My recent two posts on the Cirque du Soleil, which you can read here and here, elicited some debate on Facebook as well as comments to this blog. Since most of you probably missed this, I thought they might be worth excerpting here. Nothing like a little controversy!
Is Cirque du Soleil bad for clowning? Can you do clowning in a large space? Has the Cirque lost its soul? Everyone has an opinion, so feel free to add yours via the comment link at the bottom of this post!
From Facebook:
Mandy Dalton Wow, yet another piece of crap from NYT regarding circus. Gee I'm so surprised. It's been a long time since "We Reinvent The Circus." The most compelling part of the show was the clowning. Varekai had some great clowning with Mookie. It's a shame to see cirque turn its back on clown. In the first show it made them.
June 9 at 8:43pm
Mandy Dalton The link seems to be broken--gonna look it up. I just don't like the comments that you captured about "painted on smiles" the usual cliche stuff.
June 9 at 9:26pm
Mandy Dalton Now that I have seen the rest of the article I do agree that clowns built Cirque. I had my usual knee jerk reaction to cliche characterizations of clown. "Painted on smile" "Crying on the inside". But the article is interesting and it is a shame that Cirque is turning its back on clown.
June 9 at 9:47pm
Mandy Dalton I am trying to figure out what editor in her right mind would allow the word "twee" in NYT. "Rather, it is because developing a clown act requires more experimentation and spontaneity that the Machine allows time for. And Cirque was built on arty, sometimes twee clowning that can’t fill up a large space like Radio City." How did that end up in a newspaper? Much less a Newspaper like the NYT?
June 9 at 9:49pm
Pat Cashin Didn't Slivers Oakley, Marceline Orbes, Poodles Hanneford, Joe Jackson, Toto, Otto Griebling, Emmett Kelly and A. Robins ALL play the New York Hippodrome? Wasn't the Hippodrome stage LARGER than that of Radio City?
June 9 at 10:03pm
John Towsen Yep. and didn't Shiner himself play a sizable Broadway theatre with Bill Irwin in "Full Moon"?
June 9 at 10:41pm
Mandy Dalton I hate it that the answer in Cirque is that "clown is bad for the space" instead of "Banana Shpeel just didn't work, let's figure out another way to incorporate clown in the show."
June 9 at 10:46pm
Jango Edwards
JOHN LETS PUT THE CARDS ON THE TABLE AND BE HONEST FOR ONCE, WHEN IT COMES TO CLOWNS THERE ARE NO REAL CLOWNS IN THIS SUCKUS. OHH THE ALL HIGH AND MIGHTY SOILEIL. THESE GUYS WERE MY STUDENTS YEARS AGO AND IN THE BEGINNING LIKE IN GENISIS AT CREATION IT WAS A GARDEN OF EDEN FOR THE CLOWN ARTIST BUT NOW ITS A MAN MADE HELL BUT TO QUOTE THE ORIGONATORS THEMSELF-WE WANT TO BE THE MC DONALDS OF CIRCUS....WELL CONGRATULATIONS YOU ARE. LOST IN SPACE. PAT ITS NOT ABOUT THE SIZE BIG OR SMALL STAGE ITS ABOUT THE HEART. I'VE PLAYED FOR 150,000 AND FOR ONE AND THAT WAS AS A CLOWN. YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT FELLAS YOU BEEN THERE DONE THAT RIGHT GREG. THATS WHAT THE NOUVEAU CLOWN INSTITUTE WAS CREATED FOR BUT JUST THINK WHAT WE COULD HAVE DONE FOR THE PRICE OF THAT FLIGHT TICKET. NOW THAT WAS AN EXPENSIVE BONER. PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT.
June 9 at 11:05pm
Jango Edwards YES BUT NOT ON THE MOON. AND YOU HAVE TO SHOW A LITTLE MORE THEN USUAL,.
June 9 at 11:18pm
John Towsen Most clowning works better close-up, but of course it all depends on your meaning of clowning. It takes all kinds, blah blah blah. A clown in a cabaret or theatre isn't necessarily better than one in the circus, or vice-versa. All depends.
June 9 at 11:20pm
Jango Edwards JOHN FOR ME THE STAGE IS THE LEAST IMPORTANT PLACE MAYBE THATS WHY I'M HAPPY BUT BROKE. BLAH BLAH BLAH ENOUGH TALK JUST DO IT....NIKE
June 9 at 11:24pm
Pat Cashin
The nature of a clown always changes based on the size of the venue and audience. Things that are perfect for hospital clowning are useless in an arena and vice versa. It doesn't make one style better, just more appropriate to the scale of the venue.
The fact that there were once clowns that COULD successfully work a venue LARGER than Radio City Music Hall means that it CAN be done.
It is just done differently.
Banana Shpeel failed for many reasons. Not least of which was that it WASN'T an actual vaudeville show. A variety show format might have gone over huge in New York if it weren't drowned in Cirque's patented formula of fairy dust and unicorn farts.
Maybe they need to drop their preciousness and pretensions this time, stop trying to reinvent the wheel and instead think about what that wheel really is... and what size tire it needs to work correctly for them; )
June 10 at 7:33am ·
Jango Edwards Captain Cashin, this discourse demands such an open forum between all of us to share our experience and knowledge with those who will follow and go further. One thought I try to live by is a clown by true definition adapts to his public and not expects his public to adapt to him. Miss ya brother. Keep keepin on.
June 10 at 8:02am
And a couple of interesting blog comments:
David Lichtenstein said...Rene Bazinet is the most talented clown I ever spent close time with, a truly brilliant performer. (And although he has a German side to him, he's basically Canadian from Winnipeg.) David Shiner is not exactly a slouch in the clown department. All power to them trying to keep some theatrical clown in Cirque de Soleil. Shiner's comment is odd, since he, Bazinet, Geoff Hoyle (who I saw in Cirque years ago) and the famous clowns of the past did make the big arena intimate.
I am envious of the New York worldview being able to underplay the influence of Cirque de Soleil. Out here in the provincial capitals (Portland, Oregon) Cirque de Soleil brings a show for 6 weeks every two years and outgrosses all Portland theaters by a mile. In the popular American conscious all live theater is small, but within that slice Cirque de Soleil is huge and dominant.
I recently saw the Cirque Beatles Show Love, after not seeing them for 18 years. 20 years ago when I saw Cirque shows in Quebec I used to tell non-circus people that Cirque was bringing the one-ring circus intimacy, the theatricality of circus back to America. Well no more. In Love, there was almost always 4-12 things going on at a time. I had a great time, there was so many interesting characters and costumes to check out but the artistic choices were terrible. Any focus on character, or Beatles themes (There's a lot in those songs after all.) was infantile and always abandoned within two measures of 8 in favor of the next splash of images. It seemed to me an end of live theater, it will be difficult for theater to reach even shorter attention spans with even fast crashing of big imagery. There are physical limits live.
The problem for the USA is that we never had the full small circus, physical theater boom that birthed Cirque de Soleil. Although the 1970's 1980's American juggler-street theater wave helped spark the European Street Theater wave, the much larger European Tsunami of Circus and physical theater never made it back here.
Rene Bazinet and Shiner come from an important generation. Rene studied intensively for years with Decroux and did 3 years at Lecoq with Lecoq and Guallier and other studies. They spread it out with brilliance to the world. Is there no room for theatrical clowning descendants in America? So many forces in America squeeze off small theater. Our Wanderlust Circus http://www.wanderlustcircus.com/ puts on original productions with live bands for $10,000 total production budgets and then there's Cirque de Soleil, where is the midsize physical theater?
The European Street Theater Festival Circuit is driving the European, Australian, and South American new circus/physical theater scenes. Out of the European Street Theater Festivals come the most theatrical new circus work like El Grito. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3orrsDJe2AU
On the West Coast of the USA I think the leadership of the post-hippie generation (Oregon Country Fair, Moisture Festival) is perhaps past it’s peak. I think the new generation of leaders is developing at the second generation Burning Man type festivals that are proliferating. But perhaps their style will be too loud, fast, and rock and roll for the Rene Bazinet/David Shiner brilliant clowns that we love.
Thanks,
David Lichtenstein
Leapin’ Louie Comedy Shows
david@comedytricks.com
http://www.comedytricks.com
Noah Mickens said...Hey Leapin'. Noah Mickens here, co-director/producer/ringmaster of The Wanderlust Circus (and Bogville, Queen of Knives, Societas Insomnia, et al.)
I only wish I had the resources available to these fortunate gentlemen who are producing the new Cirque du Soleil shows - what fun we could have. For that matter, I wish that I more frequently had access to the $10,000 mentioned in your comment here.
For better or for worse, the microbudget DIY conditions under which the independent theater troupe labors in the United States has necessitated a more inventive approach. How to do something great using only the limited resources available? "Availabism", as the peerless Kembra Pfahler used to call it in New York.
I've heard that, in most European countries, one is eligible for significant government grants without having to prove that one's artistic efforts are worthy of 501C3 status. The problem with the old 501C3 is that a given troupe simply does not qualify unless they can prove that their work has an educational or charitable component. So you get plenty of money for the Ballet, the Symphony, the Opera; and small troupes must split their time and energy between their actual shows and whatever classes and workshops they have to tack on in order to qualify for the big bucks. I look at current European krewes like Grand Royal and think how much I could do with their budgets too.
But for now, and likely for good, the US just doesn't run that way. To be an artist here, one must find ways of squeezing magic from the everyday. Maybe it's always been like that? And maybe it lends to the hardscrabble spirit of experimentation that brought jazz and vaudeville (and Burning Man) to the world in the first place?
Anyway, back to work. Thanks for drawing my attention to this article.
All you naysayers in the Big Apple listen up - Cirque du Soleil is an amazing organization, capable of inspiring levels of wonder and majesty that Broadway doesn't even comprehend right now. When you stop inflicting garbage like Mama Mia on the world, then you can judge the Cirque.
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Well, I plead not guilty to inflicting Mama Mia on the world — I barely know what it is — but thank you all for your comments. More welcome below.....
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