"Pippin" in Chicago: circus deserves the same respect as any interpreters, but are not actors.
"We move on stage and say we are not dancers. We speak on stage and say they are not actors." There are more eloquent defender of men and women circus Gypsy Snider.
"I'm just trying to get people to stop thinking they are a talented bunch of monkeys doing tricks," he said. "There are tricks, is the people behind the tricks."
The first time I wrote about Snider, part of the Montreal-based company Les 7 digits de la main, back in 2010, when his show "Footprints" bowed in Chicago. This was, in my opinion, highly innovative show that was the first to actually enter the circus - identifies him or her as a person with dreams, passion and obstacles, and to allow interpreters to communicate directly with the public. As themselves.
This was a wholesale departure of the circus tradition.
In traditional big top circuses of yesteryear performer it was expected to do its thing, bow and then disappear quickly at the crack of authoritarian scourge of master of ceremonies.
In the new circuses that grew in the 1990s, such as Cirque du Soleil (which comes back in Chicago next week), artists were subjugated to concepts such as heavy and required to appear in eccentric costumes principal. At Cirque, which became known as the "house troupe," a nickname that subjugated individual identity in the mark of the circus itself. Headliners had more autonomy, sure, but could still see many of these new circuses and leave without really having much sense of what he saw. "Footprints" was an attempt to change all that.
There are, of course, an argument against Snider. Historically, many circus performers have not spoken enough English want to speak to an audience. They are not trained as actors. They have often preferred to do their things and leave the ring.
"I recognize that," Snider said, when we spoke last week. "Actors are trained to play Romeo in a show and then Hamlet in another show. Circus Performers are not. They know instinctively how to move forward in a scene the way an actor does. They prefer to do what they do best do. Often, I have found, a circus will have an amazing idea, but do not know how to get out of that idea. "
So in the last couple of years, Snider itself has positioned itself as a kind of liaison between the circus and the world of legitimate theater, which often wants to steal the circus without fully understanding the distinctive character of that culture. You can see the work of Snider in the Broadway revival of "Pippin", now playing in a touring production at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago.
Snider is very proud of the series, but she speaks with a frankness not often found in the cautious world of Broadway interviews. Clearly, the fusion of cultures was a struggle.
"I really had to try to stop all this musical theater machine" he said. "In the circus, the way they try to attack a problem is so different. I have to take the acrobats in the lobby. No one understood. As a circus performer, when not yet know your partner or your moves, you need much longer than people think theater to do something beautiful or sexy. I was constantly trying to stop the process and say you cannot use the Book of musical-theater plays. "
Take for example, the issue of predictability. Most musical productions are configured as "100 percent not fail," meaning that the same thing is supposed to happen every night. Otherwise, for example, the orchestra does not know what to play. That's not true in the circus, where tricks can and fail with some regularity. To really build that trust as a show of "Pippin" Snider said, took an enormous amount of persuasive work.
But she prevailed. There is a moment in "Pippin", where often a difficult trick fails. If you do, the main player (a character in the series) tells the interpreter to try again. If it works on the second attempt, which causes a much larger audience response. That's something people understand circus, but that does not mean they do not prefer to do things right the first time. Theater people tend to gravitate towards reaction.
"They asked me, 'Can fail on the first attempt ever?'" Snider its partners "Pippin" he said. "I said no. When it happens, it happens."
That's the kind of language that makes people very nervous Broadway, and that makes Snider something of a rebel.
But it is something important in this era of domination and social media, when Millennials never stop sharing their personal stories and expect others to do the same.
"The circus people can speak the language of Facebook," she says. "And not if your voice sounds fragile, or as the voice of an actor, it just makes it all the more real."
