The Cirque is in town!

Again, one of the jobs that make the crappy days being a stagehand worthwhile; I just spent two days loading the new Cirque Du Soliel show "Totem" in at the San Jose location the city has set aside for them. It displaces part of the personal parking for the San Jose PD. At the highest paid salary and largest most expensive retirement pack in the US for a police force, they can stop whining about the 6 weeks it runs..

Day One was pretty hard. Two crews of 6 "carpenters", split into stage left (my group) and stage right (the slow guys).

Pluses: Trish, the CDS (Cirque Du Soliel...) crew carpenter lead for stage left, from Boston; Nick, the crew chief from Manchester; and Katy, the head carpenter, from... wait for it... Tasmania! I was having trouble placing the accent. I knew she wasn't from New Zealand, she also didn't sound Aussie... I finally asked her. "New South Wales, maybe?" She laughed and said "No, Tasmania! Good one mate, not thinking I was an Oz or a Kiwi!" very cherubic 25 year old blonde. Too bad the comment about having a beer after was, I am sure, rhetorical rather than an actual invitation... "Only one?" I asked.. she laughed and said "Well, I'm not a Aussie...but I can drink like one..."

Mehs: "Carpenter" is sometimes.... frequently.... nearly always.... a complete misnomer when working CDS. I have worked a number of the shows locally. In (I think) the correct order going back to 1997; Saltimbanco, Alegria, Quidam, Dralion, Corteo, Kooza, Ovo and two of the arena shows "Because tents are for camping!" Delirium and Michael Jackson. I have worked on the carpentry crew four times. To date, I have never touched a single piece of wood that was not already attached to an aluminum or steel frame. This show was no different. We started by building out the lower framework for the main stage. Steel cross-members, anywhere from 2 feet to 8 feet long, weighing 30 to 90 pounds each. Once we had that built, we added the decking, a 1 inch thick plywood base with a rubberized laminate top surface, covered with a front-projection capable coating of grey. Then we built a second framework above that, the platform on which the musicians sit and perform. The upper section was raised up 10 feet by a pair of forklifts (sketch! very sketch!) and we then replaced the small standoffs from the lower level with the performance steel uprights, 8 foot long 3 x 3 posts.

That took us up to lunchtime, at which point we all fled for an hour. When we came back, it was time to build the backstage flooring. This was the only real negative to the day. We had to shim all four corners of each section of decking, again a plywood and rubberized laminate on a heavy structural aluminum frame. The sections were smaller, from 2 foot by 4 foot to 4 foot by 4 foot. There were a LOT of them, unfortunately. Maybe 120 or so, for each side of the stage. The shims were small squares of plywood 3/4 of an inch thick, and each corner got a small steel plate with four short pins sticking up; these locked the floor sections together. We had to shim each section up and level it, then move on... that took 5 full hours.

Day Two was much more fun! That day was devoted to nothing but :Le Squelette", the skeleton frame of a giant tortoise shell. A framework of 3 inch diameter structural steel tubing, with a spray foam and fiberglass mat covering, painted in a dusty orange/yellow motif. There were four primary sections, each roughly 8 foot by 8 foot arched "squares", heavy enough it took our entire crew of 8 guys to lift and carry in. Then there were the connecting sections and cross members...

This gives a good idea of the scale (wish I could have found an image of the steel deck frames...). These had to be handled very carefully, as the covering was very hard to repair. Again, our CDS crew heads were excellent; Nick another down-under migrant from New Zealand this time, and Spencer, a mere Canadian. (grin)

The first order from them was simple; "Take your time; there is no rush to this." I've always found this to be typical of the CDS attitude; they don't want people loafing, but they don't want a frenzied atmosphere and screaming leads, causing an injury or damage. And injury is a constant danger. The sets, lighting, even the props are all large, many of them are very heavy, as they have to support huge amounts of weight or torque... we finished the framework well ahead of schedule, In fact, we were so far ahead that Nick offered us up to Katy again, who was thrilled to able to go work on special projects, leaving four of us to scurry about under the main stage, installing the flooring used by the clowns (mostly) to scoot about under the deck on little flat carts and pop up through trap doors.