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
134 - Circus Church: When Performance Becomes a Spiritual Experience - Jay Gilligan & Captain Frodo explore Cirque’s first Vegas show 4 of 4
What happens when an artist watches the same show 84 times over three decades? Something magical emerges at the intersection of art, ritual, and the sacred.
Captain Frodo and juggler Jay Gilligan dive deep into the fascinating psychology of repeated viewing, exploring why we'll happily listen to songs hundreds of times but typically see a live performance just once. This conversation challenges our cultural assumptions about consumption while revealing how each viewing of the same performance can uncover new layers of meaning, detail, and artistic intention.
The discussion takes unexpected turns through the landscape of artistic development, questioning whether isolation or immersion best serves creative growth. Jay's incredible story of watching a VHS recording of Cirque du Soleil's Mystere daily for an entire year becomes a lens through which to examine ritual, meaning-making, and the spiritual dimensions of performance. When does a theatrical experience transcend entertainment and become something akin to church?
For performers, this episode offers profound insights about taking your craft seriously, understanding your lineage, and finding depth in repetition. For audiences, it provides a new way of appreciating live performance—not as a one-time experience but as a potentially sacred ritual that rewards those who return with open hearts and curious minds.
Whether you're a seasoned performer or simply someone who appreciates the magic of live entertainment, this conversation will transform how you think about the performances you create or witness. Captain Frodo's heartfelt reflections on the privilege of performing remind us all that great art isn't just what happens on stage—it's the invisible connection created between performer and audience that makes each moment unique, even when performing the same act for the thousandth time.
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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 today we have come to the fourth and last of the episodes, exploring Cirque du Soleil's Mystere. And today I'm trying to really use the lens of showmanship to look at the show as a sacred thing. What does it mean to look at something as a sacred thing and what is the sacred? Well, this is what Jay Gilligan and yours truly explore as we cram ourselves into Jay's son's bedroom and recorded this last of the Myster Conversations.
Speaker 1:I mean, I had such an excellent time hanging out with Jay. I mean I had such an excellent time hanging out with Jay and even though we both were a little under the weather and, as you hear along and I comment on it here and there, I have a bad cough and I'm almost losing my voice more than what I normally do but we still had such a great time and there'll be a few more episodes had such a great time and there'll be a few more episodes. These first ones is barely half of just about half of what the episodes that we recorded on those few days that I had with the Jay in real life in Stockholm, so I hope that you enjoy this more highfalutin and far-reaching and deeper exploration as we try to seek out the sacred in Mystere. You have watched the live show of Mystere 80 times, like 84.
Speaker 2:84 times Something like that yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people might think that that's excessive. And you said something really interesting yesterday about music versus shows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean just the culture and the world we live in, just culturally as a society. There's this, well, I don't know, habit or or attitude towards consuming various experiences, right, and so if you go see a show well, I go see the show one, I you see it one time um, because it's a show, for some reason that's just our, our inclination or habits or something. Um, but a piece of music it would be, it'd be so funny, right, to be like, oh, my favorite song is, you know, britney spears. Hit me baby one more time, and I heard it once, you know, 10 years ago. It was great, I loved, it was my favorite song.
Speaker 1:Loved it, my favorite song. Have you heard of it? But I haven't listened to it since. No, because you know. You know it's a song yeah, but no, so.
Speaker 2:So with music, of course, it's like totally the thing to do is to like listen to it over and over again, um, and even, I think, tv tv shows I hear that a lot now, especially with it we have we're in the age of streaming content.
Speaker 2:So it's like, oh, I'm going through the office again it's like the third time I've done the office but blah, blah, blah. Or yeah, I'm watching this series again and we watch star wars movies over and over again. Yeah, yeah, um, but then somehow, live experiences mostly I mean, in this case we're talking about performances um, you know, even, I think, bands, if you experience a band's concert, you have all these people who follow the band from city to city and that's kind of a, that's kind of a thing you do, it's a thing that a lot, yeah, but for some reason, you know, you go see a show and you've seen it. Yeah, kind of like, well, I did it and now that's done and I know what that's like. And what's funny is like a lot of people are like you know, oh, I saw the Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas. I saw it 12 years ago. It was really great.
Speaker 1:I really great. I loved it. It looks fantastic. It's all 12 years ago, yeah, and I wonder why.
Speaker 1:That is because I've thought that before as well, that it has to do with the oh, I don't know what it has to do with, but that when you're, uh, what we are, that in certain ways of expressing it you can call novelty acts, it's like you see it, and it's new and it's a gag, and once you've gotten that gag, then it's not funny anymore, uh, or it's not surprising anymore, or whatever but what we are doing, I think, is looking for stuff which is more, has more to it, and I believe that my acts has, and I've had, through the ages of doing it, had responses from audience members who have seen it more times and they go I love seeing it and the first time me personally always say like the first time when you watch it, you see the art and then, as you go on, you start to see the craft. Yeah, and then also people frequently say I enjoy coming back so that I can look at their friends who they've brought when I do the different things and see the first time on someone else's face.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that when you talk about your act the first time, people come and they experience the raw emotion and just the kind of deeper and less intellectual and less conscious, the intuitive reactions or whatever um to your act. And then they come see it again and then they can start to dig deeper into other elements where they know what's coming in one way but then they can also appreciate it on that more technical level and it is that thing maybe of like if you're, if you become a filmmaker and then you can never go see a movie ever again because you're, quote unquote, ruined for the art form, because you can only ever see them the editing and the lighting and the transitions or something whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it is something that I also have. I often go to shows and don't get gripped by them the way that I feel like I should. So I watch them and I'm going like, oh, you're doing this now and this is now.
Speaker 2:Well, that's funny. You say that I mean. So I'm also being extreme here. I've obviously I've seen mystere 84 times and now I'm I'm uh trying to explain our cultural attitude towards consuming different experiences, um, by saying, well, we just go see a show once, and of course that's not true. Like you just said, people come see your act many times. Uh, you were talking the other day about la soiree, that people would bring their friends to see la soiree as kind of a badge of honor of like. Look, I discovered this thing and now I want to share it with you and go with you and, like you just said, about your act, and I want to watch your face as you experience this thing and to see if I'm reflected in that. And we have a really we can relate to that common experience. But you know, it's like a book. We can also read books many times again and again and find a deeper meaning each time.
Speaker 1:So this is of course, the key where I want to go with this Exactly.
Speaker 1:That's why I was saying about the yeah, but what you have sketched out too, I think it's absolutely most strongly between watching a show, not watching a concert, Because even there people go. I'd love to go and see that band. I think that's a really common thing to do. Maybe they come out when they have made a new album. But if you go to see Bob Dylan has been talked about a lot you go to see Bob Dylan and he just plays his latest album and a lot of people who are Dylan fans go.
Speaker 1:Dylan is as I saw Penn Gillette describe it the other day. Penn is a freak. You stand there, hey, he's the freak and everybody's looking at him, While Bruce Springsteen is like a cheerleader. He's the one that's in the front and talking about what. The whole crowd is there experiencing the ups and downs, whatever he thinks about it in the songs. But you never know what bob dylan's gonna do. It's like he came, he'd made it as this, as this folk singer, and all of a sudden he came out and played electric and people thought it was crazy. And then he was saved and and found jesus, and and did that for a few albums and like he really is like picturing.
Speaker 1:So anyway, you come there and you want to see the artist again, and so that's what wasn't. That last thing with bob dylan was just a digression to say when you come there, you don't necessarily come to go as like, oh god, it was so boring because he played these songs from the old albums and I only want to hear the new ones because I've heard the other ones. Yeah, that doesn't exist in the live experience of a band but, but in a show it's very sort of like, and of course, in recorded music.
Speaker 1:But yeah but that too, like how many people would actually watch a DVD of the of the Cirque du Soleil show and then watch it again and again. Yeah, so many.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean, yeah Well, thanks for the setup here, for for, yeah well, thanks for the setup here, but that's what I was kind of going to get at first and say the experience of watching Mystere live. First of all, hold on, let's back up a second. Yeah, yeah, sorry, let's get a little bit of perspective here, because it sounds extreme. Oh, you've seen Mystere 84 times. That's wacky, let's just be real. The show's been around for 31 years. Yeah, let's just be real, the show's been around for 31 years. Yeah, so we're not.
Speaker 1:You know that's been a lot of chances to see the show. Yeah, so 31 years and we know for a fact that you, oh you, you watched it the first time within months of the premier years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, within months of it opening you watched it sometime in in 94 so, yeah, so I've seen it, you know, over the years and that's 30 years, like it's, oh, like, yeah, so how much does that get up to?
Speaker 1:I don't know, math is not my strong thing, right? But there's a lot of opportunities, yeah, but the so.
Speaker 2:So that's just like.
Speaker 1:My first point is like it sounds like 365 days in every year, even if you watched it 180 times exactly even every third day or whatever.
Speaker 2:Now you're making me feel bad. I should try harder.
Speaker 1:I can do better. I can do better no, no, but you're right. No, and you did do better no yeah, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:So so that's the first point is that we there's been a lot of chances to see the show.
Speaker 1:The second and and we're not answering any question any anything about that it's.
Speaker 1:This is just, and it's an interesting thing about us as artists too, because I believe that there is more depth to see in my acts, not just in my tennis, but when I'm doing my solo shows, where I get to say other things and do deeper things, then I believe that there is depth there that you will find on repeat viewing in the way that I have found it and deepened my relationship to my own acts.
Speaker 1:I have now got more depth and I had this idea as um, when I first did it and then it had all I could possibly put into it at that point, right. Then I did it for a whole season at circus nemo, 100 shows, right, and every night I found a little more detail and a little more thing. And now when I come out and I do that for you and eva in here and I do it all that, um, crafting and working and thinking and extrapolating and finding oh, that moment could become this. Then I I can portray all of that in one show. So you get to see my development of that act and you get it there, and it was all maybe there in seed. Maybe the people who saw it that first time says it's similar or it's the same, but they feel it's so strong when they see it. And I think that you can go and you can find different things in my acts.
Speaker 2:So I well, yeah, so. So a couple more points, then, and the first one related to what you just said. You know anthony gatto, uh, the world's greatest juggler, right, we don't need to argue about that, we all know that. Yeah, right, um, though he's retired now, but um, world's greatest retired juggler? Yeah, exactly, but he did, quote-unquote, the same act every night. This is kind of a thing people would say oh yeah, but you just do the same act every night, the same 10 minutes or 12 minutes or whatever.
Speaker 2:And his response to that at one point was this perspective which we hear sometimes, which he says uh, well, no, yeah, sure it's, it's the same format and it's the same routine, it's the same order of tricks, it's the same number of props, it's the same choreography, but every show is completely different. He wrote that he used to have a forum, an internet forum, that he hosted, and he wrote on there every show is completely different because the audience is completely different every night, and I'm, and he's, you know, and maybe now I'm, I'm kind of reading into what he said or trying to communicate it here, but, like you know, every um, you know, every audience member is different, so every experience of every show is different because I'm there and live in real life and I'm in the moment and I'm reacting and I'm I don't know, you know whatever he, you know he it's not, he's not a robot, so for sure his. He breathes differently and his head turns and looks differently and the people clap one or two times more for this trick or whatever, right and like. I don't know about my. I'm not going to put a judgment on that statement, but just to say there is that theory of like. Oh, we're doing the same thing every night, but it's a live performance, it's not a movie, it's not a recording, it's not a whatever robot or I don't even know how that would work, but he's alive, he's alive and this moment in time is a unique moment in time and it's the only time he ever did his show at 9 30 pm on a tuesday, on january 10th, you know, 1994, or whatever, whatever, right, um.
Speaker 2:So there's that kind of argument too of saying, well, okay, you saw mister 84 times that like in. In that is also implied in some way. But it's just the same show which goes back to confront this society, the societal relationship, to live performances of like. It's just the same thing, but at the same time I'm like, well, obviously, 84 times I've seen the show. No two shows were the same to, and that's not. I don't think that's a stretch to say, um, and I'm also, but I'm, but also of course that that's and that's drilling down to the granular level of detail of, like who was in the cast that night and how, whatever right like who was who was singing on the show that night, and um, whereas the broad strokes of the show, yes, there was still the snail at the end, there was still the this act came after that act or whatever right like on the broad strokes, it's mystere, but on the, the minute details, um, it was 84 different shows. I could, I could try to argue if I wanted to. I don't quite, I'm not, we'll get into that later what I actually think about it, but there's that, that kind of theory, um, and then just to put another context out there for you, it's not like I've only seen a 84 shows in mystere.
Speaker 2:I've also seen O 54 times, oh right. And I've seen Ka 47 times and I've seen Blue man Group. I don't, I didn't, I can't even count. I mean it's over 50 times. But but, hey, look, look, calm down, calm down. O, it's 25 years old, so I've seen it 54 times. I mean that's like what? Twice a year that has been open. That's nothing, that's nothing and and uh and uh no. But also I mean I mean same thing for blue man group. It's been around for whatever 30 years and stomp I've seen over 50 times and I've seen a bunch of shows a bunch of times. I mean I saw beatles love the cirque du soleil show like 13 times. I hate that show well, you I, yeah, I hate, I hate.
Speaker 2:After the 10 year or after the was it the 10 year revamp? Maybe it was a 10 year revamp, I don't remember. They refreshed the show at one point and then it was kind of unwatchable, and I still saw it five times after that, mostly because I loved the theater the, the, the actual structure, the physical, the physical theater itself was like an amazing piece of architecture, and that was another thing too. If you want to, if you want to be even more, uh, judgmental of me of my insanity or obsession, but, um, they used to do a thing pre-covid. I think they pretty much stopped doing it now. They would do theater tours of the ka theater, uh, the o theater mystere.
Speaker 2:You used to be able to go there too, and love beatles love, and it was like a promotion thing. So, like at noon on Saturdays, you would go to the theatre for free. You could just go inside, and they would do like a half hour tech demo of the space, and I would go to those every week, because the theatres were cool. And the other part of it, though, is I'm sure there's something about like. Part of it, though, is I'm sure there's something about like uh, okay, yeah, my personality in this obsessive way, clearly that I enjoy this kind of thing, but, like I'm from ohio man and nothing happens in ohio, where I grew up, I grew up on a farm or next to a farm, you know, in the countryside, and literally in the middle, not even on the farm.
Speaker 2:It was next to a farm, literally in the middle of cornfields. Yeah, my mother built her house next to her mom's house and her mother was a farmer, wow, so literally next door. And there's something about appreciating the opportunity. I mean of course it does border on madness, but appreciating the opportunity that you don't normally have to go see culture. And you know, now I live in Stockholm, sweden, and when I go to Vegas I'm in a city where Mystere is playing twice a night, five times a week, five days a week, you know, and it just drives me nuts to sit at home or sit at the hotel and be like, well, I could be seeing Mystere right now or I could be here at the hotel. So, yeah, there's like a fine line there, obviously, between madness and like a healthy, you know, obsession with it. But no, but all joking aside, I really do think that part of my job as an artist is to be interested in my genre and to be interested in the world around me. And I love performance, obviously, and I'm super interested in performance and it's almost in an academic way that like if I have the chance to go see a show, I should go see it, because I don't know there's there's, um, a couple of different types of personalities of artists I've met over the years. Um, I think I fall into one category and there's another category that I don't really relate to, and that is I met some jugglers early on in my life who said I don't want to see another juggler, I don't want to see anybody else juggle because I don't want it to accidentally influence my work and I don't want to copy anyone. So it's like I always think of, like the ostrich sticking the head in the sand and kind of denying that the world is out there and it's being like I'm just going to go into my, into myself and inside myself, right, and on one hand, I understand some of that mentality of like there is, at some point as an artist, you do have to shut out the world and you have to. What's it called? There's a, there's a term for it. There's a term for it called like wood shedding. Have you, have you heard that? No, yeah, you go woodshedding. It means you go to your woodshed in the forest, which means you're denying, you're cutting off your social contacts, you're you're basically giving yourself time and permission to be yourself and to have space to occupy and to find out who you are and to fill that space and time with yourself. So I'm going to go woodshed. It means you put your head to the, you put your head down and your nose to the grindstone and all these metaphors, and you just work.
Speaker 2:But the problem that and I don't know if it's a problem, but when I was young I had an experience which shaped me on this philosophy, which is, I saw another juggler who said, well, I'm not going to look at any other jugglers, I don't want to see any videos, I don't want to see any performances, I don't want to even talk or meet any other jugglers.
Speaker 2:And then they went and created, kind of reinvented, the wheel of a very famous piece from a troupe called Air Jazz, and Air Jazz they were three of my heroes, this juggling troupe, john Held heroes, um, this juggling troupe, uh, john held, uh, peter davidson and kazaya tannenbaum, and uh, they had this piece where they had long metal poles. They would each have three metal poles, maybe two, two meters long poles or something, and they would place the poles on the ground in such a way that before the the one pole falls over, they would place the next pole and catch that one right before it hits the ground, you know, and then they would juggle in this way of placing sticks on the ground and their piece it's just iconic, it's just legendary, like it's. It's. It's not the end, all and be all of that technique, but it's not. Yeah, it's very developed and mature and and considered and composed and it's just beautiful and this person received well by the audience.
Speaker 2:It's iconic, so it's culturally like yeah, it's a, it's a touchstone, right, it's a culturally, uh, touchstone iconic piece that people can reference, like it's in the public consciousness, and that's the problem, right? So this person who went alone into the woods or whatever and then came out and was like, oh, I found this thing where you could take three sticks and kind of set them on the floor, but it was badly done, it wasn't as thoroughly researched, it wasn't composed in the right as well as air jazz, but all that's kind of irrelevant, because, no matter who it is, they see this person's stick juggling piece and they go, oh, air jazz, and then the game's done. And it doesn't even matter if this person really did make it up on their own which, by the way, I don't think they did. But whatever, let's say they did make it up on their own. It's not impossible, it doesn't matter. You live in a world where there's air jazz. Yeah, yeah, you're stuck in that.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, when I talk about this, I, I talk about this, I say something that everybody knows. It's like you go away and then you make an invention and you come back and you go. I have this thing, and then you put the electricity on it and this glass globe has light coming out of it. Right, it turns electricity into light. And I've made it, I've never seen it before and somebody goes. Well, even if you thought that up, right, that's 100 years old, it was invented by someone else. It's too late to invent it, yeah, in a way. So it's that thing with putting, like you said, putting your head in the sand.
Speaker 2:I said putting blinkers on yeah, blinders on of, like the horse and buggy that you have, the blinders yeah so that they can't see very much, and then you go I am free because I can only see what's right in front of my nose.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and I think there's something which is good right Because the blinders served a purpose.
Speaker 2:Horse and buggies right. The blinders stop the horses from stampeding, getting spooked. They only see what's in front of them. So it serves the purpose of stopping certain problems right.
Speaker 1:But then this metaphor, in this artistic way, if you have the blinders on, for me that's another way of saying I am willful, I am willfully ignorant, yeah, and I think the same like I choose not to know. So then you could spend half your life woodshedding, coming back with a routine that already exists. Everybody will call you a plagiarist, exactly. And on top of that, I think the same thing extends to technique. Some people for, whether it's hierarchical or gone, they, you know whatever reason, will go. Well, I'm going to refrain from technique and juggling. That's maybe it happens there too. But I was thinking also of of artists that go to school and go. I only work conceptually, so I don't want to learn to paint an actual horse.
Speaker 2:I see what you're saying, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I refuse to learn technique, to learn to have a vocabulary or whatever.
Speaker 2:So I think there could be some sorry to cut you off there?
Speaker 2:I think there could be some value in that in one way, like in one. I don't know. Yeah, let's just say there could be some value in that in one way, like in one. I don't know. Yeah, let's just. Let's just say there could be some value in that.
Speaker 2:Intuitively, as my experience as an artist over the past 40 years of doing what I've done for 40 years now, there's something where, yeah, if you can't do a figurative drawing or a photo, realistic drawing of like a still life, of like a bowl of fruit, but I'm going to splatter paint on the floor like Jackson Pollock or something, and I'm going to skip the life drawing class and go straight for splattering the paint. Intuitively, there's something about me that feels like that process of going through learning the techniques. It's more than learning the techniques. It's learning about how to learn. It's learning about who you are and it's learning about the things that already exist, like the rules, and then you can break the rules. But because we could examine it from that side too, what you're kind of saying is people want to just break the rules without learning the rules first. Maybe.
Speaker 1:And that's a little bit hard to, but it's also to me it's like to go to not to be influenced by the old masters or Rembrandt or whatever by the old masters or Rembrandt or whatever.
Speaker 1:So I don't want to know how to paint an actual human body or know how to paint an actual house and master perspective or whatever techniques that I like. Like with juggling, you can juggle and you can call anything juggling and your son has just juggled 20 juggling throws and you can go. That's what I want to do, because it's the most free, because he's not influenced by any other jugglers that he or whatever, maybe you, but anyway like. So to me this thing of limiting yourself or having techniques, it limits the, actually it narrows creatively what you can choose to do, because now you can only choose to do, right, throwing paint on the floor, sticking holes in a in a bucket that spins on a wire, on a string, and make it, or you can right tape a banana to a wall or whatever, which is not to say that any of those things are not valuable. Or that Picasso's painting when, when he was painting cubists or whatever he, you could kind of see this evolution. He knew how to paint, and he was tired with that.
Speaker 2:Then he moved on to another face and explored something else in my personal experience, though, I have to say and maybe this is just me as an artist yeah, I could tape a banana to a wall right without any art technique, without any painting technique or sculpture making technique, but for some reason I don't. And I found the same. I find the same thing in juggling people who do very simplistic technique that is kind of innovative or provocative in the way of taping a banana to a wall. It's not the people who have never juggled technique before. There's some. That's what I was trying to say before. I didn't maybe express it, I can't really express it, but there's a mental process that goes along. Maybe it's just a maturity, of maturity into the art form, but, um, yeah, like, like, I could go tape a banana on the wall today, or something similar put a put a urinal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the duchamp was too late.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because somebody did that, and no, no but?
Speaker 2:but to do something that equally innovative. I have a chance right now. Somebody will metaphorically tape the next banana to the wall. It's not going to be a banana on the wall literally but it'll be in the same vein, right, but I don't think I'm the person to do that, and it's also because I'm just not steeped and not I'm not deep into that world, and part of getting deep into the world is the technical journey somehow and maybe we're probably getting a little bit into the weeds here, but this is important and interesting.
Speaker 1:I can round it. Are you freer if you don't have, like me, who have identified as a juggler and as a magician, as a freak show artist and all these things? Would I have been more free as an artist if I hadn't pursued all these skills? Because it doesn't feel like that. Now, Right on, I'm doing a show with my family and I go I need something else than magic, or I need something else. And then I go what can I do? And I have a spectrum of stuff that I can do and I can delve into different modes of presentation, because I have tried many things. So then the showman comes out and you feel like he could grab onto anything and do anything. And when I present even present my daughter I present it in a freak show style, but people don't know. I don't quite know what that is, but I can hear that it's distinctly different from me when I'm doing the magic routine or whatever. So that offers me a scope. So what do you think?
Speaker 2:Well, to sum all that stuff back up and to pull it back into the line, it's very easy. It's just two steps. The first statement is we live in a world where we're not alone, and that's so important to me and part of my process in my life. We live in a world where there's other people inhabiting it. Whether we like that or not, we cannot escape it. If you come out and you do the crystal ball contact, juggling, people are going to say, michael, like you just can't escape that. So how are you going to confront that moment? So that's like my first big I mean for me it's very uh. Obviously I get very uh animated about it or passionate about it, cause, I think, it's a real strong point.
Speaker 2:And and uh, that like we are all connected, we all live in a community. And that's the first thing how, how are you, how do you choose to interact with that community? And then the second thing is, because we are in a community, for example, when I go to vegas and I'm a performing artist, there's a hundred, you know, on any given night. There's something like an average of 110 live performances in las vegas every night of the year. 110 shows, like opportunities to buy tickets to go see live events or experiences or whatever, right? So as a, as an artist, how can I not?
Speaker 2:I feel like I feel, so I feel a responsibility to my work to go out into the world and see what is the community that I am a part of, cause, right, it doesn't do me any good to go see Mystere 84 times and then go home and shave my head and paint my face blue, paint my head blue and be like oh, frodo, I got this new act, you got to check it out. And then I paint my head blue and you're like, oh, blue man group. And I'm just like what? And you go yeah, dude, just go down the street, they have a whole show right. So I feel there is some, I mean, it's a little yeah, there's a truth here, but it's a little bit of a a tenuous connection. But like I really feel compelled in my work in general to explore the community around me, to have conversations with you and and whoever else I can have a conversation with yeah, because that's part of my process as an artist.
Speaker 1:And so then, in terms of this, this, uh, yeah, this, this compulsion to kind of study the I really think of it sometimes as studying what's around me, but I, I did talk to this guy called kaspar tranberg, who is a jazz musician in denmark, and he played music with the circus that I was with, but he also has a career that has actually fully taken off in. Anyway, amazing musician plays the trumpet and uh, he, uh, um, like you worked at the academy of whether musical academy or whatever like a school, yeah, the top school university or something yeah, yeah, but it's, it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know what you're saying academy, it's like like a royal yeah so he's like and what you're describing now, when he talked about how he, because I was like, well, how do you teach this? To find, like, find your artistic voice or whatever. It's like you, you're practicing. You got to practice all the time to become better, but then you also like, you got to listen wide, you got to listen to all the other trumpet players so that you know what's out there as you're developing, and then you will find resonance with someone, and those who you find resonance with you need to listen to all of their stuff so that you can use them as the master class and go on. Don't just strive to become and you didn't know about them and him as a teacher, then, is to know everybody plays the trumpet, so when he hears the new student, he goes. You need to listen to this person and this person and this person so that you can stand on the shoulders of giants.
Speaker 2:Okay, you just said it. That's what I was going to say. Yeah, right, this part of being in a community is that we are all standing on the shoulders of giants and you need to know what giant you're standing on, because you are.
Speaker 1:And also because then you will, you will put the ladder on their shoulders and take. This resonates with me like we talked about earlier, like I'm saying you're going like, oh, how is tamariz as a performer or whatever in magic? And I'm like, oh, I like him. But I feel like that, my gut feeling with um, with um, that my gut feeling with Tamariz is that for some reason, danny D'Ortiz being his student and whatever, he spoke to me even stronger than the master and that the master's books speaks to me very strongly. But for some reason, the way that Danny D'y had distilled his masters, and I can see, but then he also goes.
Speaker 1:I also have Lennart Green with the chaos, and I also have David Williamson with his incredible technique, yet looking like an absolute doofus in the most beautiful way, and then you go. I can see all of that and he speaks about his influences and you can see it in his work, but it is not derivative. It's so that when david williamson watches him that's the point he will shake his hand and go, oh, my god, you're good. And he goes, oh, but that bit that's you, and but it isn't. But that's the point, right?
Speaker 2:isn't that so funny that the that the opposite attitude of I'm going to stick my head in the sand, I'm not going to go see any other jugglers because I don't want to influence me. Actually, at the end of the day, because you are in that danger when you go out into the world that you are being derivative, whereas like the more you know, you don't know it, yeah, the more you know the less likely you are to be derivative if you make that choice.
Speaker 2:And then you have a conscious choice, it's not just a roll of the dice and like well, I hope nobody else thought of this. And it's funny you said about the listening to all the different, uh, whatever trumpet players out there or whatever. Because I'm also the type of personality where, especially when I was like early teenager or whatever, I would find an album I liked, like a music album or something I was really into, let's say. But then I had all my friends they would just listen to the one song on the album, right, and I'm like no, but the whole album is so fun. Listen to the other songs, I just like this one song.
Speaker 2:But then I'm also the type where I read the liner notes and I go oh, who's the producer of this CD or this album or whatever? Oh, who? What other bands did they produce? And then you go down through all the band members do they have any side projects? Do they like? You know, I just I don't know if I find something I like, I just want to kind of dig deeper and see where the wormhole takes you, to see the related work you know around, and it goes back to this idea of community.
Speaker 1:But this also is that you and me, and why we're having so many conversations and why I feel like you've saved my sanity so many times, is that we're both. What I think is interested in this depth dimension, I find something that I like and then I get fascinated by it, and sometimes it's a pop song and after a while I'm tired of that thing and I listen to the other stuff and it doesn't speak to me and then that goes away. But the things that stick with me are the things that are deep. I go like I wasn't. I was crazy about Sherlock Holmes for a long time and that's 52 short stories and at some point I kind of felt like I had my head around it in a way. And then then that's why I keep going on with Steiner as a thing, because it does not matter what I do or think, you'll find some that this dude has talked about it in a way that I couldn't imagine.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Look at this. You get an album right. There's one song on it you love Okay, but you love that song. You listen to the other songs You're like, ah, this isn't really doing it for me, but you still listen to them. This is the process, man. It's not random. If you find something you love, there is something of value there and you need to respect that and you need to follow the trail, even if it sucks. This is the work, right. So you follow who's the producer? Who played bass on that? Who's playing guitar and what guitar pedals were they using? You follow the wormhole and then it doesn't mean it's always pleasant and it doesn't mean you love the rest of the album, but you follow that path and you're gonna find another thing you do love, or whatever, at least for me.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to bring up that point that and that's that's not always about it, but it's about a process and trusting the, the having faith in the process and the work, and but it's also to have an understanding of relations, of every that.
Speaker 1:relationships are the foundational thing of the universe. That's me saying it, but like but that. That's just to express in emotional numbers, as we have talked about emotionally to go, just how important it is. It's the relations. And depth is about interconnectivity, it's how things are connected and by knowing what the other people in the band and knowing how the show was put together and after an hour, just three episodes and of course there's all sorts of stuff more that we could talk about with Mystere. But to know the different projects and we haven't even delved into the artists and what they had done before that made them all chosen for the day. But there's so much depth to dig into, if you want to, and what it meant and whatever.
Speaker 1:And I think that the core thing here now is that when you see the art of my act, when you see it the first time, you see the shiny surface and what has been created.
Speaker 1:For us, this sort of that's the the first viewing is one particular thing.
Speaker 1:But then, as you start to look at the craft and you see how do I make it and why do I make you laugh, even when you've seen it six times and you laugh again.
Speaker 1:You laugh at the specific way that that night I fell off the stage, so that it still surprised you, because it is actually real. I am actually falling and what I do to let myself fall is I am out of balance and you go ooh, and you get that little feeling in you and in that you are now starting to participate. You're scratching the surface, maybe if you've seen the six times, but you're scratching the surface of the depth, and the depth dimension of the universe is to be found absolutely everywhere. Know, I go on about this all the time that nature is always more than you can ever express and that, uh, this is a little bit. People say that the depth dimension of the world, of reality is also another word for that is to call it the sacred it's when you step into a symbolic, into a dimension where things take on another meaning. It's not just a person walking across the stage and maybe the first time you just see that and you stare, they come in.
Speaker 1:But then maybe you're very perceptive and you take in the symbolism of everything and you see the abyss opening up and it's the time before everything and and you have the two poles and the drums come down and the sound and it calls forth life. Maybe you see those things, maybe you don't, and maybe that is just off with the horses. But I said that I knew what dragona had said about the beginning. So this dimension is available there. Someone might say it was a snail and and the drums and, and the floor went down. I don't get it sure, but that is also the nature of the sacred. On the fundamental things about the sacred, or a deep dimension, yeah, is mystery. It's to not know, it's to face something right and not understand it.
Speaker 2:And this is the name of this show, it's Mystere, and I'm taking it in this direction because you have several times talked about, and you mentioned this like 25 minutes ago, so we should just say it that basically yeah, no this is also just going that you say you watch this.
Speaker 1:Oh right that I'm going to church, that you go to church, let's hold that.
Speaker 2:Let's hold on for a second. I'm just, I'm just flagging where I'm going with this thing and how it's after a while and no because after a while, right, I'm going to see the show a bunch and I start to notice myself oh, I've seen this show quite a lot like, why am I doing that? Um, like, just as a passing curiosity. I mean, obviously I just enjoy going to see the show, but you know, at some point you like, like.
Speaker 1:I said before.
Speaker 2:the more you do something, the longer you do something. For me, you have to find the deeper connection to keep doing it, cause at some point you're just like why am I doing this? And like what's the answer, and at some point it just popped into my head I go when at this point when I go to see my stare, I'm going to church.
Speaker 2:It's my church in many different ways. We get back to that in a second. Yeah, but um, yeah, so nine 94, I had Pat McGuire was in the cast, uh, right, my, my old juggling partner, and, uh, I was obsessed with the show to the point where I was obsessed with it just because, again, I got to follow this journey. It was my favorite circus company and my favorite, you know, juggler. Michael Motion made this piece and it was my, my good, my great friend, pat Patrick, who I had been working with for a couple years, you know. So I had very close personal ties to the project, um, and so I was really curious about it, I was excited about it, I don't know, I was just enthusiastic about it to the point where, though, I had the phone number of the gift shop memorized, because, because I was in Ohio and um, before the, even before the show opened, I was calling the gift shop.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know they, you know cause they had the shop shop open a couple of weeks before they, getting all the t-shirts ready and the hats and the little figurines and stuff, and I'm, I'm just calling, uh, once a week saying, hey, when's the program going to be printed, when's the soundtrack coming out? And then they were always super nice though, and they're like, oh yeah, maybe call next week. It should be out in a few weeks, but give a call next week, but we'll know then. But then it was so long delayed the whole process though, but I had called so many fridays. Every fr Friday I would call the mystery gift shop for Ohio, you know, and I had just and then it just became stuck in my mind that phone number um for years and years, and I mean eventually then uh, it was before I saw the show live I did get a program. I had them ship me one to Ohio from Las Vegas, from the gift shop, and then I just looked at that every day and the photos were just.
Speaker 2:You know, I would just dream into those photos and just like, wow, look at the show, and Pat's in this show and he's in Vegas and look at this. And I'd seen Nouvelle Experience and you know, like the on video and all the other shows and and, and I'd seen Nouvelle Experience in Vegas and I'm just like pouring through this program being like, wow, this is, this is going to be amazing, you know, just being hyped on it as a fan. So at one point though, after I saw the show for the first time live, I finally badgered Patrick enough times, which I'm sure I constantly annoyed him, but he sent me a secret video of the show, because in the tech booth they record on their little camera. You know, it's all washed out like really bad quality, it's not zoomed in, it's just, it's just a picture of the whole stage. Um, they just record every show in case there's a problem, in case there's an accident or a rigging problem. They can review the footage and see what really happened and fix it later and whatever.
Speaker 1:So he sent me, um, a video of the show from 1994 from a tech tech tech cam, tech booth cam, and, uh, I watched that video every single day for a year so that's uh, and there too, it's not because maybe the first day and then you're excited the second day and the third day, but at some point you must have thought I have not watched this 10 days in a row. When did it become? But it became a ritual, yeah.
Speaker 2:So this, this is yeah well, I know it's gonna say so. It became a ritual that I would come home from school and then I would watch the video and as I watched the video I'd eat a little snack and kind of you know, decompress from the day, but I would be like interested in the video, I mean, I was still fascinated by it. And then I would, and then, when the video would be done, it'd be time to go juggle. I would go juggle and then I'd have dinner and then I would just juggle till as late as I could get my parents to let me stay up. And so it became this kind of part of a daily routine which you can kind of do when you're in school, when you're a kid, right, you get this really daily routine kind of thing. And it became part of my daily ritual just to sit and watch the show.
Speaker 2:And what was crazy was, you know, we had a, we, we had a, I guess, a, a medium-sized tv for the day, but like back then, you know still the, the tv with the tubes, like the big fat tvs, like the big heavy boxes and whatever.
Speaker 2:And you have to imagine that, like when you, when you go see the show we talked about how immersive it is like, physically, to be there in the show, live in the audience. But now I'm watching a video from the tech booth. The camera's zoomed all the way out so you can't really see small details like people's facial expressions, and it's in, it's in this little square in front of me. I'm in the living room, right, so I have. My field of vision is filled with the walls and the ceiling and the carpet and my parents and whatever is in the living room, and there's like a little square in front of me. But what was crazy was every time I watched the show I saw something new. And I don't mean as a big revelation, I'm like whoa wait a second there was a hand-to-hand act.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that wasn't there yesterday. Those are the new things. You see the first ten times.
Speaker 2:So it was the little details in the corners. Or maybe one time I would watch it and I would only look at the background projections on the sky they call this set piece the sky. I'd only look at the projections on the sky and you'd be like, whoa, wait a second, there's a face there during this act. I had no idea there was a face there, even on this little TV that I had seen. You know, over the course of a year you could still pick out oh, that character. I'm just going to watch that character today and see what there's, their track and all these things. I mean, and this is at the same time.
Speaker 2:That was I was really developing my understanding of the mechanics of performance and making a show and again, I was very sheltered in one way. I didn't have a lot of experiences of seeing different things. So this was also kind of a textbook lesson in terms of, like, choreography and staging and transitions and rigging, and so it became this kind of ritual. But it was also very informative in ways that I didn't intend when I started that journey.
Speaker 1:Right, that journey right, but that's also super interesting when that we've talked about about. If you in life can become a master of the depth of one thing that you truly love it and you go all the way in, then the patterns of that thing will always, in one way or another, mirror the rest of the world yeah, sense that you.
Speaker 1:So when you're learning choreography and you're learning all this, it doesn't mean that all you could ever think now was the way that that person did it in that show or that track of that performer. Right, you look at it to such a depth that you fully know what back projection is. You have a relationship to yeah, and a thought about what the back wall of a show can do, should do. What you like, what you don't like oh, this bit's so boring, I don't want to look at it absolutely.
Speaker 1:And then you get opinions about light and about absolutely and about and so you get this education by studying one thing rather than looking at a million things. You learn it through knowing it so well.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, yeah, well, and not just through one thing, but from the thing I had access to.
Speaker 1:Well, there's that too.
Speaker 2:No, no, but just to say, sitting at the farm, but sitting in the farm in Ohio, yeah, it's like I could watch Mysterio Night because I had that video. It was like gold.
Speaker 1:Also the mystery of that too. It's a tape that comes. It too, it's a tape that comes. It's a copy of a copy or whatever. Yeah, and it's, and it's. You don't quite see it. So there are shadows, there are. There's a liminal space for you to enter into. You don't see the perfect, exactly close up of the dvd of everything, so it's not you have to imagine yourself in into it as well in a certain way.
Speaker 1:You have to meet it in a certain way to have it have value. And yeah, like you said it already, but that you watch something every day for for one year and then 84 times in the show live, yeah, that and and that you come home from school, you eat your food, you do all those things and you do do the little things that you have to do and chill yeah and you watch, but that is a ritual.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this thing about ritual is that it has been said that ritual is the dramas which communicates our deepest values, so this is, of course, talking specifically more about religious kind of rituals or something. But there are all kinds of rituals, rituals that baseball players do before they get the ball, or tennis players do before, and they do all this stuff to it, and we might say that it could be like skinless pigeons who would pick the thing and then they, the food comes at random but, they're picking, and they turned around and then they picked again and the food came and they thought that it was related to them turning around, so they
Speaker 1:start to do all this stuff so we can go. We could say that it's like that, but when somebody has intentionally made a piece of art like Mystere, or when somebody has handed down oral tradition into books, into what has become Christianity or Judaism or whatever, the rituals which are in those are not trivial, and the rituals and the thought and imagination and human blood, sweat and tears and somebody died when they fell in the abyss that of mystere is not trivial. So this thing is something that you can genuinely take seriously and when you look at it and engage with it, there will be depth to find and in that you can then go. I it's communicating our deepest values and and the human dramas, not because he's tried to capture everything, but because it has so much depth that when you look at this character to the right in the corners but you might also look at him in relation to, because twice he interacts with another person then you look at that person another day and then you see how they interact and from those things there becomes infinite depth within this thing, not just because of what they do, because the show is always the same, but because your understanding of this.
Speaker 1:We can now call it the ritual, the ritual of the show, of going through this thing which at one point had something to do with the origin of life. But it also comes out of talking about mythology, like a show that never happened in Caesar's Palace, about Greek mythology. And then we know from the quote that I did in the last episode, where Dragone talks like it's the sum of all mythologies to come into this. So he had that mindset when he made it, which means that I would say that this as much as you could say about the great albums or whatever, that somebody went into Sgt Pepper's or whatever.
Speaker 1:These things that you can look into. And then it's the cover art and why did they do this and what happened there and what was their stories when they made these things. Yeah, that there can be depth in here that can allow you to see the kind of depth that a religious person would only see within religious rituals Right, and that the capacity to experience and feel the sacred like feel this all of a sudden when you're watching the show, you get this. The floor sinks away and it's an existential kind of thing that this depth becomes real and that it can be called sacred.
Speaker 2:I knew when you were going to come visit me here in Stockholm this week you wanted to talk about Mystere and why I would watch it a lot and kind of dive into that, and I did have a In thinking about these questions that we were going to maybe talk about. I did have a bit of an epiphany in trying to think this out, in that I did realize that. So yeah, I had that phrase in my mind for years. It's like going to church when I go into that theater, I am home, and I mean that in the, in the artistic sense, like I feel like I'm home and there is that constant parallel thread in my life. And that doesn't mean to say when I'm drifting off to sleep tonight I will think like, oh, mr is still in Vegas and I am still on planet earth. It's not that psychotic yet, but there is when I get to go to vegas and I'm physically in that theater and I go, I'm still alive, mystere is still alive. There's something there that I find very, very compelling. And so I was thinking about these thoughts. I was going to try to. I knew you were going to poke me about these, this mystere thing, and I had this thought of you know, the more I learn about mystere and the more I learn about the people who are in mystere, and not just and that's funny, because most of the stuff I learn is very practical and down to earth and in one way it's very mundane, even boring. But it helps me understand why things are happening in that theater the way they happen. So, oh, this person was sick this week. That's why the transition looked like that. That. The way they happen. So, oh, this person was sick this week. That's why the transition looked like that. That's why you had to cut the second song, because, oh, that person was out and you have a new person who hasn't trained. Or that new person got trained in, but they haven't had their costume headpiece made yet. Isn't that crazy? They are on full salary for five months and they're waiting for their shoes to be made from in Montreal or whatever, right, it's like a banal detail, but it has a real life repercussion in that theater.
Speaker 2:And then when I go see the show and I go, oh, what happened to that second transition song? They cut that short or whatever, right, cause I know the show so well. But then I start. I know the story behind why it's like that and it's a microcosm of me also understanding the world at large. I go. If I can comprehend what's happening in that theater in Las Vegas, I also have a shot of comprehending the world in the larger realm somehow.
Speaker 2:So it's a little bit of a parallel of, like I go see Mystere and the more I learn about Mystere, the more I can dive deeper into it, and the deeper I dive into it, the more I learn about it. It's like a circular kind of process and the kind of result of that process is, yes, it's a hobby to be obsessed with my stare or to be into the show, and it's also, um it, it serves also a professional because it's a, because I'm a performer as well, so it's very close to my profession. So I can also find parallels there between my work which I find valuable. Valuable, but also just in general I'm like, oh, I've grown up watching Mystere all these years, through happenstance or whatever, because this, this random personal connection that started it all with the show, and as I've grown up, my understanding of the world has grown up and as my interest in the show has has deepened. World has grown up and as my interest in the show has has deepened.
Speaker 2:I've also started to started to understand these, you know again, business decisions or non artistic decisions, or logistical decisions, or and I get to know some of the performers and I get to hear their experience of inside the show and from hearing all those things again, it makes it even more magical. It doesn't detract from it. And not only does it make the show more magical, but it makes it makes me able to comprehend and go oh yeah, so that's how they had to stage the show this week, or that's how they had to deal with that replacement, or that's how they got new props, or are they going to redo the light design because of the led bulbs? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I don't know it, don't know why, but it. But then I can look around in the world and go oh yeah, there are light bulbs in different places or something you know what I mean like, yeah, it expands bigger than that show?
Speaker 1:yeah, I totally think so. So and I use that as well love the things that I know, which anyone who's listened to this for many episodes know that. I often then return to my acts different acts that I have, where I talk about or do certain things, and I see those kinds of mechanisms function in the world, because some of those things that I've done 1000s of times and I am aware that doing my act and doing it is a kind of is a ritual. I go through the same stuff, stuff I have to do the warm-up, so I literally have to bow down, get on the floor, warm up, do stuff to prepare myself, mental stuff in the moments before I go on the last few minutes, where I'm frequently standing there for three or four minutes, where I'm just getting ready and I'm moving and checking all of my muscles where I know I can need to make sure they're ready, but also then being ready to when those doors and in my mind it's with Matt Apple, because we're talking about circus and, yeah, circus like, yeah, the door open and I go out into that space and this is my only chance in this show to give people everything that I have, my whole philosophy, everything that I've ever talked about on the podcast now has to shine out through this one moment and I had moments when I was performing with La Clique.
Speaker 1:I mean, we were at the Hippodrome and it kept going and kept going. We had a two-month contract that became nine months and there was a curtain there that was at the back and I could stand behind that curtain and there was people sitting very close behind it because we were warming up behind it and I had this ritual there before I went out. And this was also really the season that just took La Clique from being a hit of the Edinburgh Fringe and an underground late night show to being a juggernaut of the show that won the olivia prize and all like, yeah, the show it was, it was, it was a real thing at that time. Yeah and um, and I was standing behind that curtain and listening to the audience and I because when you're doing the show eight times a week and month after month after month goes like how do you keep it fresh? And for me it was that it was to be there with the audience.
Speaker 1:Where I'm going, it's the ritual of me going through it, but them being there looking at me and me genuinely making this real for them right now. This is a kind of sacred thing. I do not take it for granted. It's I'm not to be allowed to be on stage in a situation where people are so excited and then I get to come out and take them to even another level from what has happened before me and I do my thing and they. This is not something that I think is a privilege that it should just be given. No, it is a privilege. It's not something that I can demand or whatever. So you have to earn it or whatever. And going out there and listening to it and being fully aware that I have to be grateful for this and have a certain form of reverence for them.
Speaker 1:That puts me in this mood that when I now I did that so many times, hundreds of times, there Didn't start in the beginning. It started maybe once we'd done 150 shows or something we still had 150, whatever, shows left.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that at the time, but it just going through. So now when I'm standing behind there, it is that moment of where I come up and if I have been down in the basement I haven't gone up and seen any of the other acts, which I usually do, but sometimes I just haven't Maybe we've been in a conversation I go up and then I stand. There's a couple of little spots at the back of the stage at Mad Apple where you can stand and look at the audience and sometimes in the other act, when it's early on, I can go out and have my tracksuit on and I can sneak out against and actually sit in seats in the audience, because the ones closest to the back of the stage are kind of like the ones that have the worst angle or whatever. So there's often on those first seats you get to there's often some empty ones, because people choose to sit in the best angles and I go out there and I'm watching the act. But I've also watched the act, so I'm also watching and feeling the room, how they are like or whatever, so that when I come out I can feel like I'm connecting to them immediately or whatever.
Speaker 1:And this is a I think this is a as much as you have to take everything with a grain of salt or whatever but it's a sacred kind of experience for me. I feel like I'm part of something bigger. I'm part of this particular night here for these people and because it happens to be that Circa Mad Apple have decided that the comedians, those people who go through every time, they have to go out and do a meet and greet afterwards after every show, which normally is something that I'm not crazy about, but the people who have done already 2000 shows it's great that I do it for two months and I can find but what that gave me when I was there the feedback that I get back after having done the show and they go oh my God, it's you and, and you were my favorite.
Speaker 1:And, of course, it's skewed as well, cause we're standing off to the side, so the people who did like me have a stronger tendency to go over.
Speaker 2:But still, if somebody hated me, you have that chance. Yeah, but you have the chance to to meet.
Speaker 1:At least get that feedback genuine reaction from these people and it's um, it never gets old to know that, as I'm getting older and older, that this thing that I can do, I can't do so much in my life and and I'm so dysfunctional in so many things and I could not function as a human being if I didn't have my wife to help guide me in the real world.
Speaker 1:So to be there and to do that and to know that these 10 minutes of my life, 12 minutes of my life, this is what I know best of all. Any mistake that happens in here, like we just talked about the other day, there was one time when the microphone didn't work and there was one time when the music didn't work and there was one time when the music and the microphone didn't work at all in a show with 3,000 people and I still did my act. So there's almost nothing that won't allow me to go through it. So that is because I know the depth, I know everything that can go wrong and I've tried to get out of it before yeah much and yet it still somehow surprises me every now and then holy shit, something happened today that has never happened yeah, it still happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, well, yeah, it's like watching the video every day for a year and you still see a new little thing. And what is that? Yeah, but, um, it's funny you say that about kind of taking the show seriously in one way, to paraphrase um, but you know, watching, you know one. One side effect of watching mystere over 31 years live is there's obviously so many new cast members yeah, um, who who weren't in the show? Uh, 31 years ago? And in fact the only cast member who was in the original show since 1993, who never missed a performance until the pandemic, then he retired his name was bruce rickard and he was the guitar player in the band and he played over 12 000 shows of mystere and I have to say he was a great guitar player. I saw him many of those shows. Obviously I would sit in a seat and I could see Bruce play, but towards the end, before the pandemic, it looked like he had played 12,000 shows, like he looked like he just wanted to die. I have to say from the audience I don't know how he felt. He still played a nice solo during the swinging trapeze, but man, it was looking rough. But what I wanted to say is these younger, especially a lot of the teeterboard jumpers now, are these younger kids, like 20 years old? They didn't. They didn't hear franco tell them that he wanted the audience to be afraid of them. They weren't there for that.
Speaker 2:And the thing is, I find a lot of the new generation of performers in the show. They don't take it seriously. They take the teeter board seriously because that's what they're hired to do, but then they have to do all these other cues, like the 20 Chinese polls that descend in the background of the main Chinese poll act. That's also some of their cues they have to do and they don't care about Chinese poll and they don't care about the choreography and they're quote unquote in the background and they just don't take it seriously. And you just tell like, for me it's just a sloppy show and that's what I said before about it. Depended on what era over the decades, of what artistic director you would get, and for some, you know, at one point in the mid to in mid 2000s, uh, the show was looking really bad, like just super rough, because the artistic director didn't really care about cleaning up the background's intention of the choreography and this and that, and now I think it's up on, it's on an upswing, they have a great new artistic director and the show's looking super good. But again, still, sometimes you see these people not take the show seriously, and I get it.
Speaker 2:That's also, for me, fascinating, and the way of thinking about doing a show 10 times a week for years and years and years. You can't always do a hundred percent perfection, you can't be always a hundred percent present, you can't. You know it's going to ebb and flow, and that's a human, that that's to be human Right and to and it still puts me in awe, though, of just understanding to keep that mechanism running for 31 years, or any of the shows that have lasted decades and decades. It's incomprehensible in one way that they had this artistic vision and now, 31 years later, you're going to hire this new cast member who wasn't born when the show opened. Yeah, and then you, or it was born a decade after the show opened.
Speaker 2:These kids are 20 years old and then you say, okay, so you're going to wear this costume, and then you're going to run across the stage like this, and then you're going to hold this prop, and then you're going to wear this mask, and then you're going to do this thing and the kids are just like okay, and they don't know you know what it means or the intention or whatever behind it. They just they. They do hopefully their best, but some but. But what they're best at is connected to, normally, their main discipline and the other stuff they're not so connected to. So to do their best it's just like to do what. Someone will stand here and hold this stick or something. They're like okay, but then they don't know what's supposed to mean.
Speaker 2:And in that way, because you asked me, uh, you know, for you, does the show maybe embody some sort of like genesis of life and kind of the meaning of life or the evolution of life and all these, these things that the creators talked about in the creation? And I was just like, nah, I don't. I don't really see that in the show these days, other than I see a show that that I I'm very happy to see. Like I said, it's in good shape right now and I can I can respect the rhythm of the show and the pacing and the effort the performers are giving. We talked already about the relationship of the clowns to each other.
Speaker 2:We talked about the strong dance team, um, and, and also some of the performers who have been there, like shingo, one of the just the best chinese pole performer um, there is just this maturity and grace and just um virtuosity in those roles that they, that these performers have, who have been there for 15 years, you know, and that's it's so impressive, to be in their presence, to be like, in one way you can say, bruce did 12,000 shows and like man, you just want to shoot yourself maybe, but on the other hand, I mean he could play that guitar, like I don't know, there's a balance there to find, but it's also but maybe also the musicians are in an even more sort of secluded spot, so maybe they also, when you've done it thousands of times, you feel like you're just in this room and maybe you're not so connected, or so on.
Speaker 1:That is also something that you actively have to pursue. Just like taking the show seriously, taking your life, taking your partner or your child seriously is a choice that you can do. And taking yourself seriously, you can choose to be a better you. You can choose to improve. You have done this life every day of your life but you can choose to look at yourself and improve it, or to oh this aspect of myself myself I'm sloppy on my background china's pole thing I think I can't be seen, so I'm on my phone when my kid is yeah, is uh doing
Speaker 1:her, whatever it is gymnastics or whatever it's like but also just in terms of taking the job seriously, of course. Then you still watch the show and the show is still happening, so the ritual is still there. And then this Chinese pole artist, shingo. Then this person comes out onto stage and then all of a sudden shines like a diamond in a bunch of people who might not be doing it, and you are now maybe more of an expert than that person who is on the teeter boards. Um, oh, yeah, without a doubt, because you know what the show is. And then you see the spark of something which is probably, or arguably, the reason why this show is still playing after 32 years. Yes, as everything gets sloppy, as everyone stops to take the whole of the show and the other artists and all of that, this stuff that you get not for free. I don't take it for granted. Yeah, in the pioneer stage of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when the director vents their anger at your ineptitude to realize his vision and when, when you, your hands are bleeding because you have actually been hanging on this trapeze for so many days in a row to learn this new thing, that that is like that you want and that the show needs, and that group thing that happens in that which, eventually, as people are leaving and as all that, and you get into the doing it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:That that's why I think choosing to take it seriously, choosing to see the depth and seeing how everything is interconnected and trying to work out how things go, will keep the show endlessly fascinating for you. It can be a way for you to, and it's for all the people, all artists everywhere, if you choose to take yourself seriously and you believe some of these things that I say about what I think a showman can be and how it's related to the sacred, how it's related to the shaman and how all these things that I that I will develop further as we go on and all how I see play as the origin of what we do and how fundamental the aspect of play is to being a human being and not just becoming set in your ways and becoming old.
Speaker 1:Because, I felt it now like I'm here visiting you in Stockholm and I'm sleeping in your son's bed and I'm climbing up into it and there's part of me that also goes there's something about this that I fly out to see a friend just to talk. I sleep in his son's bed, but for his son there's a 49-year-old man who's coming and hanging around and I go. This was what I did when I was 20. And I don't feel like I've changed, but sometimes I become aware of the fact that I'm almost 50. Feel like I've changed, but sometimes I become aware of the fact that I'm, like, almost 50. But well, I love and continuous, continual reflection on what we do that you and me share. Then, yeah, it feels like it's alive and I've. I have taken the choice to do it seriously, and you have too and yeah, I mean, I mean those, those, uh, teeter board kids.
Speaker 2:When they're doing the Chinese pole cue you can tell they think it's stupid, they like this choreography is dumb. And because they think it's dumb, it is dumb, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy there, right? And when Shingo comes out and does his pole solo, maybe for him it's another Tuesday, maybe it's his worst show he's ever done. He doesn't care, and he's thinking about I'm he's ever done, he doesn't care and he's thinking about I'm gonna have chicken tonight after dinner, but he still has done that act 15 years, for 15 years and he can't help but shine because he has it in him.
Speaker 2:And maybe those teeter board kids hopefully the show goes for 100 years who, hopefully? Who knows right? But like maybe the teeter board kid who's 20 years old now who thinks that the chinese pole cue is stupid, maybe in 15 years they'll be the one who's carrying the show, not because it's it's it's the Thursday night early show and they think it's the coolest thing they've ever done, but because they can't help it, because they have it inside their body and I think to be there for 15 years. You have to find the depth and you have to find the truth. You can't phone it in for 15 years, you can't play the guitar for 12,000 shows without some kernel of truth there. That compels you, yeah, to still be there.
Speaker 1:You know it shines out of you. Like it's you, you. That's what I believe enthusiasm is. It's that inner sacred thing, enthusiasm the theo enthusiasm being entered by a god or so and I think that there's something in that which which, when you have genuine enthusiasm and you believe in the depth of what you do and you believe in the validity of what you do and the choices that you've taken through a long life, if you're at the beginning of the Way of the Showman and you've just landed your first job with Cirque du Soleil and you're a teeter-borter artist and you think it's stupid to have to do something else, I have been in that situation where I'm in a show and all of a sudden I have to do some dancing on the side and I'm like, oh no, one of my pet peeves of like there's an opening dance.
Speaker 1:So the first thing they see of me is how inept I am at dancing. Then I have to win them back in the show because they have a pre their first encounter with me.
Speaker 2:No, the even worse thing than that is when the director says and now when we come, do the bow for the group show one by one. When you come out and bow, just do it. Just do a quick little trick, an extra little trick, because the stupid dancing at the beginning of the show is the first impression. Yeah, that's not fun. But then you come, get to do your act later on, so you leave them with a great impression of you. But then when you come to your bow, you have to do one more cool little thing and if it's not quite as cool, they're like oh, I like that guy, but what was he doing Better before it did?
Speaker 1:What was he doing with the handkerchief?
Speaker 2:Anyway, but do you have any uh, any more, any more questions about mysterious? So I think I mean I'm shooting for a hundred shows to see it live, a hundred times.
Speaker 1:That seems to be good sort of cursory overview, and then we can sort of go deeper yeah, at another time we could start talking about it for real.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like later on, because now we've sort of gone.
Speaker 1:These are the things that we could potentially talk about yeah, and then we can.
Speaker 2:I'm to start doing a live blog every time I see the show. Excellent, in real time. A live video blog, just of your face. Okay, johnny Miles is walking on the stage Now. He's stopped in the center of the stage.
Speaker 1:He has the puppet, the interesting thing now is that the timing has changed here. Because of his growing relationship with Jimmy Slonina, they have this moment that used to be one second, now this is developed into this thing. Yeah, anyway, now that we've done this, I did when I was on Two Characters and a Clown on their podcast. Then I did air this idea. So I've had this since March last year when I've talked to you about, I've got to talk to you about Mystere, and I did talk to them when I was there that after the podcast, I think, to said I would like to talk to you guys, or at least to some of them or whatever, about yeah about what it's like, and then no one is better than you to come up with how to frame it for them, because they're all just come in later and yeah, and I should say they should listen to these four episodes here and going do you take the show this seriously and if so, why not?
Speaker 1:but also what is kind of wonderful as well, but having these three characters that is shining in the show and that really enjoys it and that when you, when I have talked to them about it, they just they just find the depth and how Jimmy is like he loves to be in a show, to do the same thing over and continue to find new details and stuff, to hear that in them. And then it's not a coincidence that they are shining in the show. And if three people like that have that connection that every time they come on there's a little sparkle and they look at each other and they have in every moment that they have, that is sometimes enough sort of to save it. And then the Chinese, pole artist and the good artistic director or a powerful stage manager that can focus it, and it's almost no people that can, but we had one like that for a while in uh, mark, I don't remember his last name, but he was just extraordinary and now he works for um. Oh yeah, and what he nice did backstage when I have the weekly meeting, tap is rouge when they're talking.
Speaker 1:I was shocked. I did not know that this level of communication could go on in an organization as big and as old and as corporate as Cirque du Soleil, but that there was overflowing heart from him when he brought up what had happened in a week and how he dealt with that and it was amazing. And you can get that sometimes through a few performers as well, and sometimes it is from new performers that come in, those people who aren't dulled by 2,000 shots no, no for sure. But they've come in and are. I can't believe that I'm in this production. There is somebody here, some wonderful ladies who keep coming out of the. Can I dry clean your suit?
Speaker 2:Can I?
Speaker 1:organize. Oh, you told me to just wash your tennis shorts because it gets white when I roll on the floor. Anyway, it gets dirty and then he goes. But I saw that there was a little seam that was open on the side there, so I just fixed that.
Speaker 2:Is that okay? She just hand-stitched it.
Speaker 1:she just hands that I hand stitched your, so it's not just yeah, and I found that like I had this great relationship going and talking to those ladies who were working there and and they just had this care that they, when it was washed, they did not just take it out of the bag and hang it on the hanger, yeah, took it out and they looked at it, yeah, check the pockets, yeah, and they checked everything on it and going is this the way that it could be? Um, as good as it could be, and they made sure that it was yeah, it's all.
Speaker 2:It's so fascinating on so many levels that to do a show for that long of any of these shows, that you're doing 10 shows a week in vegas just grinding it out, and that there has to be some sort of level of commitment and gratitude and appreciation and awareness and passion and all these things, while at the same time not burning yourself out. And yeah, and that's pretty, pretty incredible and that's maybe part of this thing of like why rj and and jimmy and johnny don't really talk about the work on their own podcast, because you can't really they're they're living it every day, you know, yeah to go.
Speaker 1:I haven't got the perspective that you have for not being in it and not having been in it.
Speaker 2:Maybe you need that perspective of just taking a step back after work to keep doing it night after night to a high level of quality, which they do, because otherwise you're just going to burn yourself out or something. But I find the whole balancing act of all that to be really Fascinating. Yeah, it's just crazy, it's beyond reality, and I'll still, as many times as I see the show, I'll still probably never understand it fully.
Speaker 1:You know of how the world works like that, but it's, it's fun to try yeah, anyway, and thank you so much for, uh, doing all of this and I can't wait to plumb the depths for real. Yeah, exactly, see you then. See you then. All right, thanks for coming along on this leg of the journey. I hope, whatever project you're working on in your world, whatever shows you're dreaming about or whatever shows you're actually doing, that you're finding depth and value and that is giving you the purpose that you need in life. I hope so. If it isn't, then you can ask yourself why that isn't.
Speaker 1:Maybe this last month's explorations of Jay's obsession with Mystere, which has certainly kindled my interest in it, and I know when I go back to work with Mad Apple later on, that's actually going to be in May. From the middle of May until the middle of July, I will be performing with Mad Apple in New York City. No, it's not New York City, it's New York, new York Casino in Las Vegas, and I will return back there and perform there in all of September and all of October. So if you're going to be in Las Vegas, you can come there and see me, and you can also maybe join me. Say, if you're there and you want to go and see Mystere, then I certainly am going to see it at least one more time, which will take my tally up to two. So watch out, jay Gilligan, there's a new Mystere fan in town.
Speaker 2:So until next time take care of yourself, those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.