The Cyclops, A Retrospect

THE CYCLOPS BENNY OR

Great successes rarely come without trials but ultimately it is the overcoming and response to such trials that make the final product even greater.

The Beginning.

Last summer, I was given the opportunity of a lifetime. As part of my education at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, my class with absolutely no theatre experience was asked to produce our own adaptation of Euripides’ satyr play “The Cyclops.”

Expectations outlined that we were to design everything from scratch ranging from the rewriting of the script to composing a 40 minute original live soundtrack. All of which must be completely fabricated and presented to a paying audience within 12 weeks time. On top of that, we were also expected to keep up with a full course load of challenging, but most importantly, time-consuming engineering and design courses. When I was nominated and elected unanimously by my pupils as director, I was ecstatic to accept the position. In fact, I had been fantasizing about this opportunity since I found out about it years ago. I hope that through examination of the different issues and resolutions of the process, you will be able to understand why I truly believe that an internship with Cirque du Soleil will help me achieve my future goal of creating inspiring performance environments.

Before we jump into the emotional roller-coaster I like to call the best time of my life however, I believe an introduction is in order.

Bonjour Cirque Du Soleil, My name is Benny Or and I’m a third year architecture student at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. I grew up in the 90’s, inspired by Disney classics and pop culture, though musically grounded in classical piano, violin and vocal training. More importantly, I am madly in love with the stage. In high school, I stepped out from behind the shower curtain and into the spotlight, performing for high school and local theatre productions. I learned quickly that it was through artistic mediums such as painting, sculpting and singing that I communicated best.

My interests in design later led to the forgoing of my application to performing arts school and enrollment in architecture school instead. However, I promised myself that it was not going to be the end of my musical career. Instead, I decided to strive for a suitable link between my two passions of music and architecture.

Enter Cirque du Soleil. As I mentioned earlier, I am interested in performance spaces. Not just spaces that houses performances such as theaters and opera houses but spaces that perform. Cirque du Soleil’s work is about the creation of realities through the synergy of music, costumes, language, dance and acrobatics. What I am interested in is the distinction between the reality of the performance space itself and the fantasy world that the production endeavors to create. This is why I believe that Cirque du Soleil will be tremendously helpful to my future as a designer.

If architecture is like frozen music, as Goethe suggests, and therefore has the innate ability to touch us on a deeper emotional level, how can this be integrated into productions to create even more provocative performance environments?

CONCEPT Directing The Cyclops, I wanted to experiment with perception through the control of light. In complete darkness, what one sees became reality.

By understanding how light behaved in darkness, we could control perception by selectively revealing and concealing environments through illumination.

Darkness then became the stage curtain where performers entered and exited seamlessly in and out of sight.

For me, The Cyclops was also an attempt at breaking the barrier between spectator and performer. Instead of just watching the performance through a proscenium theatre window, I wanted the audience to be an active part of the show.

I wanted them to participate, not just spectate.

With this in mind, I proposed to have the audience sit in a grid system of pivoting seats where the performance would happen around them in all directions. This way, the individual spectator became an active participant in our new reality, creating their own individual experience with the environment around them. This kind of framework required a large open space with high ceilings such as a warehouse or an auditorium. As with the start of many artistic challenges, what I was given instead was the complete opposite.

LOCATION With less than 3 months notice, my location scouts were unsuccessful in finding the ideal venue for our production. In fact, the only place that opened their doors to us was the Cambridge Curling Arena. At first, an arena sounded like the perfect place, but we soon found out that the rental space wasn’t the arena itself; it was the arena’s dining hall. The venue had the perfect backstage utilities for the production, but the actual performance space was a relatively small room with low ceilings. Needless to say, I was devastated. With two months before opening night, it was imperative to secure a location and so the Cambridge Curling Arena dining hall became my canvas for The Cyclops. This would not be the last hurdle to overcome on the long journey of improvisation that I would eventually endure. Retrospectively, the curling arena served as a source of inspiration for presenting an exciting challenge to maximize the potential of the space.

COLLABORATION At the initial stage of assigning tasks, they were asked to sign up for their top three areas of interest from a range of different departments ranging from marketing, acting, set design, to music. Each individual was then organized by our producer into two different departments to ensure that no one would be working on only one aspect of the production the entire time unless they had a significant role within the department. This allowed for a continuous cross disciplinary interaction between the groups, ensuring that we never lost sight of the bigger picture of delivering a premium quality show. Resulting from our tight timeline, people also jumped from one department to another depending on its needs, spreading ideas and insights from all facets of the creative process. The outcome of this framework was a truly homogeneous, collaborative body of work forged from the minds of 80 young, esteeming architects.

ACTING At the beginning, the greatest difficulty was in finding actors. Hardly anyone had an interest in acting, let alone any relevant experience. Finding male actors within the class for the male dominated cast of the Cyclops was going to be especially difficult. In fact, only four people signed up for the four lead roles of the show. I ultimately had to make a series of personal phone calls inviting the men in my class to join the acting team. I was pleasantly surprised with their compliance! Many who were initially uncomfortable performing for the first time in front of a live audience agreed whole heartily to do their best. Although none of them were professional actors, they all exhibited a free-spirited enthusiasm to understand how to become their characters and every single one pushed the boundaries of their own abilities. I cannot begin to fully express how proud I am of them.

Beyond sheer enthusiasm, adaptability also played a huge part in the acting process. The majority of the production was literally put together within the week of opening night.

Blocking and choreography was conducted with a taped floor plan of the performance space for guidance in the very different atmosphere of the school loft. The entire set wasn’t even complete until hours before opening night. In fact the premier was the first time I saw the set fully functional. But the perseverance of the group pulled through with a performance that looked rehearsed in-house for months.

SET DESIGN Adding to the rehearsal frustrations was an extremely limited budget. To maximize sight lines, we had to build up the stage by at least a foot. We couldn’t afford materials for it, however, with the student budget of $1400. This certainly spelled out many challenges. Instead of fabricating the whole structural system, we halved the costs by supporting the stage with over a hundred milk crates that we were able to borrow from local grocery stores. The whole set also had to be pre-fabricated at the school workshop and then reconstructed on site, the week of the show.

Also, because of the physical constraints of the venue, the set piece needed to be relatively static as there would be nowhere to move or hide it. In response to that, the final set piece became a table that manually transformed into a boat, which then transformed into the backdrop of a cave. These transitions were designed to be easily executed by the the actors exiting the previous scene under the screen of darkness.

TICK TOCK Another crucial restraining factor was time, especially in the last week of rehearsals. My producer’s commitment to the project was questionable as reflected in his consistent lack of attendance. As director, my job was to ensure that everything, not just my performers, were ready for opening night. On the final week of the production, half of my time was re-allotted to directing my colleagues between departments where help was needed most and efficiently scheduling rehearsal times to maximize productivity.

Paradoxically, this was the most invigorating time despite the stress associated with it.

Seeing as half of my actors were part of the set design team, I had to strategically organize rehearsal times so that they only had to be there when it was critical.

Without doing so, the set would not have been completed in time for opening night. Final touches on costumes also required the actors to be individually fitted. When that was happening my time would be spent with the main actors, rehearsing lines and blocking or revising musical cues with the music director.

MUSIC Going back to the artistic components, music was the glue that united all the disparate pieces of the production as a whole. I wanted the music to be a subconscious driver for the unraveling of events in the play. When sitting in complete darkness, reality is what you hear. Along with my musical team, we created a musical storyboard that determined a set of guidelines for the soundtrack for each of the scenes based on factors such as scene length, rhythm, style and atmosphere. This storyboard was then used as a base for dance choreography and blocking. The entire musical score was composed through a series of weekly rehearsals where the instrumentalists were directed to improvise and annotate by memory. The outcome of such a creative process was phenomenal. I used to joked that if all else fell apart, the audience could simply close their eyes and the show would be just as great if not better.

Despite the presence of music, I would argue that there were no ‘musicians’ in the production. Whenever there was music playing, it was because a character in the world we created happened to be playing an instrument. Costumes and props were designed to make noises and work alongside the choreography, acting and music. On top of that, a collection of atmospheric sounds and white noise were essential to the creation of the environments we wanted to evoke. It was important to me that the audience was constantly aware of their surroundings through the provocation of the senses. With the constant turning of heads and suspense that filled the air, I knew that we had accomplished this.

Improvising was clearly a key element in the whole process.

Because the facilities at the school was not always available, music rehearsals took place at my house and when it was time to rehearse with choreography and blocking, all the instruments and equipment were loaded onto a truck and moved to school. This was not the most efficient method but it was necessary. At school, the costume, acting, music and dance departments all functioned in one large room so that it became an environment of constant adaptation and co-operation between the disciplines.

COSTUME AND MAKEUP Through the chaos of all other departments, the costume team came through in a blaze of glory. Because this was based on the Odyssey, we were given the opportunity to have fun and create our own renditions of mythical creatures. With a limited budget and time, the pieces were designed to be easily constructed with minimum materials without detracting from the quality of the final product.

Their creative solution? Each of the Satyrs had their own custombuilt goat legs, designed by the set team through testing with prototypes and were all designed to have proper leg bracing that eventually evolved into hybrid stilts. While they were tested thoroughly for safety, in the event that a performer was to fall over, he would be unable to get up without help. With everything resting on 3 performances happening in 3 days, I had to make a decision fast. The set design team had spent 2 days working overnight on the legs and they were almost all near completion. In fear of an accident, I could possibly be taking out a major highlight of the design of the show (not to mention wasting time and money). I had to take the risk, the next important thing was finishing them and getting acquainted with them as soon as possible.

Interestingly, that would not be the only problem with the legs. The costume team realized that we would not have enough time or fabric to conceal the bracing properly. Instead of trying to poorly hide the stilt legs, the artistic direction in response decided to expose them completely to showcase the craft put into them by the design team.

On top of that, 2 days before opening night, I was approached by the dilemma that because of the way the legs were designed, it would be impossible for the actors to move up and down stairs during the show. This meant that I could no longer have stage left entrances or exits for more than half of the cast. I quickly assigned help to keep the rehearsal going and met with the assistant director to try to resolve the issue. An hour and a half later, we returned to the class with a tweaked set of stage directions and the show was back on track.

CHOREOGRAPHY With all the stress, there was always time for humour and amusement. When the men signed up for acting roles, I may or may not have left out a few small details such as dancing in togas. The entire show was literally choreographed in 2 days with the collaboration of music and acting. Our dance team was faced with the challenge of choreographing 2 significant numbers and teaching a dozen boys with no dance experience to perform it within a week – on stilts.  This endeavor was in no way easy and any spare time during the week of final rehearsals was spent rehearsing those scenes. After many laughs and amidst blushing faces, the dancing turned out to be huge highlights in the show and it was nothing short of brave and brilliant.

OPENING NIGHT And then all of a sudden, opening night was like magic. All of the pieces came together better than I could have ever imagined. The performance was received with tremendous support and the sound of the applause triggered a wave of memories with sleepless nights, near fatalities, and quick-fix solutions that washed over me in a flurry of emotions.

It was at that moment that I realized I could do this for the rest of my life

CONCLUSION It was no doubt the most trying week of my life, but I would do anything to go back. That is why I want to intern with Cirque du Soleil. I want to be part of your team and embark on this journey of creative thinking and improvisation to “invoke, provoke and evoke� the imaginations, senses and emotions of people around the world.

By working with Cirque, I hope to learn the directorial, technical and operational functions of a successful production company. By doing so, I hope to one day be able to bring my theoretical ideas about theatre to life.

The Cyclops production for me was a lesson about time management, adaptability and cooperation.

Although heavily restricted by significant circumstances such as time and money, the team was able to stay true to the thesis of creating reality through the provocation of the senses in darkness.

What I’ve included in this essay is only a glimpse of all the work put into the production. It was an honor to work with my fellow classmates and friends. Never had I ever experienced such tremendous support from a group of incredibly talented individuals. Without their full collaboration of talent and effort, the Cyclops would not have happened.

Cirque du Soleil, I am as eager to learn as I am passionate about what I do. Working for your organization will undoubtedly open my mind to the unlimited possibilities of theatre and teach me more than any technical textbook ever could. I know that The Cyclops is only just the beginning of my future in the exciting field of architecture and performance art. If granted the opportunity to work with your family, I will take full advantage of it to not only enhance my own experience in the field but take part in contributing to a creative process of a world class production company, grounded with values and a determination to succeed.

My name is Benny Or and I’d love to work for Cirque Du Soleil.

Merci