Cirque - Revisit

Let me take a few moments to revisit my previous posts about CirqueCon 2007.

We had planned a trip to Disney earlier this year as a graduation and birthday gift for Connor. He was extremely enthused about this trip on many levels. We hope he had a great time when he's able to reflect back on all its happenings.

Last year wifey and I were unable to make it to Las Vegas for the 2006 CirqueCon. Relatively last minute happenings forced us to cancel out of the meet and greet. (Owning a business makes scheduling very hard and priorities even harder.) This upset us to no end. We vowed we'd be going to the coming years events, without question. When the 2007 convention was announced I through a tizzy fit of excitement. Disney is one of my favorite places on earth. We try and get down there as much as possible typically going down for a week once every couple years. The last time we visited Disney was a joint vacation, birthday gift for FAV (Amanda) and my father. We flew everyone down to Disney to see La Nouba (a Cirque show near and dear to my heart and my favorite show yet.) We surprised FAV and her brother with by having their 'Jammy & Poppy' surprise them at a dinner after we'd already arrived the day before. So anyway, the following day we saw La Nouba, loved it, and everyone was ecstatic. Short trip but we still had a great time.

 When we heard CirqueCon was at Disney World this year, we pulled out all the stops and made a project of it. 10 days of bliss enjoying the environs in style and pamper.

Having never attended a 'con' before we had some trepidation about the event. What were these people going to be like. Would they be totally over-the-top nut jobs bordering on costumed trekkies? Long ago I went to one Trek convention and vowed never again. People were plain extreme and that type of event was just not for me. It left a bad taste in my mouth and a seed planted about these enthusiast type gatherings.

I did as much research on the group's past events as possible. I read a few blogs on the meets and the description of people in attendance. I looked at every picture I could find that were available on the net. Nothing jumped out at me at all. Also Rich and Ricky certainly quelled any type of misgiving one could have. Their description of the events were spot on and to the point. I traded about 10 or 15 emails with them about planning and event attendance, etc. They were great and responded immediately. They truly are fantastic to deal with and are as concerned, if not more, than anyone else about making sure the events planned come off without a hitch. CirqueCon is a simple gathering of people who enjoy the artistic presentations of Cirque. That's all. No more, no less.

The first registration day, Thursday, got hung up a bit for us. We'd planned to attend an afternoon registration event but it had been pushed off a couple hours because of flight delays. We had show and dinner plans that couldn't be moved at all. We also had tour plans for first thing Friday morning and therefore couldn't make the Friday morning reg time. I called reg central and spoke with Rich. I explained our situation and totally true to form the response I received was 'nice to speak with you Doug, welcome. No problem. Just arrive at the fireworks viewing area tonight and we'll trade registration information then.. Wow, that was easy I thought.

We arrived Friday night and entered the VIP viewing area. We were greeted by both Rich and Ricky. Four or five Disney personnel were here checking wristbands and shining lighted wands around directing everyone to the proper area. They greeted us warmly, showed us the direction and then said, 'enjoy the show.' Didn't know anyone at that time and as such we moved off into our own area and grabbed a bench to watch the Illuminations Fireworks. The dessert party was very nice. Brief speeches were made and then the fireworks began. We were WOW' d. At the end of the evening we were again ushered properly towards the exit and then wished a very nice evening by the Disney people. Just great. What a night and best seats in the house.

Saturday we got up a bit late and hustled to an 11AM theatre call. We grabbed some fresh baked goodies at the Boardwalk Bakery, gobbled them down, grabbed a cab and headed off to Downtown Disney and the La Nouba theatre. We arrived just in time to be at the end of the line still entering the building. Whew.

Richard Dennison (Cirque organization manager with Disney) greeted us and led us into a fully lit theatre. The place is awe-inspiring (this picture does not do it justice):

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The 45 or so con attendees sat in one of the 200 sections and gathered ourselves. Richard took the reigns and put everyone in their place (nicely) early on. It was a theatrical experience. The stage, costumes and workings are artistic property of Cirque, please don't interfere with operations people. This was the casts 'Friday' ((last show of their week.) They do 10 shows per week and have Sunday and Monday off.)) Richard,

 went on to explain the history of the Cirque organization and Guy's (founder) artistic vision from the start way back in the early 80's. In summary, he was a street artist working in Canada and fell into collaboration with other artists who formed a troupe. The troupe grew and grew, adding more and more physical and technical prowess to their street shows until they finally decided it was time to form a corporation. They hooked up with a small bank who capitalized their initial operations and they were off to the races. Today, Guy is a Billionaire and working to bring many more shows to Las Vegas and the US in the next 3 years. 4-5 more in Vegas and a couple other resident shows here any there (with rumors for one in NYC on the Hudson (yeah!).

Then we met Bob Shuck (director of operations for the show.)

 He was introduced and shook his head saying something to the effect of 'I don't know what you're going to learn from me" and laughed off any other interaction. Bob appears to be a true to life - work yourself up from the bottom type of guy. He started in Broadway, off-Broadway and traveling production set carpentry. Finally the company he was working for out of Ct made him the head set carpenter/constructor. Cirque caught his eye and visa-versa and suddenly he realized there was a way out of the snow belt down to sunny Disney. He took the job and was their lead production designer/constructor in Disney. Then eventually made his way to Director of Operations. He runs the theatre production and everything keeping it operating.

Richard broke us off into two groups of about 22 people. One group went with him and began on the stage while the other, my group, went off with Bob to begin touring much higher.  Bob led us passed some backstage areas and a small kitchenette area to an elevator and up we went to the production 'ring' high above and behind the audience head. There, in a space not very wide (about 7-8 feet I'd gather) is the entire direction facility for the shows. The Director, lighting, set designers, etc etc. all sit in this area during the shows. Lighting and stage producers are all 'comm'd' in to one another by radio. They also have video feeds running at all times (as well as a dedicated performance video station) from 16 placed cameras. Typically they cover stage entries and exits, curtain call areas, music, below stage areas where hydraulics and stage motion takes place, green room, elevator and finally grid (high above the stage.) They also seem to have all their computers networked through this direction area as well as set designer and CAD services there as well.

Bob took great lengths to describe Cirque's relationship with Disney. They have a 10 year lease-hold agreement with Disney. Disney operates the building and operational services for the infrastructure (like a landlord). They run the ticket offices, vending, cleaning, maintenance, and usher services. They also maintain things like the a/c, power and house lighting, and laundry machines. On Cirque's side, they're concerned with all of their equipment, motors, stage props, costumes, physical stage itself and its related operations, all flying equipment and hoists, etc.

What I always find quite interesting is the interface between Landlord and Tenant. In this case, the demarcation point between Disney and Cirque. Being in the building trades I can certainly appreciate the finite nature of needs at times. Its not always roofs leaking or electric lines running afoul. In Cirque case, the biggest point Bob pointed out was that Disney seems to encroach on production at bit, contractually for sure. The audio and video equipment is owned by Disney, but used and rented by Cirque. Cirque has issues with the limitations of the systems currently in place. They'd like to expand the original equipment to better produce shows. The cost to change equipment will be in the 1-1/2 million range. This equipment though has not reached Disney's 'life-cycle' charts yet. Therefore, Disney and Cirque have worked out a 50% replacement is 2008 and 50% in 2009. Bob now points out 'how do I, as operations manager, integrate 1/2 of of a new system into my production?. In 2008, they're getting 1/2 the equipment, but the equipment won't operate without the other half. So, effectively Cirque will store $750K of equipment for a year, not use it, until the remainder of the equipment is received in 2009. Weird how corporate entities think, bottom line, forecasts and spreadsheets.

Getting back to the 10 year agreement with Disney. La Nouba opened in 1998 with the 10 year lease. The renewal of the lease was subject to mutual negotiations which were scheduled to begin in 2008. Disney, realizing it had a good thing going with this show (and an average 83% seat fill rate)  opened extension negotiations with Cirque earlier this year. The show is still fresh, still puts a great deal of new-comers into the chairs each evening and there's been no push-back from anyone to change out the show. It appears that Disney and Cirque have a really good, and profitable, relationship going right now and why mess with something that works (La Nouba). So, at this time it appears that La Nouba will be staying put for the foreseeable future. If it was to leave Disney, some other Cirque show would replace it and La Nouba would find a new resident show home (its too big to travel properly.)

Interesting aside on this topic while I'm here... The La Nouba theatre is now the standard bearer theatre design for all resident future shows. The stage size and audience areas are almost perfect (short about 200 seats.) So, the new traveling and resident shows will all be designed to work on the La Nouba stage size. Audience members will be able to feel the Cirque comfort they experienced at one show when seeing a new show.

Back to the experience... So, Bob now took us to the elevator where we crammed our 22 (+ Bob) bodies in and rode up to level 9 - 'The Grid'. This was absolutely fascinating. The grid exists high above the stage. I didn't take notes or recordings, but I believe he said it was 74 feet from the stage to the base of the grid. The grid contains all the flying equipment, cable hoists for trapeze, motors for the netting, aerial production sets, curtain operations, back of stage wall equipment, and storage.

This brings me to a storage story. They have very little of it. It seems every nook and cranny is crammed with storage of some form or another. Supposedly, during construction and ground breaking, the cost over-runs for theatre construction were mounting heavily. Disney then decided to cut 25% of construction costs by reducing the size of the facility to bear minimum. They cut 25' feet off the circumference of the circular building, and thus reduced expenses and any area they had planned for storage and operational offices. It also reduced seating capacity from a planned 2102 seats down to the 1760 it is now. Cirque works and has worked with this but its a tight fit and cramped quarters.

Because of the lack of space there's also a metal shop in the grid, replacement sets, general production storage and funny, a couch and small rest area. Now the grid consists of 3'x3' sections of 1"x3" open cell steel grating. You literally can look through the grid and see the audience seats, shown below:

   

If you look at this pic closely you might be able to make out the metallic steel 'grid' the picture is being shot through. The view down is to the red audience seating, isles and on the left, stage left. The seats arc around the up stage interface with the audience. (Funny aside, the place is so cramped for space, even the elevator was impacted by the design changes. At the top level, 'grid' the elevator door opens, but not all the way. The door has been programmed to only open as far as the walking space will allow. There's an 'X' brace beam on the left side of the elevator open that blocks free access to the full width of the elevator cab opening. The door stops about 2/3's open to protect the people using it from tripping over a 6"x16" cross brace. Just funny. 

Then Bob took the group back down to the stage level. We exited into blackness. Everything is the typical painted black. Wall fabrics, walls, floors, prop covers, everything, black. We saw the staging area for the opening act clown props. Those pesky multi-colored boxes the clowns interact with the audience over. A couple dead and dying plastic palm trees. The choo-choo box, carrier and plain string pull line. (We were also told that at one point one of the previous iterations of cleaning ladies was leaving the cast and made a point to be stepping on the pull string that gets the small model train across the stage. Yep, just plain white string on a hand wound spool.

Then it was downstairs to the under-stage area. Seeing the mechanicals was uplifting. My first personal experience below any professional stage. The 4 floor elevators were there protected by cargo netting to prevent anyone from falling the 4' into a 'pit' at the base of these cubes (used by the bike's, the white clown troupe, and the table balancing act.) Then we passed the building hydraulically lifted to stage height and used in the trampoline ensemble by Titan and his counterpart. (Those lifts and props are controlled by computer from the directors booth high above the audience. In times of power failure (like a $4 part that went bad during one show) they can be controlled locally by hand-switch.)

Leaving he under-stage area we walked through the costume shop (with a $700K/yr budget). Three ladies were hard at work repairing various costumes. They were extremely gracious and accommodating. They answered questions like troopers and also were very helpful with various 'behind-the-scenes' stories like when Titan met the lizardman from Varekai

Then it was through the hallways passed the dressing rooms and finally back to stage level and a walk onto the stage. I'd never realized how imposing being on stage in front of 1760 seats would be. Its breathtaking. On stage we learned about the production and maintenance schedules and efforts needed to keep things looking so well for each performance.

Finally it was back to our seats where closing q&a took place and then Richard stunned everyone by saying that after the evenings show (which everyone was there to see) we were to remain in our seats for the house lights to come up. Richard asked a few characters to come visit with us in costume for a group picture and then finally we'd be led to their green room where Cirque would be hosting a cast party for us. WOW!!!.

 

more later....