but the company kind of went we need to protect ourselves and whatever.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Yeah, I don't know the details.
Speaker 1:No but they also needed to to this guy go. They could always go. Oh, he is a crazy guy, that guy.
Speaker 2:He always does something, and then he did that to new. I don't know, I don't know. So so anyway, so, but but but back to franco screaming and alice the snail and benny legrand. So apparently, uh, when the show opened around then there was a bunch of press and there was a infamous newspaper interview with benny legrand where the interviewer had been talking about the creation of the show and what's the show like, and this and that. And then they had seen the show and they said to Benny, like yeah, by the way, at the end of the show there's this huge snail that comes out. What's that about?
Speaker 2:And Benny had made some sort of remark of like well, that was, that was about this big bowl of cocaine that we had backstage when we created the show, and kind of as a joke, but I, from what I recalled, there was maybe some cocaine floating around the creation. So I'm not saying that franco was like doing cocaine and directing the show, but I'm also not saying he wasn't doing cocaine and directing the show. And I don't know if that contributes to him, like you know, being manic, which apparently he was manic many times, but who knows if everybody was hopped up on cocaine or not I didn't just have consequences, though, when he said that oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So there was like a huge sorry. Yeah, there was a huge backlash, like obviously the company was like you know, you can't, benny, you can't go to the newspaper, you can't joke about it, and no. But I also don't think benny was joking, I think he was straight up like yeah, well, we were like I raised.
Speaker 1:If you're the crazy guy that cuts neckties off.
Speaker 2:You could end up joking about that yeah, you could try to play it off as a joke, but the company went. This is not okay oh, no, especially back, no way, it's never okay, of course.
Speaker 1:No, yeah it's never okay to do it at all, but to mention it, it's a crazy thing that it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean speaking of Mastare and drugs, though I do remember a couple of things which Pat told me. So there was this Korean Plank Act and the Korean Plank at the end of the act they would do a four high and they had a bunch of other. Like you know, there was like a. I think there was at one point a double back to a three high and these things and Pat said all of the, so a lot of these.
Speaker 2:Like I said, they got these world-class performers to go to vegas and these days you know vegas I mean you know me, I love vegas but like it's kind of a hotbed of like talented people. It's not crazy to be a great performer in vegas, like having your life there. There's thousands of performers there now with all the soleil shows back in 93 it was the only show in town. So they had all of these great world-class performers in Mystere who were bored out of their minds being in Vegas they couldn't take it because, I mean the town, you know, there just wasn't people around back then. And so Pat said drug use became pretty rampant, also because they had the disposable income to buy drugs, like from the salary and their in-man place, and no doubt they're easy to obtain as well.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, exactly Because of the place that it is, people come there and it's like the capital of hedonism as much as it's entertainment now as well.
Speaker 1:When you look at what's on the billboards of what's driving up and down the roads there with the dispensaries for marijuana or for girls on the thing, it's like it's everything that's yeah that the church has warned you. There you go, so they had money and access.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the acrobats got into cocaine and maybe, if we put those stories together, maybe that's from the creation. But uh, he told me more than one time like like not all the time, but like not just one isolated incidence, but sometimes the acrobats would come off stage after the Korean Plank Act with their ear hanging off the side of their head on cocaine. They hadn't noticed that when they caught the flyer on the three high or two high or whatever, that the person's foot had like ripped their ear off to the point where it's like hanging off their head and it's just like blood. He said it happened a few times like they'd come off stage and be like dude, your ear is like hanging off your head. Like what? Because they're just all like completely high and that's how. That's how they would get through the day. That's's eventually. I don't want to speak for Pat, but I know he really struggled in that environment, being around people who were so nihilistic and self-destructive.
Speaker 1:But then that act was moved out of the show.
Speaker 2:So they eventually changed the Korean plank to a proper teeter board and I don't know much about the technical difference, other than I think a teeter board is a little bit shorter and more stiff and it throws you a bit higher than a Korean plank, which is a bit slower and bigger. Yeah, at some point, but that didn't happen until like the mid 2000s or something. Yeah, right, but I mean, who knows how many acrobats they rotated through?
Speaker 1:Anyway, these rumors are like also one of the things that we all know about any level of the entertainment industry, whatever kind of abuse that there is of drinking or so, when you're doing just one concert at night, right Like, look at Keith Richards.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:It's like he is alive, isn't he? It's a miracle. But that these things are going on, and also this thing that you're rock stars or you are and you're coming to Vegas and you're these crazy stars performing in the most absurd show or whatever, and you'd be treated like a star a lot of it has where those things are on offer and it takes a certain people. That's their ruin.
Speaker 1:They lose their career yeah people don't in that industry at that time may be there now. This is a complete no-go with most companies and it's like whether you are in the casino, where these are into a whole different realm and the corporatization of everything and these things of health and safety and everything. It's like the amount of stuff that we had to do on that first day when I arrived at Mattapolis Next level as well of what they do to protect it, but anyway.
Speaker 2:Well, one thing I thought was really fun I mean I'm such a naive dude, I don't drink or do drugs or anything, smoke anything but I didn't think about it.
Speaker 2:Culturally, cirque du Soleil became a mainstream success and because they became commercially successful just in general as a company, it did afford the financial ability for their artists to buy drugs.
Speaker 2:Just in general as a company, it did afford the financial ability for their artists to buy drugs just in general. And that phenomenon, because before that circus people were kind of broke I'm not you know what I'm saying Like, like you could kind of do that rockstar lifestyle of like, oh yeah, I'm just going to be rich and like buy drugs and have this kind of nonstop party which I'm not saying that circus people didn't party before but just to have that level of stability of like financial, like income, just to like be a drug addict or something on a party level, of like going out. And you know all those, all the crazy Cirque du Soleil parties they used to have back in the day with like how much money they would spend. And Guillaume Liberté I mean that's how he met George Harrison, who they got into the Beatles show and stuff, that's how they did that collaboration because he had a big party.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was a party company back in the day and so it's also not to be pooh-poohed the role of lifestyle and and excess and fun and larger than life and all that Of Like, like you say You're in, maybe love wouldn't Literally wouldn't have happened. And how long did that last? 20 years, 18.
Speaker 2:No about 10 years. 10 years yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So we have a show which is still, which is still 10 years, which have been doing 10 shows a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 50 weeks of the year. Yeah, for 10 years. Yeah, that's a.
Speaker 1:That's like a suitcase full of shows no, that's a lot of shows, but it's like and that and the the truth of the matter, I think, is that people drinking cocktails or whatever they're doing, sitting in the corner having a conversation at the time when they're both excited about having seen the circus and excited about the show and excited about the concert, rock and roll, whatever it is that's been going on, those conversations where somebody sit there and literally go, oh man, what would be cool would be to take the music that you made George Harrison, imagine this, you do this and then, and that it literally is in those pictures where the whole livelihood of so many wonderful artists who worked with Cirque's love just keep making up shit about that show that I know nothing about, but I know some of them.
Speaker 1:I know two of the fools in that show that I know nothing about, but I know some of that. I know two of the fools in that show who played the fool on the hill first, uh uh, jolly good, fella rumple, still skin, and then nate cooper, yeah, like how all and that's just. That's just one role in one show over a few years each. And then looking at what that show offered and it maybe it actually came down to a real moment when two people were partying and the right things were said and the right frame of mind was there.
Speaker 1:So, for all this hollywood excess and for what keith richards has developed through the whole affordance of being a rock star Like yeah, it's interesting Anyway it's because, in one way, it is literally people that used to be in a show that can't be in it anymore because their drinking has affected them so much that that line that we go. No one's really telling anyone what to do because everybody likes to party, but when it starts to infringe on your ability to do your act, that's when it that's where this sort of red line comes. If you're not in a corporate world where it just says if you test positive, then you're fired, yeah, which is another sort of level or whatever. But there's at those parties some of the most crazy things, for we know Myster is in there because, but I think I think Myster too, was also because they hadn't had a permanent show yet.
Speaker 2:They didn't have a resident show. That was just ongoing open-ended run. And you're also learning as a producer and as an artist what it means to do 10 shows a week for a year, for example. I mean, of course they've been touring Saltimbanco Nouvelle Experience, we Reinvent the Circus, but that's different than 10 shows a week in the same place, just week and week, weekend, week out.
Speaker 1:You know boredom is, is, uh, is a force of evolution. I think maybe I've mentioned this no, no or whatever, but the fact that we're bored human beings get very easily bored and we then decide to go. What is actually behind that hill? And then eventually you go there and you find, oh, this is good, I'm going to set up in this cave, here's also a cave. And then your kids will at some point go.
Speaker 1:This is boring what's going on over there and that's creates a steady migration out of africa and all the way down to australia in the first wave, and then all the way up into Europe and everywhere else in the second wave or whatever, and there is a steady increase. Or you can follow where you find the archaeological diggings of the paleo humans who were going out. You can find them dating back. So you see that they were moving at a kind of. When you look at it in hindsight, then you go every 5,000 years they would have moved 5 000 kilometers or whatever. So they're making roughly one kilometer a year, but in pulses or whatever. Right so it's like. And that boredom is a an actual force of creation and of of affecting your behavior. And if you're always touring, which we were doing with la clique, where we go to next town and we go to the next same same tent, but you open those curtains and you look out the backstage, it would be a different town, yeah, like Sydney, and then we were in Montreal and then we were in London, and the town would change but the crew and the circus would be the same, and that is an exciting kind of thing. So then, but if you're in in the show and all of a sudden, you're in the business of doing ten shows a week, which is not and that's not a trivial thing to deal with. Yeah, and we've spoken about this before. You've been on stage and literally going, like I can't remember if this is my first or second show. Yeah, and me doing, you know, street shows in Edinburgh, doing it on French Sunday. We're doing lots of shows and I'm going and I'm almost finished, so I'm about to just say thank you, I'm out of the straitjacket, I've done the rackets and I'm out and I go. Did I say anything to you about money? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I actually get the response going no, oh, I'm supposed to have said and then I do my bottling speech right towards the end, and normally I don't do this in the end. But anyway, here's my hat, that was my art. Come forward. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like where you're confused as to what's going on. Yeah, and you know, groundhog Day basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that is when the shows that I've been on too, which have had long residencies, those people who are prone to fall off the circus wagon and get on another wagon to such an extent that they need to alter their ways, or that they now go. Well, what do you do? Oh, I don't drink. Oh, yeah, full time, yeah, it's pretty much a full-time occupation now, just not drinking, yeah, and then I do my job like that, but I'm, yeah, I'm I'm now needing to spend a lot of energy on that. So that's, that is a real life thing. And I think when you do those long seasons, a lot of repetition, lots of nights, because you're in that culture, and every time anybody comes to see you, it's like a festival, it's a party. Yeah, it's the most amazing thing. They're going. What a big snail.
Speaker 1:And then you come out and go was that you in there, when they're like that encounter, where they're, you're in a party or in a dimension of extraordinary experience. So whenever you're encountering people, it's like crazy and you for you, that becomes after a while. You need something else, which is like you read the the dirt or you read these books of the rock stars who like basically gone. In the end I couldn't, couldn't have a normal thing unless there was like 11 girls and a dog and and a box full of crazy toys.
Speaker 1:I could not, I wasn't interested, so you've jacked everything up until there's nothing left of what's real or whatever. So I can see that. And where else to experience the edges of that than Las Vegas?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I mean, that is the town, right? Yeah, well, I have a bunch of. I just have a few little like random uh reflections maybe to to say about mystere, before I forget them. Just not a good segue into anything, but, um, last time I was in vegas, uh, when I was visiting you last easter, I went to mystere and took a tour of the theater and I went down to the, to the pit where the. I talk about the stage going down, so it's, it's the pit down there. I the I talk about the stage going down, so it's, it's the pit down there.
Speaker 2:I went down under where the stage goes down and I met a guy named Monster. He said his name was Monster, he was a bit older and he said he used to be a stage hand for Siegfried and Roy. So that was kind of a cool little like moment of coming together of of. You know, siegfried and Roy had innovated this new production show and then Mystere was kind of the symbol of another style of new production show and Monster had kind of worked on both and he was running the pit automation, you know, pressing the button to go up and down and taking care of the lifts and everything. That was pretty amazing to meet Monster down there. And also I remember because I didn't see Mystere on video or anything before I saw it in person the first time and I told you about the stage lowering for the first time.
Speaker 2:But I did know because I was really keeping up with all the news and the rumors and stuff. I was really into Soleil and I know a worker died making the theater because fell into the pit. Oh wow, and and so they were. And I'm not saying that when I was in the theater and the stage went down I was like, oh, someone died, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:There was some sort of like. You know there was something there. I knew these details before I went. There was some sort of context unconsciously in me. I'm like that pit maybe it's a little bit dangerous, like I know a worker like fell in and died and also talking about falling into the pit and things, so one which is kind of funny looking back now with the longevity of the company. But I think they kind of tried to make Mystere a little bit of a greatest hits Because before Mystere they were really trying not to repeat acts in different shows Because again, the touring circuit, I think, was much smaller. You know you have a two-year, maybe, life cycle of a show and you're going to go back to the same New York, chicago, la, whatever so you don't want to have the next show look like the past show and they really tried to make the acts different every year and so one thing was Looking good.
Speaker 1:No, I think these have stopped working.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Shall I stop this just a second here. No, the microphones, the lights are off them as well.
Speaker 2:Maybe the battery ran out, it probably ran out of battery, but that's okay.
Speaker 1:I'm just stopping that and this is still recording, so either I'll swap to this now or we'll. Whatever we can take these off.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So yeah, but we're good here. Yes, okay, so yeah, but we're good here. Yes, yeah, that's all still gone. So, okay, and I'm just going to push record on this one. Yep, oh, that was head started on that one. So I'm doing this and now we're back with these two. All right, good stuff.
Speaker 2:No, so so they, so you know, before muster, they were really think being a little bit more careful to not repeat any material. So if you have Chinese pole in one show like Saltimbanco, we're not going to have that in the next show.
Speaker 2:No, they're not going to put it in an allegria or whatever. But Mystere was kind of an exception. It was like, well, we're doing a residency. And they had actually done a little bit of a kind of a greatest hits when they took a show called fascination which was a mash-up between nouvelle experience and saltamanco. Fascination played in japan for like a very short time and uh, chris lashua um, who he did? He did flatland bmx freestyle bike. He was in fascination. He became the a lighting technician in mystere and in his free time he learned german wheel and then they put him into key dom as the opening act of the show. And then of course, chris laschew went on to to make his company cirque mechanics, which is kind of a fun little story there. But so with mystere they had this kind of, in one way, greatest hits up, the whole company of like a history, a retrospective of cirque, which is kind of like I get it, they've been around since 84.
Speaker 2:So for them, you know, 93 that's that's like a long time, yeah, and for me too, but not looking back from then, it's like a retrospective in 93, of when you're almost 10 years old, yeah but uh, so, so, so, in, in, um, in, in, in, uh, mystère, they put a bunch of stilt walking because, uh, so cirque du soleil actually started with a bunch of stilt walkers, atque du Soleil actually started with a bunch of stilt walkers, gilles Sainte-Croix and you know, and there's the famous walk he did across Canada or whatever, on the stilts, and so they had these four-legged stilt creatures.
Speaker 2:And so Patrick and Steven and Jean, they had to do different cues in the show besides the micro motion act, and so one of the cues they had to do with these four-legged stilt walking creatures. And you could say steve was in this costume that looked in one way like a giraffe, let's just say like a like, you know, a long like. He had crutches for his arms, like long legs on his arms and long legs on his feet, and then he had like this uh big, uh like long neck headpiece, so it looked like a giraffe basically yeah, I've seen that and so what happened was on the premiere of the show.
Speaker 2:It's the premiere. So like we really need to like, uh, pump it up, man, it's the premiere. Yeah. So they had these ground fog machines and so they're just like we got to put a lot of fog. It's the premiere, we're gonna pump it up. But the ground fog causes condensation on the floor like little like like what? Like a thin layer of water film, you know, because it's like kind of cool, because it's ground fog, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so in the finale of the show, apparently, pat told me that steve takes like two steps out on stage on this big giraffe, stilt, stilt creature and he slips and falls over and he knocks himself unconscious. So like, basically, you see this guy walk out from the wings and just go, bam, and then they pull him by the, by the stilts, the legs, they drag him back. So you just see this guy, bam, he doesn't move, and then after a while just like slides off stage because they're pulling him backstage. And that same thing happened again, uh, to a friend of mine who was in the show. There's a scene, um, right before the clown act that's called used to be called like hell, which was basically the stage lifts went down and then this they would put really, uh, bright red light with a bunch of smoke effects and it looked like the, the you know, they were down in hell, the fires of hell, and there was a four-legged stilt creature that would come up on the lift and then they would do the box act, the clown act, in the second part of the show and it was the same thing.
Speaker 2:That happened again. It was just like the condensation, and also in Vegas it's like kind of they have to deal a lot with humidity, like there's a lot of, you know, in the, the desert climate they have a lot of problems with like these things. So it was like humid, it was fog, and he just slipped and fell and he fell off the lift down onto the and I mean was just really lucky that he didn't maybe die or get paralyzed or something. So there's there's a couple of stories like that with the, with the bad luck in the show man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's scary and it's a non-trivial thing the danger that is involved in doing these huge stunts that people do in the shows but also in environments like this, with enormous pieces of moving machinery and nimble people squeezing in hair and air and getting around.
Speaker 2:Well, we talked about, you know, like the show opening after the Chateau Ravard opening, and then it's Baby Francoise with the big red ball. So this big red ball, I mean it's you saw it, you know it's what like a meter and a half big, or maybe I mean it's freaking huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so that when a grown man is standing up and hold his hands down, you sort of got your hand. You got to bend your elbow a little bit to have it on top of the ball. Yeah, it's even maybe bigger.
Speaker 2:But this ball it's like a workout ball. I mean it's thick, thick rubber. It's made of thick rubber. I'm always surprised because the premise of the act is he takes the ball and throws it into the audience and I'm always so surprised. It doesn't even like whack someone in the head and crack their neck or something.
Speaker 2:But what happened was at the end of the show originally, or it still happens now. But what happens is at the end of the show, in the finale, they take the red ball up into the sky and they open the grid and they drop the ball from the grid down and then he's and then the baby's supposed to get the ball. And the first time pat told me the first time they did it. They they're just like, yeah, yeah. Then we dropped the ball from the sky and they dropped the real ball and it came down and just smashed the, because there's lights in the floor and it smashed the first light and it bounced and smashed the. The second, like the completely obliterated the lights and just like thank goodness no one was standing under trying to catch it at that.
Speaker 1:So now, when?
Speaker 2:you see the show? They drop the red ball from the, from the sky. But it's, it's a, it's a representation of the ball. It's like basically a wire framework with cloth over it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, more or less dropping a balloon or whatever, like a giant balloon or something which again in my mind, I think that that ball in the end looks terrible.
Speaker 2:I think it's so dumb, it's not even the same size or the same color or anything. But it's again when you hear the story from Pat, because like if you don't know the show and you're just like, oh, then they drop this weird looking thing, that kind of looks like a ball. But then you story from pat and oh, that's why they're doing that time.
Speaker 1:Something that weighs, how much does it weigh? Two kilos, two and a half, three kilos, whatever they of, of it's not, uh, that plastic or latex, whatever it's made of. When you drop that and it falls for 25 meters or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those two kilos it's like.
Speaker 1:It's like you're just someone's just thrown a big thing at you as hard as they can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so kind of fun, kind of funny little story there.
Speaker 1:Because, as you have gotten, and I think, as this is going on and on, we're going to talk about you seeing it many times. But one of the things that has happened with that is that you have met a lot of these people and made friends with them to hear which is what a lot of what we're talking about at all, what it's based on. It's direct stories or second or third hand stories misremembered by you. So the faults are with me for asking you these questions at the random day and a random Tuesday in Stockholm, 10 years after the story was told and it's been molded in your head, whatever. But but, be that as it may, you've gotten to meet a lot of these people and, yeah, and one of the things that you've said before is that it's like before you when you first saw the show, and in the first encounters with the show, you just it's it's hard to grasp what it is, and partly why it's hard to grasp is that it actually is a extremely multifaceted thing.
Speaker 1:It's got many stories. It's got this trait of Dragone that is like I'm working with images that has emotional resonance. So he starts with the story of the baby or he starts with this and maybe it started quite simple. It's like we're going to follow the story of the baby. We starts with this and maybe it started quite simple, looks like we're going to follow the story of the baby. We're going to follow, but along the way he doesn't.
Speaker 1:It doesn't worry him that maybe in the creation, when they had two months just working with the baby, what was they? Every day they had a session with the baby and maybe they had the story there and what's been taken out? You're left with fragments that makes up a more dreamlike story or whatever. So all these these things, all these reasons for why you can't grasp it. So it becomes this whole thing with sound and lights and staging and all this that you don't know what to do with. But then, how has that mystery of Mystere? Has it died? Did it kill the mystery to get to meet some of the people and do the research on that, or what has it died? Did it kill the mystery to get to meet some of the people and do the research on that, or what has it happened?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's one thing for me. That's why I keep going back and watching the show again and again, I think, because for me this is a really big deal to try to express, because it makes such an impression on me. But basically, you know, they say never meet your heroes. Right, and I'm not sure. I mean, I've heard that expression a lot in my life. I think I know what it means to me. I don't know exactly where it comes from or exactly what it's supposed to mean, but kind of like, don't meet your heroes, you'll be disappointed if you kind of peek behind the curtain of the magic and you, just you know you'll be disappointed if you kind of peek behind the curtain of the magic and you, just you know you'll destroy the, the illusion that you have and the reality. It doesn't probably live up to the romantic vision that you have.
Speaker 1:It's the wizard of oz. Yeah, very big and amazing, but then, when you look behind the curtains, a dude yelling in a microphone yeah so.
Speaker 2:So it's like, don't meet your heroes. And I can say that's definitely happened to me in my life many, many times that I I've met my quote unquote met my heroes and been like, oh okay, that's. I had a different impression of things, but now I understand and now it's yeah, maybe it's not what I expected. But I say there's a couple of things in my life that I did start to quote unquote meet my heroes, and Mystere is one of them where I got to know people in the show. I got to know these people who played the characters. I got to know what they think about it on a day-to-day level. I got to know about these stories of creation, of why the show is how it is. Instead of me having my own story, I learned the real story and you could say which is what you're asking? You know, did that kind of ruin it for you like, oh, there's this different red ball at the end and we have this story of smashing lights, and did that kind of take away some of the fun?
Speaker 2:And I'd say, in the case of mystere and also in the case of meeting micro motion, which are these two formative experiences of meeting quote-unquote the heroes, um, learning the humanity and learning the, the reality and the kind of basic logistics of things and the day-to-day activities, has only made me more impressed, because there isn't any sort of magic formula, there isn't sort of, I mean, mystere was just made by real people like me and you and, uh, they still managed to make this magical show.
Speaker 2:That, and the more I learn about the show and the more I learn about the reality and the mechanics behind it and kind of the mundane facts and figures. And there's no, there's not like the dressing rooms are very small or I don't know whatever. Like, pick, pick a detail that you learn. I just go wow, and even still all that you managed to create something that meant something to someone like that's so powerful to me, like when I, when I got to know Michael motion, um, there, there's a really there's kind of a famous thing people say about Michael is that when you see his hands he has stumpy little fingers. And it's true, you see michael's hands and they don't look like the hands of a juggler or of a an artist or an elegant pianist or something.
Speaker 1:They look like stumpy little sausages and you just go like how can this guy who made contact, juggling where it focuses all on the hands and the beauty and the beauty, yeah and then you learn and you go, yeah, michael has bad hands and he overcomes that by practicing a million hours a day and that, that.
Speaker 2:And you go, wow, that's even more crazy that he it's not some magical fingers or magical genetics or dna, or he's not a. He's not like a mythical creature, he's a mere mortal like us. Not only a mortal, but like he has a setback, even a physical like. Maybe this you know, his hands are just like sausage fingers and yet he has made them dance like angels or whatever you want to say right and so I don't know, with michael, like uncovering the work has made me even more I don't say impressed, but connect or like in awe of it yeah and same thing from a stare.
Speaker 2:It's like the deeper I dig into these stories and these people and the history, the more I go wow. And even then you still manage to make that show like, even like franco screaming at everyone. But you still manage to put it on stage and it's even more impressive somehow people fell apart because of that and someone was crying or whatever.
Speaker 1:But those who stayed, who wiped the tears and followed the directions and made it so that he was happy and they could or even push themselves further than they felt was comfortable, and created an image that or even still relevant to people 32 years later or even not right, like, yeah, maybe what you just said, but also maybe more just that, like they were all on drugs and their ears were ripped off and they were.
Speaker 2:They didn't care that day and they were just wearing this stupid costume and they hated their lives. It still worked. Oh yeah, like there's still a magic there. I was talking about the actual creation, yeah, but transcending even.
Speaker 1:Yeah but in the everyday life of it as well. Yeah, that it continues now to capture people's imagination, 32 years later, so that I saw it for the first time. So I'm like a newbie with you in the 80s 84 times, which is we're gonna have to talk, deal with that, yeah, but uh, but uh. But that thing that I saw it too, and because I had been, like I said in the first episode where we talked about this of, I'd seen O before Mystere, you saw where it ended up in a way.
Speaker 1:Because in Vegas I would arguably say that O is the culmination of the grandest and most where they have taken the ideas that started. Maybe a novella experience of that has come to the nth degree of where I don't know what after gone, what happened there or whatever. But like that, that's like this, and then I went back to almost like where it started in vegas, yeah, yeah where this is and seeing that and I was go.
Speaker 1:Well, certainly that's that mystere pulled me in in a way that oh, didn't like I get pulled into that. That show with the people going around in the audience and doing stuff to clowns first, the way that they grab you versus the way that the clowns that are in the audience in O, is a much different flavor yeah, more detached or whatever. I saw that there was a magic in there that felt also like it was still had this real strong sort of circus element and the sex elements were still, to a certain extent, actually functioning like circus act yeah, yeah, yeah
Speaker 1:but with all of dragones, magic around it and how it's being presented, whilst in oh, it's almost like the acts have become so deconstructed that you almost don't the skills are happening, but the skills have become invisible and, like we've talked so much about, people are doing Russian swing or whatever and jumping up and doing somersaults into the water and all this stuff is happening. So, yes, that's a circus kind of act, but almost like you don't think of it as acts anymore, it's just one big picture painted.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and that's what I think Franco intended with O. I mean, he said that many times.
Speaker 1:So that's where he's gotten, but he couldn't do that when he did Mystere and me, who is a lover of circus, folk circus see still the folk circus strength in that first show. Yet he has added it with a mystery. Where you just go. This is definitely a show also about something. So just touching five minutes about that. Because the show was first, I read, supposed to open at Caesar's Palace. Then the deal changed and whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a show was supposed to open. A show was supposed to open there but with the same creative team part of it, so they were working and then that didn't happen.
Speaker 1:So then they changed it to be Mystere and the first show. Dragoni has said it was supposed to be about mythology, like it's going to have elements of Greek mythology, roman mythology in it. But he has also said then about Mystere that it is about the origins of the universe or the origin of life. And I mean knowing that now and then looking back at it. Like I mentioned it last time, when you're talking about the void that falls out In Scandinavian mythology there was this, there's the void, but then on each side of the void whatever that means, there is ice and fire and that the world comes into being with this. So this void when you talk about the floor dropping out and how that made you feel almost existentially or whatever, and then the sound comes in from the top. Now that I know because I didn't know at the time that he had said something like that that it's there.
Speaker 1:It's the story of the universe through all the mythologies. It sounds big and pretentious, but it helped us construct images that came from the plant world, a universe filled with the monsters of childhood. So that was a quote from him from the 20-year Jubilee book. He is aware that whenever somebody says, oh yeah, now I'm juggling, but it's actually about life, the origin of life.
Speaker 1:It's pretentious or so, but you also seem to come when you say, oh, he said I want you, the people, when they see you after the show, to be afraid and go to the other side of the road. Yeah, because they're like, and one way you go it's pretentious. But then, when you yourself has gone, well, the experience so, for as pretentious as what it was in his mind, he did manage to channel those things into it. So you, who are an expert because you've had the experience so many times, does the fact that they're talking about the origin of life and all that that the baby does, that have like a? It's obviously the origin of, of human life. We all start as babies and come into a world that they don't understand. Is this a successful, uh, manifestation of these grand ideas?
Speaker 2:man, I know, I know what you're getting at with the question and I know kind of the answer that you might want to have in one way, but I'm going to answer it in another way. Good, because it's so hard to say, because the show is 31 years old and that original cast, who did the original creation with franco, I think they could have embodied some of what you're asking about for real because they were the top of the top performers. I'm not saying that people there now aren't the top of the top, but not all of them are. And it's like a lot of Cirque shows. They'll open with the original cast who they grab these very singular characters Like Slava opened O, slava was in O, but he's not in O 25 years later.
Speaker 2:They got Slava for like a year. So are the clowns there as good as Slava? No, but they're different. We don't have to compare, but just to say it's not slava. And oh, right now, yeah, so the the people in the stair right now it's not the original cast and it's a it's.
Speaker 2:I don't want to say it's a derivative of a derivative of a derivative, but in one way it is it's a copy of a copy, of a copy of a copy, because the show also has gone through so many iterations of artistic directors and over the years that I've seen it 84 times the ebb and flow. I mean at some point in the mid 2000s the show was bad. It's bad and it really depends on who's the artistic director at any given point of how much they want to boost morale director at any given point, of how much they want to boost morale, how much they want to bond as a community, as a family of performers, and also how much they want to either deviate or or encapsulate the original vision, because there's a lot of that ego stuff going on too. As you're, if you're the artistic director, do you want to just keep the original vision of franco or do you want to put your own stamp on it?
Speaker 1:and we see this happening a lot with different cast members Revitalize it, to feel like you're part of something which is happening right now, not just an embodiment of 30 years ago.
Speaker 2:Potentially, yeah, and so all these factors really contribute to the answer to your question, right, and it's like I think when the show first opened, it had the best chance of maybe actually representing what franco's saying with this huge bit, these huge visions. These days, I think it's been completely lost. Maybe it's been found a little bit and lost again and found again, lost again and um, no, I would say. And also, so there's the artistic vision of all that journey. There's also just the logistic, uh, production side of that journey of keeping a show running for 31 years and budget cuts and financial crisis and, you know, the world economy and all these things. Like, since 2009, I think they've lost 12 performers on stage for budget cuts, right, so those 12 performers could have been more embodying the journey of the evolution of life or something. Now they're gone, so like and I know right now, for example, in the show there's a huge push. They have these really virtuosic dancers in the show, because that's kind of where the internal, you know, energy is, and maybe the people with the louder voices are like oh, maybe that transition before the clown act, we could do a little dance there, and then, oh, yeah, yeah, you guys are pretty good we got because they have a strong dance team right now and they didn't have a strong dance team five years, eight years ago or something right.
Speaker 2:So all those factors contribute to the reality of the show and I would say the show today versus the show when it opened, it's a shell of what it used to be. I'm not saying it's a bad show, but in terms of just like, vision of like, it's something else now it is something else. Now it's turned into that sustainable, like we're going to do this for 31 years kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, it's very different than but that's also.
Speaker 1:It does also mean that, of course, the show is alive, it's actually changing, it's actually evolving, it's actually transforming, based on the people in it, I think in a positive way.
Speaker 2:Now they have a really good artistic director. Now they have a bunch of cast members who are interested in that. Now you have RJ Owens and Johnny Miles and Slonina. Yeah, yeah, rj Owens and Johnny Miles and yeah, exactly, they're interested in having a relationship on stage. That never happened in the show before the pink guy, soma Mahdi, whatever his name, it's stage but the pink guy yeah, pink guy and RJ Owens, baby Francoise, they never had a real relationship before.
Speaker 2:In the show before Johnny Miles and RJ Owens was there Interesting, and then before Jimmy Slonina was Brian Dewhurst as the clown for many, many years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he didn't really have that strong of a relationship to pink guy because pink guy was okay, there's been many different cast members over the years but, like right now, we have johnny miles, who's friends with jimmy, and they have a relationship off stage and on stage and you can feel it in the yeah, and whereas before pink guy was, uh, he was sometimes one of the russian acrobats for the teeter board and he was, that was his like opening show cue, yeah, and he wasn't into that style of performing, like johnny miles is as a character, right, like it wasn't his origin at least.
Speaker 2:And so then there, so sure, there was brian dewhurst doing the clown act and at one point pink guy comes out. They still do the gags, blah, blah, blah. There wasn't the chemistry there, yeah, and now there is chemistry and not just a chemistry but, I think, a dialogue off stage like that that that jimmy and johnny have, yeah, and with rj, right, yeah, and so that that trio, that that trio of characters, that's really taking the show in a new direction, as has this new group of dancers taking the show in a new direction, and so I don't think it has anything these days to do with. And they've, they've cut, they've cut all the alice stuff, except for at the end of the show. I think maybe there's one passage now with the little Alice snail puppet on wheels, oh, yeah yeah, yeah, one passage.
Speaker 2:But other than that it's just like that happens kind of in the background of maybe even the Chinese pole, the 20 Chinese poles, and then at the end of the show there's a giant snail, yeah, and then that's it.
Speaker 1:So it's like… this is the difference between making a movie and making a show, because the movie was made and it's a snapshot of something that happened and that was edited together, but the show is happening actually for real, every night. Yeah, and when somebody's cutting and chopping and trying to make the show shorter or whatever, the moments that you can cut is the bit that, because nothing was really gained by the snail head three-meter snail head coming out of the hole, so they go. That means the job is going to be easier for these who have to run to do that. So after another 200 shows, which is over 10 weeks or whatever then you might just go.
Speaker 2:Okay, that that bit can't we just cut that bit yeah, it's just a little bit well, I remember, like maybe we'll do the last, the last story, um, but basically so, steve riggatz, who was in the micro motion piece, um, the costume for that piece was a skirt with no shirt, like, so they were topless and they have like a long skirt to do that juggling piece, yeah, but then in the t, in the korean plank act, uh, the lakai, the george washington's, they would run across the stage in a line of a style, in a stylized running manner, um, in the opening of that piece, and the line, according to franco, needed one more person in that line. So Steve had a cue where he had to like put on makeup and like put on a whole costume of, like the wig and the thing, and he had to run across the stage one time because that line needed one more person. That fulfilled the vision of the show. Yeah, yeah, that's great example.
Speaker 1:That's gone yeah, and it's probably true. There is a world of difference between four people running and five people running. At some point it feels like it's the whole show or it's a whole thing. Absolutely Before it's just a few people, so there's something about that. That's like I fully understand. But when you're doing 10 shows a week and you run around and you go, wow, just this, running across the stage, which literally is 15 seconds of stage time, takes me an hour of solid working to get the costume.
Speaker 2:Because then you have to take it all off for the other thing, and then you take it off again and do the next thing again. So it's like wow.
Speaker 1:So that's the reality of being in an art form that has to happen in front of audiences and an act that really shines and is amazing. When you change the artist who's going to do it, then it might not be the act that shines anymore.
Speaker 1:Maybe Gilkey, when he did there was a kidam or whatever and he'd come out and that was the most amazing thing, but then when it's the third performer trying to do it and he can't embody that magic quite, then the juggling act is nice, but it used to be a standout moment or whatever, and part of the wisdom of that is to be able to accept that it's going to be like that and to see the show for what it is. So when Johnny and RJ and Jimmy starts to have chemistry, that whoever is running it at the moment can see the chemistry, and each day or week, whenever they have the tapis rouges or when they're gone, can we improve this? Can we put the spotlight on that? That's what's keeping that show alive, even if it's not the original thing. It is how, as the show grows up, gets a little older for each performance, we need to adjust to the everyday life, like you and me, not just doing it for the passion anymore, because we've got kids at home and families and mortgages and you go.
Speaker 1:So life gets more complicated because you have lived many lives and many things. So, all right, let's wrap it up there and then we'll see where we're going, because I got more. I'm not finished with you, I'm ready, all right. So I hope that you have been enjoying both last month and this month. We're pursuing the theme which I did start a little bit before Christmas now, and I had sort of a theme for the month or so, because what I do enjoy is to go in-depth at something.
Speaker 1:Sometimes when I listen to a podcast or I see a podcast and I see that it's 20 minutes, then maybe I'm not so interested. If I'm looking at something on YouTube and I want to understand a piece of artwork or understand. Currently I've been on this binge of trying to understand a little bit more about Bob Dylan, which, strange as it might seem, I'm not such a huge Bob Dylan fan of his music, but I'm very interested in him as a person. So in learning more about him I am finding a closer affinity with the music. But be that as it may, when I sometimes then see that it's just like a 15-minute thing, where they explain his all of all of the 60s in 15 minutes, and I'm not really interested because I have been watching a bunch of documentaries that are a couple of hours each and they might be just about one album or whatever.
Speaker 1:So I am much like Jay, someone who likes to delve in deep, and I hope that you are too, and that these themes are something that you're interested in. If it is, then please tell me so, and if you don't like it and you want to have more random episodes with all this sort of stuff, then feel free to say that too, and feel free to subscribe. And until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.