We’re Off and Running, Part 5:
Nouvelle Expérience, Part 2 (1991)

A few weeks ago, as I was flipping through a few classic Cirque du Soleil programme books (as is my wont), I was happily caught off-guard by a brief history of the company that it had written about itself in Saltimbanco’s original European Tour programme, published sometime in 1996. Not because the historia was in English, French, and Spanish, but rather I found the wording a bit more colorful… haughty… than what you’d find from the company today. Something about its whimsical and heady nature spoke to the way Cirque du Soleil saw itself then, containing a youthful verve and arrogance that is simply no longer present. When did Cirque lose this dynamic sense of self, this liveliness, and vivacity about its past, present, and future? Unfortunately, not long after. Thereafter the speak becomes less joie de vivre and more lié aux affaires, and Cirque du Soleil turns from a rag-tag band of street performers into a bona fide corporate entity right before our very eyes. This is not a new revelation – far from it in fact – but this re-discovery struck a chord of curiosity within…

How did others see Cirque du Soleil during this period?

Think about it: as Cirque’s multitude of shows travel around the globe in either arenas or under the big top, at each stop, in each city, there is a write-up in the local press. Sometimes the coverage is just a brief blurb about the show and its theme, occasionally there’s a short interview with a performer, a stage hand, or creation director, and other times it’s an assessment of the show itself, evaluating its technical and acrobatic merits with what had come through before. But the reviews we see today are too current, discussing these shows through a contemporary lens; shows that have/had 15 to 20 years touring the globe, shows we would refer to as “classic” or “signature”. What I’d become interested in knowing was what some of the first reviews, peeks, and evaluations of these shows were as they took their first steps across North America. How did the press see Le Cirque du Soleil in 1998, 1994, 1990, 1987?

It was time to peck through the archives.

What I found was extraordinary, and more than I expected. And I’m sharing these discoveries here in Fascination through a series of collections, beginning with the 1987 tournée of Le Cirque du Soleil (better known today as Le Cirque Réinventé), and continuing on from there. This month we continue on with 1991’s reviews of Nouvelle Expérience.

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CIRQUE TAKES COSTA MESA BY HUMOR, THEATRICAL VITALITY
By: Jan Herman | LA Times
February 25, 1991

What astronaut Neil Armstrong said when he landed on the moon may safely be applied to the touring Cirque du Soleil, which arrived in Costa Mesa over the weekend: “That’s one small step for a clown, one giant step for clownkind.”

This hypnotic, dazzling, one-ring “circus of the sun” touched down for the first time ever in Orange County with an inspired display of theatrical vitality, the likes of which are rarely to be seen under any Big Top tent.

The show, titled “Nouvelle Experience,” not only combines acrobatic grandeur, picturesque beauty and ingenious humor but keeps all of it on an intimate scale and still manages to tell an epic fairy tale symbolizing human conflict and renewal.

Mime soloist Geoff Hoyle–replacing David Shiner but not mentioned in the official program–plays a lone traveler who inexplicably finds himself in alien territory occupied by all sorts of devils and angels and especially by the Flounes, a delicately bizarre species of gibbering clowns who are the most endearing characters of the production.

The Flounes, together with Hoyle, serve as a touchstone to the evening’s varied entertainment. In his role as a sly Mr. Sniff, moreover, Hoyle brings to the performance a satirical sense of smell that puts the crowd in stitches, along with a three-legged dance number that Fred Astaire might have admired if not envied.

There are many other acts, all of them breathtaking–from contortionists, aerialists and tumblers to tight-wire walkers and balance artists. But everyone–even the trapeze fliers who soar between the two peaks of the blue-and-yellow Big Top–performs to a compelling jazz-rock score that unifies the action.

So fluid and assertive is the music, alternating from catchy to propulsive to haunting, that it determines the rhythm and mood of virtually every moment in the production. In fact, this is one stylish circus you can leave humming the score.

For all its dazzle, “Nouvelle Experience” is a fresh and youthful show more heartfelt than slick. The daring feats may be wondrously spectacular, but they’re not always perfect. On any given night you are bound to see some unintended misses, which heightens the suspense.

High-tech production values remain top notch, with both costumes and lighting as striking as ever. The company is also up to full-strength again, since the addition of a Chinese juggler and a British wire walker who joined the tour in San Diego.

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CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: CIRCUS OF THE FUTURE
By: Glenn Collins | New York Times
April 12, 1991

The secret is out. The Cirque du Soleil is not a circus. “What we do is not circus, it’s theater,” said Franco Dragone, the show’s artistic director. He said it loudly, confidently, but with the barest hint of mockery.

“It certainly is a circus, you just don’t like circuses,” countered Gilles Ste-Croix, creative director and co-founder of the show from Montreal that opens Sunday night. Mr. Ste-Croix was trading barbs with Mr. Dragone on a recent afternoon outside the troupe’s blue-and-yellow tent festooned with jaunty pennants snapping in the Hudson River breezes of Battery Park City in Manhattan.

Mr. Ste-Croix turned to a visitor. “You see, we disagree about everything,” he said in his accented English. “This is exactly why we work so well together.”

When the Cirque du Soleil begins its New York run on Sunday (previews started yesterday), audiences can assess for themselves just how circusy the Cirque du Soleil really is. The troupe’s new extravaganza, “Nouvelle Experience,” will run through May 5 under its new, $750,000 big top at West Street and Battery Place.

SYNTHESIS OF SKILLS

Only three of the performers have returned from the Cirque’s original six-week run at Battery Park City in 1988. That show won rave reviews for its dynamic new-vaudeville synthesis of theater, music, dance and traditional circus skills. Not only was the production hailed as a savvy, high-tech art circus, but in addition, its seamlessly choreographed world of theatrical fantasy influenced a new generation of performers.

The new show, which cost $1.25 million to produce, has a full complement of variety artists, including energetic newcomers from Montreal, Russian aerialists and acrobats, a Chinese parasol juggler and trapeze artists from France. Oddly enough, the focus of the show is a 37-year-old, Boston-born beanpole of a European-trained clown, David Shiner.

“Definitely, Cirque is circus,” said Mr. Shiner, who should know, having starred in the Swiss national circus. Although purists insist that a circus must have a ring and animals to circumgalumph it, Mr. Shiner dismissed such quibbling with an intense wave of his hand.

The Cirque du Soleil “is in the round, though it has no ring,” he said. “It does a different style of circus, that’s all. It casts its own spell. But it has acrobats, clowns, a trapeze. And the name Cirque is in the title.” Ecological Harmony

“It’s not a circus, it is more than circus,” Mr. Dragone said with his sly smile. “It is a show that marries elements of dance, theater, mime and circus, and creates something new, that goes beyond them.”

The troupe began work on the new show in 1989, starting with a philosophical substrate: the ecological theories of James Lovelock — the scientist who helped propound the Gaia Theory that the earth’s biosphere is a single self-regulating, living organism — and Albert Jacquard, whose theories posit an ecology of human relationships.

“The show is in no way didactic, it doesn’t preach any Gaia message, but we feel our ideas of ecological harmony infuse the show,” said Mr. Dragone, who joined the show in 1985.

“People enter the tent sad, tired, distracted,” said France La Bonte, the show’s “Ringmistress.” “Our job is to take them with us, make them forget they are adults, and become the children they still are.” Chorus of Clowns

Ms. La Bonte is the queen of the Flounes, a Greek Chorus of clowns who instigate much of the action during the show. The word floune, in fact, is a coinage from “flo” — Quebec slang for child — and clown.

Mr. Shiner’s bossy clown character is also a key comedic enforcer, as well as “the spine of the show,” said Mr. Ste-Croix, who was a founder of the company, a troupe of street performers formed in 1980 that did not adopt the Cirque du Soleil name until 1984. Mr. Shiner “is Everyman, and throughout the show he embarks on a journey of innocence,” said Mr. Ste-Croix. “He starts as an adult, and ends up as a child. In the process, he is empowered — and transformed.”

Such is the transformational power of the Cirque du Soleil that its influence on other troupes has been considerable. Paul Binder, the artistic director of the Big Apple Circus, has acknowledged that the interloper from Montreal forced his one-ring circus to confront its essential nature in its new show, which celebrates “a contrast between the nouveau circus form and the original circus form.”

LEADING A REVOLUTION

“Cirque is tremendously influential because it’s the circus of the future,” said Brian Dewhurst, a 58-year-old English wire-walker who plays the Great Chamberlain in the show. “Cirque is leading a revolution in redefining the concept of circus, and bringing it into the next century.”

Mr. Dewhurst has the credentials to assert this: the scion of a multi-generational European circus family (his parents were knife-throwers and his 22-year-old son Nicky is a wire-walker), Mr. Dewhurst has starred in European circuses and performed on the Ed Sullivan show in 1965.

Another important element of the new show is the Cirque du Soleil’s tent, constructed in Bordeaux, France (“a good vintage, our tent, I think,” said Mr. Ste-Croix). It has a capacity of 2,500, 700 more than the circus’s old home.

“The new tent is so large, the first time we saw it we felt it was a cathedral,” Mr. Ste-Croix said of the interior space, which has the look of a huge blue beach ball. “It inspired us to create things to fill that space.”

Fill it they have, and the show — be it circus, theater, or whatever — is constantly changing. “It is very much alive,” Mr. Dragone said. “We keep juggling elements, adding things, losing things. The concept must keep evolving, or it will die.”

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THEATER IN REVIEW
By: Richard F. Shepard | New York Times
April 17, 1991

When it comes to circuses, the no-ring Cirque du Soleil, which arrived in New York with stunning eclat over the weekend, is to the three-ring Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey extravaganza playing Madison Square Garden what Le Cirque is to Mama Leone’s in dining circles.

Cirque du Soleil, akin perhaps to elegant nouvelle cuisine (this new production is, in fact, called “Nouvelle Experience”), serves smaller portions than the big Ringlings spread, but each of the nearly score of courses on its menu must appeal to the most demanding gourmet.

Cirque fills the tent it has pitched at Battery Place and West Street with creative choreography and compelling music that is at once urgent, extremely tuneful and often eerie. There is neither ring nor formal stage. There are no animal acts, either, but as one winces admiringly at the pretzel bends of the seemingly boneless contortionists, gawks at the fellow who perches and balances atop a precarious tower of piled-up chairs, and gasps at the devil-may-care wire walkers and high flyers, the wildlife is not really missed.

The star of this assortment of talent is a clown, a marvelous and extraordinarily intelligible mime named David Shiner. He is the binding for the show, the figure of a hayseed tourist wandering through extraterrestrial realms. Mr. Shiner sports no red nose or whiteface, but he is brilliantly funny, whether diving into the audience to drum-beat a bald head or staging a make-believe shooting of a silent film. His silent eloquence is expressed in a body that communicates like a semaphore, abetted by punctuating fingers and a head whose merest twitch speaks volumes.

While Ringling has always said it was a circus for “children of all ages,” Cirque may be a little more selective; one might say it is a circus for sophisticated children of all ages. Call it what you will, Cirque is a wonderful show, high art and all — with popcorn, if you like.

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CIRQUE DU SOLEIL JUMPS THROUGH HOOPS TO BROADEN ITS AUDIENCE
By Lewis Lazare | Chicago Reader
August 1, 1991

Cirque du Soleil isn’t exactly the household name in Chicago that Ringling Brothers is. But the marketing powers-that-be at the Montreal-based circus are counting on strengthening its base of support and its visibility here when its new show, Nouvelle Experience, opens September 13 at Cityfront Center near North Pier.

Those who caught Cirque du Soleil when it first visited here in the spring of 1989 already know the company is one of the most successful of a small band of new-wave troupes trying to resuscitate the circus as an art form. With the once grand Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey three-ring extravaganza now a somewhat tawdry relic of its former self, Cirque du Soleil is trying to bring back the daredevilry, sophisticated choreography, and sense of theater a great circus can deliver. In one ring it combines traditional acts–clowns, trapeze artists, tightrope walkers, and contortionists among others–with original music, dramatic lighting, fanciful costumes, and stylized choreography.

Cirque du Soleil’s month-long run here two years ago started out drawing sparse crowds and ended with full houses. This time communications director Jean Heon wants to ensure larger audiences right from the start. Regular visits to major U.S. markets are essential to Cirque du Soleil’s growth, and Chicago–with it’s large, sophisticated, and affluent population–is a major stop on Cirque du Soleil’s U.S. route and the only one in the midwest. The not-for-profit company was incorporated in Montreal in 1984, and it started out touring for five or so months a year, which is what the weather allowed in Canada. But the founders soon realized that to develop the show they envisioned, they’d have to adopt a 12-month tour schedule; that way they could sign the best acts to full-year contracts and take in enough money to maintain the show’s high production values.

Cirque du Soleil made its U.S. landfall in September 1987 in Los Angeles. It has been praised by most U.S. critics for its efforts to elevate the circus experience, but Heon and his team aren’t content to let the critics sell their show for them. They conduct regular surveys to gauge audience response and discover more about customer demographics. Heon knows, for instance, that the typical visitor is between 22 and 44, affluent, and well educated.

But in this acutely cost-conscious era, ticket pricing is one area where potential audiences must be reeducated. Tickets for the current production range from $12.50 to $35.50, making the top ticket $3 higher than the most expensive ticket for an off-Loop hit such as Lend Me a Tenor and considerably more than a typical Ringling Brothers ducat. Heon says the prices are necessary to cover expenses and are justified by the production’s high quality.

“This is like a Broadway show,” explains Heon, “and it’s costly to put on.” Approximately 89 percent of the circus’s operating budget comes from ticket and souvenir merchandise revenue, with the remainder coming from grants and corporate sponsorships. Because the circus is still relatively new to the U.S., Heon says it has been tough trying to line up the same kinds of sponsorship here. He hopes more will be forthcoming.

The new production was titled Nouvelle Experience to make sure Chicagoans who saw Cirque du Soleil on its last visit know this is a completely new show. With its spacious new $600,000 tent–it has a thermostat-controlled air circulation system and must be hydraulically raised at each new site–the circus was able to add a flying trapeze act for the first time and boost seating capacity from 1,750 to 2,500. The extra seats will allow it to offer more tickets at the lower end of the price scale without adversely affecting income.

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NOUVELLE CUISINE: CIRQUE SERVES CIRCUS OF ANOTHER SORT
By: Richard Christiansen | Chicago Tribune
September 1, 1991

Like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” the visitor to Cirque du Soleil knows instantly that he has surely left the real world behind. The kingdom of the Cirque-lights, color, music, motion, laughter and enchantment-is not of this world, but of another, entirely different state of being.

We had our first experience with this magical land in 1989, when the touring Cirque du Soleil put down its big blue-and-yellow-striped tent on the lakefront for its Chicago debut. On Sept. 13, with a completely new show entitled “Nouvelle Experience,” it returns to the Cityfront Center near North Pier, ready to cast its spell on audiences once again.

As its name suggests, Cirque contains elements of a circus-a very good circus. There are tightrope walkers, trapeze artists, contortionists, acrobats, jugglers and clowns under the big tent. But “circus” is not quite the word for Cirque. It is, rather, a theatrical production, a million-dollar presentation that is designed, choreographed and directed as a stage spectacular. There are no animal acts, no three rings, no orchestra stand; and, though each individual act is special, all the performers are integrated into a single, unified production that is danced, sung and acted as carefully as a Broadway musical.

The Cirque’s other-worldly mysteries are grounded in real-world mechanics, of course. Founded in 1984 with a one-year-only funding of about $1.4 million, it now has a yearly budget 10 times that amount. It employs 170 persons, 35 of them as on-stage performers and 5 as musicians, and uses a caravan of 34 trucks and trailers to transport its tent, box office, kitchen, laundry room, offices, washrooms and physical therapist’s workplace on its globe-trotting travels.

Based in Montreal, where it still receives government funding, the not-for-profit Cirque now runs each of its shows for two years, playing to a total of more than 500,000 persons annually in its 2,500-seat tent as it travels to such destinations as Toronto, Quebec City, New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., in North America, and London and Paris in Europe. Besides its own production, Cirque already has plans for installing a similar, theatrical presentation in Japan and has made arrangements to incorporate some of its avant-garde artistry into the repertoire of the 75-year-old old, family-run Circus Knie of Switzerland.

Amazingly, Cirque springs from a country that has virtually no tradition of circus. Guy Laliberte, the organization’s founding president, was only in his early 20s, “a street perfomer with hair down to my butt,” when he applied for government money in 1984 with “my crazy idea to start a circus.” Fortunately, it was the 450th anniversary of sovereign Canada, and there was funding available for new arts projects.

Along with a few other performers/entrepreneurs-including Gilles Ste-Croix, now the Cirque’s casting director-Laliberte created a fledgling operation that, thanks to success in its first year, was given further funding to continue. In 1987, the Cirque made its U.S. debut in Los Angeles, creating a small sensation there and cementing the troupe’s future as an international attraction.

The Cirque’s rapid growth has not been without problems. Its European tour last season ran afoul of the Persian Gulf war and the recession, forcing an early closing; and to this day customers are confused about the “circus” part of “Cirque,” believing that it’s merely a small touring circus. On the contrary, it is a highly polished, diligently rehearsed, carefully conceived work that takes at least a year of preparation and 12 weeks of rehearsal before it is ready for the public.

Ste-Croix and an assistant spend up to 35 weeks each year on the road, searching for acts in North America, Asia and Europe that they believe might fit into the Cirque design.

The acts are divided into two categories: house numbers, which the Cirque organization teaches and works into the repertoire with its own staff, and specialty numbers that are already fully realized by mature artists. In either case, Ste-Croix says, “We want a person open to artistic change, someone who can fit his talents into our concept and see the world as we do.”

It is understood that anyone who enters the Cirque becomes a part of a larger work in which the performer must play roles that require acting and dancing skills quite apart from his or her own immediate talents.

The performers come from all over and in all ages. Brian Dewhurst, 59, a veteran English vaudevillian, performs hilariously and breathtakingly on the tightrope with his 22-year-old son, Nicky Dewhurst. Stacey and Bruce Bilodeau, 20-year-old twins from Quebec, are daredevil gymnasts who, in the last two years, have added dancing and acting to their tumbling skills.

David Lebel, 31, a Quebec street performer before joining Cirque, now finds himself as one of the show’s flounes (a word derived from a union of Quebecoise for “children” and “clowns”), the group of childlike zanies who help unite the show with their antics.

It’s a big, closely knit troupe, living together at home and on the road and not without its occasional frictions. On the whole, however, it is a relatively happy family unit, according to Laliberte. “We all have to live out of our luggage,” he says, “but we try to provide good food, good working conditions, good comradeship; because, if the performer is not happy, it is very hard from him to project happiness to the public.”

From the quartet of teenage Canadian girls, who were taught their prize-winning contortionists’ act by a Chinese teacher, to the Russian circus star Vassiliy Demenchoukov, whose balancing act climaxes the “Nouvelle Experience,” they are united by director Franco Dragone in a fantasy world that he and his design team have created after months of discussion and debate.

Specially composed jazz-rock music paces the production, elaborately executed costumes actually form the personalities of the show’s outlandish characters, and state-of-the-art lighting effects create an eerie and exciting landscape for the nonstop action.

Talented on their own, the performers merge in a show that unites their specialties into an even more spectacular whole. As Lebel says, “They will break their backs to make you look good.”

With money from the provincial and national governments to help in developing work, and with the Ecole nationale de cirque in Montreal acting as a valuable training ground for many young performers, the Cirque du Soleil has a chance to develop its own tradition of ground-breaking performance art.

“We want to inaugurate new projects, open new markets,” Laliberte says. “Our job is to entertain and exalt; and, to do that, I always say that you have to be in the game for just two reasons: passion and pleasure. That’s what it’s all about.”

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VIVE LE CIRQUE DU SOLEIL!
By: Richard Christiansen | Chicago Tribune
September 15, 1991

There’s a wondrous moment in each of the marvelous acts that make up the Cirque du Soleil’s vibrant new production of “Nouvelle Experience.”

It’s a moment unique to the magical theatrical experience that this Montreal-based organization provides in its bountiful show; and, in a way, it has absolutely nothing to do with the circus.

To be sure, the circus acts that have been assembled for the Cirque are terrific in themselves-clowns, tightrope acrobats, contortionists, trapeze soloists, stiltwalkers, teeterboard jumpers, high flyers and balancing artists of the very top rank.

But Cirque does more than offer up these thrilling acts. It presents them in a brilliantly designed production that artfully integrates all the disciplines of performance art into one stunning theatrical whole.

It dresses its performers in sumptuously colored costumes, sculpts and silhouettes them with the latest in lighting technology, makes them dance to thrilling jazz-rock fusion music and sets them down under its big blue-and-yellow striped tent in a fantastic environment that is more like an extra-terrestrial spaceship than a circus arena.

The performers enter with a bounce from the rear of the tent, lighted from behind and shrouded in billowing fog, as if they are a lively breed of aliens approaching Earth for a close encounter of the third kind. Once viewed, they do indeed seem to be from another planet, their faces painted in vivid colors, their tights and pantaloons dyed with streaks and patches of gorgeous colors. They speak in a gibberish not known to man but which, after a few minutes, becomes intelligible; and they walk in stiff, spasmodic steps, as if adapting themselves to the strange new terra on which they find themselves.

Then-here comes the wondrous moment-when the circus performers create their own kind of miraculous motion, by flying over the heads of the audience or climbing near to the top of the tent on a ladder built of straight-back chairs, these creatures of the Cirque stand aside in awe, imitating or complementing the movements of the performers and, in so doing, providing a sympathetic showcase for the artists they are watching.

For example, while the four lissome young teenage girls who bend their limbs into amazingly contorted shapes are turning themselves into human clothespins in the center spotlight, one of the Cirque’s brightly dressed flounes (an invented word combining Quebec slang for “little kid” and “clown”) appears in the shadowy background, watching the proceedings with a small child. Gradually, as the contortionists increase the difficulty of their performance, the clown and the child begin their own acrobatic turns, gently mirroring the moves that they see before them.

They have become our representatives on the dizzying circus planet in which we’ve been placed, watching with childlike wonder and entering into that exotic habitat with joy and delight.

This is but one of the ways in which Cirque du Soleil draws viewers into its world.

Before the show has started, with a stroke of imagination that it would be a crime to give away, one of the show’s customers is literally carried off from the audience and plumped into the midst of the strange land of the Cirque.

By the time the production has come to an end, a little less than three hours later, in an equally magical manner, that person has charmingly become an integral part of the Cirque’s exotic universe.

For the next few weeks, in the lakefront land strip just off McClurg Court and east of Illinois Street, the Spaceship Cirque will be anchored here in Chicago.

It is a show with many highlights-the breathtaking acrobatics on land, air, tightrope and trapeze are particularly mind-boggling-and it is, to be honest, a show with a few slow spots, as when the likable chief clown Geoff Hoyle carries on a bit too much with his fellow zanies.

Overall, however, it is a show that lifts one’s spirits as few experiences in the theater can.

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THE ART OF DOING IT WRONG
By: Lawrence Bommer | Chicago Tribune
September 27, 1991

Spectacular lighting and flamboyant costumes notwithstanding, the Cirque du Soleil basically is a big family that performs circus acts. Or, more accurately, a family of families.

Take Brian Dewhurst, a tightrope walker who’s the third of four generations of English circus artists. Brian’s 22-year-old son Nicky and his 26-year-old daughter Sally work in the Cirque as, respectively, a tightrope artist and acrobat; trained gymnasts, both briefly pursued other careers in show business-but the circus was in their blood. After all, their grandfather performed as a clown and their mother had sung opera.

In “Nouvelle Experience,” the Cirque’s latest sensation, Brian Dewhurst, plays the Grand Chamberlain, a fussbudget clown who serves as right- hand man to ringmistress France La Bonte. Dewhurst: “I’m the power behind the throne, a man who thinks he runs everything but who’s really a bumbling wizard. When I crack a whip to show my authority, it ends up hitting me.”

Even his tightrope act goes strategically wrong. “I’m invited (by Brian’s son Nicky, pictured here at right) to walk a wire but I keep wackily falling off. Eventually I’m able to take a few correct steps”-after which the audience makes its gratitude apparent.

There’s an art to doing it wrong. “You have to show you can do it to make the audience believe you when you can’t. They can tell insecurity and they pick up tension. That’s when they start to worry that you’re going to hurt yourself which is not what we want.”

Dewhurst is modesty itself when it comes to describing the art of tightrope walking. “It’s just a matter of practice. Almost anyone can do it if they’re willing to devote the many hours that doing it well will require.” Favorite moments in the show? “Of course working with my son is a joy. And I love working with the Flounes (the gentle, earth-colored clowns who supply so much magic); they provide so much ingenious physical comedy.”

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That’s all I have room for in this issue, but there’s plenty more to come!

• Issue #165, OCT 2017 – Saltimbanco, Part 1 (1992)
• Issue #166, NOV 2017 – Saltimbanco, Part 2 (1993)
• Issue #167, DEC 2017 – Alegría, Part 1 (1994)
• Issue #168, JAN 2018 – Alegría, Part 2 (1995)
• Issue #169, FEB 2018 – Quidam, Part 1 (1996-1997)
• Issue #170, MAR 2018 – Quidam, Part 2 (1998)
• Issue #171, APR 2018 – Dralion, Part 1 (1999-2001)
• Issue #172, MAY 2018 – Dralion, Part 2 (2001-2003)
• Issue #173, JUN 2018 – Varekai, Part 1 (2002)
• Issue #174, JUL 2018 – Varekai, Part 2 (2003-2004)
• Issue #175, AUG 2018 – Varekai, Part 3 (2005)