Circusing

Yesterday I went to the circus.

I am extremely fortunate in that a friend of mine performs in Cirque Du Soleil's Kooza show, and he invited me to come see the show and showed me around backstage afterwards. Backstage was excellent, but I must confess I was still reeling from the show itself.

I haven't been to the circus since I was a kid, unless you count the time I saw a Cirque Du Soleil show in Vegas. The title of that show was O, which could very well have stood for 'over my head.'

Contrary to all my previous circus-going experiences, the tent was quite cozy, with even the furthest row of seats commanding excellent views of the action. And of action there was plenty. A complete collection of circus acts - trapeze artists, tightrope walkers, contortionists, unicycles, you name it - melded with Cirque Du Soleil choreography and costumery.

The clown with a crown! His very existence is anathema
to native Japanese speakers.

But each of these acts are like pearls - beautiful individually, but with a string to hold them all together, exquisite. That string was the clowns, and my friend was their king. No, not metaphorically. He had a crown and everything.

The clowns were the comic relief, the easing of the tension, the breath taken after a death-defying act spiraled to its climax. They were the distraction as costumes, people, and sets were changed, props were set up. Who could possibly spare a moment to glance at people hoisting ropes when clowns are running amuck, hitting people with a nice ribeye steak?

(Upon reflection, the sheer thickness and size of the steak was wildly ambitious for Japan. If it were a real steak, it would probaly cost in the neighborhood of $50 here.)

Over beers afterwards, he told me that there were a number of jokes that they had to rework due to cultural differences. One example was a joke that in North America had been about female empowerment; nobody laughed at it here, so after frantic experimentation they hit upon a variation where avoidance of responsibility and blaming the innocent was the punchline* - then everyone got a kick out of it.

*The original joke was that they would take a female audience member and have her whack one of the clowns in the balls with the much-abused steak. The revised joke involved the king snatching the steak away, hitting the other clown in the balls, and handing it back to her - then, when the victim looked back in indignation, the king would finger the hapless audience member as the culprit. It's a classy show, as it should be.


Also, some of the lines that required audience comprehension were in Japanese. Whether the audience was laughing at them because their actions were funny, they used funny, exaggerated voices, or just because they were foreign clowns speaking in Japanese, was not really clear.

I should also mention briefly that the acts were very sensual, at times stunningly so.

You haven't been to the circus in years. They're not as popular as they used to be. Go check one out instead of just going to the movie theater. It's a great time. If you're in the SF Bay Area, I hear Teatro Zinzani is good. It's on Embarcadero and you've walked by it 100 times. (So have I.)

Also, quit being so down on clowns. Or I will hit you with a dead cow.