Behind the scenes at Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Quidam’
By Mike Danahey mdanahey@stmedianetwork.com February 8, 2012 7:50PM
Cirque du Soleil performers Mireille Goyette of Quebec and Rafael Munhoz of Brazil participate in early afternoon practice at The Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates on Wednesday. | Andrew A. Nelles~For Sun-Times Media
Article Extras
Updated: March 11, 2012 8:29AM
HOFFMAN ESTATES — Cirque du Soleil returned to the Sears Centre Wednesday night for another local visit.
The stay through this weekend will bring to 41 the company’s total number of performances at the Hoffman Estates venue just east of Elgin, the most of any act that has played there.
If you go to the show, a guy with Chicago ties will be serving as your host for the evening, guiding you through a production called “Quidam.”
“I emcee in a Cirque du Soleil sort of way,” Mark Ward said.
Ward plays John, a role which he first took in 1999, at the beginning of the “Quidam” European tour. Since then he has traveled the planet with the other-worldly spectacle. To this day, Ward has performed more than 6,500 Cirque du Soleil shows without missing a single one.
Ward joined Cirque in 1993 after spending two years with the Chicago City Ballet and five years with the Ballet of Chicago, where he was one of its original members. He was one of the original cast members of the resident Cirque du Soleil show “Mystère,” which debuted in Las Vegas at the Treasure Island Hotel resort.
This will be Ward’s first visit back to Chicago in eight years. Since 2006, he has been living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a country he fell in love with on a 2½-month vacation.
Typically, Ward’s schedule has him on the road with the exotic circus for 10 weeks, then off for two weeks.
International flair
During a behind-the-scenes tour Wednesday morning, it was evident just how international a Cirque touring company is: 22 flags hanging above a practice area note the nationalities of those on the road with “Quidam.”
Their numbers include Australian Christy Shelper, who performs a solo aerial act toward the end of the show on a cloud swing. On the Wednesday of a five-day stay, Shelper said she typically gets to the arena at 9:30 a.m. for a 7:30 p.m. show, eats, sets up her dressing room, warms up for an hour, trains for 30 minutes, then spends some time doing physiotherapy.
She gets set for the evening’s performance about two hours prior to it, with makeup and costume taking 90 minutes to ready.
“Quidam,” like all touring Cirque shows, travels with its own catering crew, this one from a Texas firm, Spectrum. Late Wednesday morning, the spread included an omelette bar and chafing dishes, each filled with a different type of calzone. To add even more variety, show publicist Jessica Leboeuf said, chefs will talk with performers and staff to come up with dishes reflecting their respective styles of home cooking.
Any Cirque company is a small, portable traveling town of 100, including 50 performers who have 2,500 custom-fitted costumes and 200 different character looks among them. While most have smartphones or tablets, Cirque also sets up three computer stations on-site for employees to keep in touch with family and the Internet.
“A lot of us are using Skype to talk with people back home,” Leboeuf said.
There also are 50 technical or support staff, which includes a coach, two performance medicine specialists, six musicians, two singers, IT folks and even an accountant.
Super Bowl gig
After all, Cirque du Soleil, which started in Montreal in 1984 with just 20 people, has grown into an entertainment industry empire. Madonna used Cirque du Soleil performers as part of her Super Bowl halftime extravaganza. And a simple Google search shows Cirque founder Guy Laliberté the subject of billionaire-lifestyle profiles.
The business employs about 5,000 and now has more than 20 different shows listed on its website that are either touring the globe, based in Las Vegas or soon to open.
“Quidam” — which translates from Latin to “a nameless passer-by” — takes the audience on a journey into a girl’s imaginary world and has been one of Cirque’s offerings since 1996. Its industrial set includes a conveyor system overhead and the world’s largest turntable stage, which can complete a full rotation in 12 seconds.
With the help of 80 local laborers, it takes about eight hours for setup, another four hours to make adjustments and 13.5 hours to load everything back into the 15 trucks and onto the next stop.
Stage manager Adam Kendrick noted that most items stack nicely on top of each other, the exceptions being some of the props, such as the big German Wheel being used early Wednesday afternoon by Californian Cory Sylvester. With Russian performance coach Viktor Manjos watching, Sylvester practiced turning himself into a human nickel, spinning the contraption on its side with it hold him in the middle.
“He opens the show and is a sort of shaman,” Leboeuf said.
And if you want to find out what that means, well, you’ll have to go see for yourself.
Cirque du Soleil’s “Quidam” is at the Sears Centre, 5333 Prairie Stone Parkway, Hoffman Estates, through Sunday. For show times, tickets and more show information, see www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/quidam.
Comments Click here to view or make a comment