SUNDAY MORNING OUT OF THE PAST: Laugh Those Rumors Away ... Beat of the Big Tops Goes On ...

Here's looking back on a happier time ...

From Vargas to Kelly-Miller, New Cole to Nicole, Big Apple to Big Carson & Barnes, they’re all out there pitching tents or getting ready to hit the sawdust trails with optimism ... “Hello, Showbiz David, “ e-mails upbeat Vargas VP Katya Quiroga. “Thanks for your honest opinions and good and bad reviews of the show.” Now that takes a touch of class. I’m reading on. “We here at Circus Vargas strive to create the best show and experience for our customers possible, and we take all customer comments serious.” Glad to know a new season faces you, Katya. Promises she with the sort of optimism I respect, “We have completely redone the 2008 edition of Circus Vargas, and we have created it to be more exciting and fun for the entire family.” Now, why do I believe that? Guess I’m an optimist, too. Gotta give ‘em credit for taking on the chin the grudging 2-star review I gave em last year. May God bless your big top, Katya & Company, and may it be spared my fussiness. But, oh, your tent itself was such a pleasure to enter. Please don’t bring it too close. Just being inside it inspired enchanting memories of a Ringling big top from long long ago ...

Another believer is John Ringling North II, returning to whistle in his second season producing the Kelly-Miller program. Opening date is March 15. The real Ringling was tinkering with a storyline for a certain production number. Guess the theory is, give the audience at least the illusion of modernity, so they can, once having swallowed their broccoli, indulge, guilt-free, in cotton candy and all of the other circus essentials... .About which, end ringing it around the subject, to narrate or not to narrate seems to be turning Nicole Feld's press interviews into mushy yes but no but yes sessions. To the Knoxville News, talking up her Boom A Ring on the Gold Unit, she said that audiences didn’t much like “the narrative driven, one ring circus” idea, that it was “abandoned.” But wait, in another fuzzy disclosure, we are told that “a story line links the traditional circus acts” of Boom A Ring. And that makes for a Boom A Headache. PLEASE, circus world, make up your minds. ... Okay, I kind of feel your marketing vacillations, Ms. Feld. They remind me of your dad’s — all over the sawdust...

.... More basic, I think is New Cole or Old Cole or Beatty-Cole or Cole Bros. basically out there again, about to open in Deland on April 1 and move up the coast through the Carolinas. And that means that John Pugh, long rumored to be wanting to sell, is still not selling. Good news. A head shrink once domestic partnered to a late friend of mine said, “People do what they want to do.” And so I say, if Johnny really wanted to sell, he would have sold by now.

Not selling but going for three-ring endurance gold is Barbara Byrd, whose Carson & Barnes big top will not be shrinking down like the others any season soon. ... The grand lady of grand American tradition just flouted all those one-ring rumors by ordering another huge spread of plastic, a 160 by 300 top assumed to be ready for the 2009 season, and ready for the show’s 75th anniversary run in 2011 ... Memo to Ms. Byrd: Please, bring back some live musicians. Byrd v. Petrillo?... Hey, there’s a spirited bunch of Sottish amateurs who call themselves the Really Terrible Orchestra. Why not they during, say, the clown turns and the hula hoop fillers? Bring back the windjammers, and I’ll nominate you our first true American Circus Queen. ...

Baraboo, time to wake up! Are you there, Bob Dewel? I can see you getting ready for another season of Al Ringling Theatre tours. More than once during the winter, I’ve imagined you, good Doc, tip toeing across snowy streets through the village of Ringling, tapping gently on windows, a la Winkle, calling out “Are the children in their beds?” ... Time now, Wee Willy Dewel, to wake them up. The Circus is coming!

First posted Mach 8, 2008

Sunday Morning, Looking Back: Circus Compensation Blues, A Tough Tea to Swallow

This first appeared on March 5, 2008

In order to face the task at hand, I’ve finally taken a crack at Tribute Pu-Er here at L’Amyx, which Will has been needling me to try. It’s strong enough to give me extra muscle, assuming I don’t end up in ER.

Oh, yes, the main topic at hand: Those mysterious wages dolled out to circus performers by the owners who are said to carry on like cheap low down capitalists.

Showbiz, 1A: Very few people with a few cells in their noggin expect to become rich and famous in the spotlights. Most of us sooner or later wake up to the realities. We can do it “for free” in local community groups. We can go out on the road and make a decent living, maybe, doing what we believe we were born to do because, to quote the ballet impresario from The Red Shoes, “we must.”

At the top of the perilous pile are the lucky few — screen idols, pop stars and certain wild animal trainers. THEY are, Wade of Burck, the rare MINORITY. And they always will be.

Down here with the majority and below, there is me. Where do I fit in? The author of seven books, all ‘em put out by royalty publishers who fund all the costs and pay me a standard royalty of 10 percent of the retail price, I have made a little money. Had I ever tried to survive solely on my royalties, I might have done it living in a tree house, shopping with food stamps, and mugging on the side. I have no regrets. I know I am not Norman of Mailer or Ernest of H.

Some interesting points were raised in a hearty barrage of comments left by the practicing three or four of you (for which my thanks) on the post preceding this one. Like the idea of establishing rates for various circus skills. I only thank God that James. C. Petrillo, who unionized musicians into the world’s second oldest profession, kept his greedy hands off of the ring stars who have thrilled me since my boyhood. Why? Because, for many reasons, they have a way of now and then showing up under smaller tents, which makes circus going an adventure in discovery.

You, Wade, show fearless courage in revealing your pay scale. Why not others? Most of them, like me, might not like flaunting what we don’t make. Get my drift? I feel your zeal over this topic, but I can’t see it ever much changing. Perhaps everything we can know (and already kind of know) comes through in these penetrating comments by you and your pro cohorts. And I don’t think it is that much a mystery. If you want to try uncorking a greater number of confessions from your peers, you’d likely do better under Buckles Big Big Top. I am just a concession stand, although lately it’s been a little crowded around here. I await my 15-minute stampede. Maybe I’ll have to hire a kid assistant for a percentage of my non-profits. Remember Hubert Castle once stating that he made more money performing than producing. Fake humility?

Hey, let’s take a look at the comments: Business Side is a real person known to me. Comparing sports players: They work in an industry for which putting a circus out would be mere pocket change. I thank our circus owners who, working on shoestrings and against herculean obstacles (PETA for example) somehow manage to bring affordable entertainment to American audiences, even if they often let critical me down. Sure, they are going to pay as little as they can, which is the way of the business world.

I’m just a guy who buys a ticket (and I really do) and sits down, hoping to be entertained, hoping not to see another hula hoop act or another painfully protracted audience participation filler. In the positive, if I am correct that performers can and do negotiate directly with producers, that might be why I am on record many times pointing out that, at ANY circus, there is a good chance you will see at least one or two very fine acts. Maybe they were desperate to tie down a season. Maybe they got the pay they wanted for a string of dates they fancied, or maybe they like the big top boss or are in love with an ex-con turned prop hand on the show. Whatever works.

Lauren Fairchild said what I absolutely believe, returning to my deference to the Red Shoes impresario: “I do think that most performers want and need to work SO bad, that they are willing to work for ANY salary, just to be able to do what they do.” I myself started out, and what luck, landing a testy review of Polack Bros. when I was but 14 years of age in the White Tops. No pay for that. I consider myself very lucky to have gotten published by houses that put up all the costs, market as best they can and pay me royalties. Far from rich. I guess I fall midway on the midway. Trust me, I am not being dramatic when I say that the first three of my four circus books each came agonizingly close to not finding a publisher at all. Each may have found the one house in the world interested.

Now, as for those disillusioned Cirque du Soleil artists exiting Kooza. They have every right to realize it might not be for them, especially if they value a humane working environment, and to try something else like the rodeo circuit.. As in the free job market, so to the big top. And if they want to revert to a counter career starting at McDonalds, that’s their right. In life, I believe there are no absolutes, only options. When I got a job with Wallace Bros Circus, I was thrilled at the age of 20 to be an “usher” for only room and diarrhea (excuse me, food). A few weeks later, they offered me a certain amount of money to replace a clown arrested for getting to cozy under the seats with a female patron. The pay? I’m having a hard time coming clean ... (Okay, a cheap teaser to get you to read on..)

For being just a clown? I think they needed common labor, art being secondary. Besides being a “performer,” I helped pitch the dressing top and marquee, if anybody can believe that (Pete Cristiani, watching me work a sledgehammer, called me "Snow Cone"). Ah, youth! And I helped lug the seats onto and off the trucks (reprising a boyhood gig when Clyde Beatty came to town and I got a pass for helping toss jacks and stringers off a red wagon). And I never felt disrespected. I loved Norman Cristiani, such a smiling face when I climbed the stairs to the office wagon each week to proudly collect my — no, not YET. (Business Side: It did bear income tax info) .

On the up scale, in 1969 Sid Kellner paid me $250.00 a week and the use of his Ford Bronco to be press agent for his James Bros. Circus. What seemed a huge amount of money to me did not suit Eddie Howe from the previous season, whose refusal to return was my opening), even if I paid for all my expenses including gas and YMCA hotel rooms. Thus, no newspaper I called ever was given an incriminating return phone number to call.

So, kids, ugh, this tea is turning as dark and forbidding as a muddy lot at midnight. Will took pity on my facial hints and offered me Flowery White Pekoe. Ah, back from under the earth, into the air. Maestro, if you please...I could fly. Okay, for free.(Just don’t tell anybody, contract negotiations with the Felds, you know....)

That’s about it. Maybe Wade Burck’s daring one person confessional will turn into a crowd scene of shared revelations.

Okay, what did I earn on Wallace Bros. per week back in my youth? $25.00 Can anybody out there bottom that?

[Photos of my part-time career on various midways: Skirt-raising air blast operator and relief ticket seller on the Foley & Burk lot in Santa Rosa during the Sonoma County Fair; clowning with Wallace Bros. one summer; National Press Representative for Sid Kellner's James Bros. Circus -- the only job I ever had that came with a business card. Thanks, Sid]

3.5.08

Cirque du Desertion: Why and What to Make of It?

About those performers on the Kooza unit who are rumored/reported to have walked off, the reasons range from low wages to callously disrespectful treatment at the hands of their bosses. I for one was quite surprised at the sudden exits, although when I think about what I know of this phenomenally successful enterprise, there is no reason at all to be shocked.

Ample are the examples, some bordering on the sadistic, of a ruthless operation that treats its employees like discardable electronic components. For one, the Bravo tv special on the creation of Varekai was an eye-opener.

Guy Laliberte, Cirque du Soleil’s brilliant founder and impresario, can, I suppose, continue to treat his secondary acts as chattel. Something like how Broadway chorus hoofers get pushed around, so they say. I doubt that he can get away with it for long in his dealings with the real ring stars he will increasingly need as the public tires of too much same-old same-old special effects, choreography and senseless narrative allusions. Noted the Savvy Insider in an e-mail to me, “Let’s face it, a large part of every Cirque show requires basic circus skills prettied up with choreography, staging and music.” And as he also points out, whatever little money they make is fairly typical around most circus lots. It was always thus.

On the positive side, if you spend some time at a Cirque fan website, you will understand that through the eyes of the young bristling with talent and ambition, here is a form of circus to feel good about. It is, as Ringling once was (recalling the words of the late Harold Ronk) the “modern circus.” Its production values are nearly without compare. It has billions to afford. And it may need to start spending more on first rate talent.

But with all its money, might the darker quirks of Guy Laliberte — who might, for example, suffer a serious greed problem — at some point self-destruct artistically? I think not, and I will tell you why.

Kooza tells us many things. It show us what excitement true stars like Anthony Gatto bring to a show that was beginning to look a bit too fey, too precious. It tells us that Guy Laliberte is able to let go of one aesthetic and charge ahead after another. After all, at the very beginning, he and his cohorts set out to “reinvent” the circus. At his relatively young age, he may still have a few more reinventions left inside of him.

Kooza also tells us that you can’t expect to treat your staff like dirt without consequences. Perhaps the most telling element of this new edition is the program magazine itself. Unlike every other show that has preceded Kooza, the magazine for this edition comes with a separate insert listing the acts. Does this not suggest that management has already suffered or expects turnover? And what does that say, may I ask you, Mr. Laliberte?

The young and the hip have a very new age circus to aspire to. But they will not stick around forever. “The glow is gone,” guesses the Savvy Insider. And if that’s the case, some of the same kids — among them, our possible ring stars of tomorrow — will begin to look elsewhere, and they might change their attitudes about traditional circus. If they can’t increase their pay scale, at least they can look around in search of friendlier circumstances. There are a number of shows out there, I have to believe, that treat people like human beings. John Ringling North II, for one, has shown real compassion in managing his Kelly-Miller staff.

Circus performers with rare exception have never been unionized in this country. They are known for accepting low wages, for going well beyond the call of duty (“cherry pie”) when needed, to help move the show. At times, they have nearly spilled their blood in the love of the big top. The least they deserve is respect.


[Anthony Gatto]

Showbiz A La Carte: Outtakes and Outbursts

Rock on, if that’s the best you can do, PBS. I am tried of tired old rock and rollers wailing away for endless PBS pledge drives. Wasn’t this whole public tv gig supposed to be about education? Oh, that’s right, I need to get smart on the best guitar twangers ... If our publicly funded networks can’t survive without the Beach Boys, maybe it’s time to turn off the lights and let the cable stations pick up what deserves to go on, like old rock and roll groups, if that’s what the public really wants to go on. What I dont want to go on is Digging for the Truth without Josh Bernstein.

Shame on you, History Channel! Josh was one compelling teacher when he hosted Digging, so why did you let him slip away? Whoever took over looked like another clone cable host. I will not watch the show until professor Josh returns ...

Broadway’s fresh dead draw big grateful crowds at going-away tributes in Times Square Theatres ... Admission is free, if you can get in (lines are long) to bid farewell to the likes of Jerry Orbach and Robert Merrill. Class act, NY ... And while we are walking the Great White Way, South Pacific gets ready for it’s April return, with its acclaimed director, Bartlett Sher, telling the NYT that to really succeed, the revival needs to be even better than the original. Without Mary Martin, that’s a tall order and I wish them well, and I have remarkable faith in Sher, for he staged the perfectly rendered Light in the Plaza ... Another reason to jump aboard Damtrak for a May trip back there ...

Back to Josh Bernstein --- Okay, I’m still fuming over his absence from Digging, for he made so interesting the exploration of ancient sites and lost civilizations. Reminds me that once upon a semester at Santa Rosa Junior College, a gifted biology instructor of rare enthusiasm made lab 1A so engaging, I of all people (I hate science and math) earned an A grade, nearly top of the class. Never again. I nearly flunked out of Astronomy. Don’t give me blood and guts, World, give me poetry and circus, ballet and big top and even Idol ...

Starring Simon Cowell, who else but?. It’s really all about him, isn’t it? We wait for that celebrated hated tongue to rattle like a snake. What will HE say. His cohorts on the panel are mere luke warm up acts for Simon Says. Idling away another Idol hour the other night, I haven’t a clue what drives these judges to their oddball judgements. A country and western guy (and I don’t much fancy c&w) struck me as perhaps the most authentic; not so the judges. They gotta keep us on edge, off guard and amazingly surprised. Shame on their professional stupidity.

Music, Even if You Don’t please: An Idea, Cirque du Soleil: Since you are very French and into serious scoring, why not include the strains of your master composers, like Ravel and Debussy? On your fan website, I notice one guy who says he mainly goes to your shows, even if he doesn’t like them, because of the music, so how about giving us the Greats? ... Heck, if you can get Bartok or Stravinsky into your fluffy dull Corteo, I might go back ...

Whatever Happened to Craig Killborn? He hosted a classy late night show, so promising, then he walked away, and even Google tells me little about what Mr. Exit is up to since he gave showbiz the finger. ... You retire at your own peril. My all-time favorite, Jack Paar, left the Tonight Show after only five years, and later tried for a comeback that is rarely mentioned in tv docs or bios (so many sacred cows get sacred protection). That comeback fizzled fast....

Monster Cinema Reigns, and I’ve had my fill for a while of diabolical barbers, viciously anti-human oil men, and strange psychotics who slit throats on a mystic whim down there where Mexico escapes into the US with drugs, hookers, farm hands and circus roustabouts...... Even the young pregnant woman in Juno, a worthy film dramatizing the profound power of motherhood to modern women, is so pretentiously hip and full of herself, I could hardly bear some of her more cynical syntax. Does a 16 year old in this day and age really talk like a jaded feminist in her 30s whom I would imagine finding in a woman’s bar? ...

And whatever happened to the great trapeze hero Miguel Vasquez? End ringing it here, are you just dying for a new tv circus celebrity show in the works? Circus of the Stars turned circus art into drek. So here comes another assault ...I still can’t shake the mediocre image of David Nelson posing as a flyer. Sure, anybody can do it, gracelessly. Yes, as in Idol, anybody can be a very accomplished amateur.

Shame on you, History Channel (or did I already say that). Blame it on the social buzz at L’Amyx, where I’m pounding out this mediocre rant. Or on the dizzy turbulence of Hojicha, the brew I daringlgy selected over my usual, more serene rice tea. Oh, yes, did anybody see the Academy Awards, and is it over yet?. I HATE awards shows that go on over an hour ... maybe they remind me of those endless PBS pledge breaks. Or movies that should wrap up in two rather than 3 hours. Like my friend Liz here in Oakland says, “They make them by the ton these days.” And still, endings elude them. No Country has no ending, it just suddenly ends in the middle of nowhere. Aristotle, who invented dramatic structure, would be outraged ...

And I better end this at the two ton mark. You see, I still have more tea to drink. Killing time can be hazardous to your prose, assuming you have any.....I learned that back in my Ovaltine phase...Blame it on my Mom... No, make that the History Channel...

Mass Performer Walkouts at Cirque du Soleil?

On the Cirque du Soleil fan website, they are talking about an ominous number of performers or musicians who have walked or are planning to — from Kooza, now playing in Northern California to rave notices. (I’ve reviewed it elsewhere on this blog.) Among the names: Jason Berrent (who played the trickster), Crystel Bujold, Theresa Bailey, Chris Bailey, Elodi Dufuo and Alexi Shirin. Some of these names do not even appear in the program I purchased at the S.F. date, which suggests a volatile turnover, does it not? And, if so, what a surprise that is.

“Why is everyone leaving this tour” headlines a posting by Globasf, an usher. “I’ve heard many more plan to be leaving shortly. Quite a shame. Are people not happy?”

Another contributor, Parris, opines, “I can imagine the show being stressful on the artists because the show is still developing. It will be a while before it can run itself. Not saying that is why the artists are leaving but it may be part of the reason.”

Very strange to an outsider, for I had thought these performers were nailed, sworn and canonized to long-term contracts. But Cirque is such a closely guarded organization shrouded in perhaps more mystery than it sends out into its atmospheric tents.

Very strange, indeed. Here is the website. You might find this issue or you might not. It’s a Cirque thing.

http://www.cirquetribune.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5508&view=previous&sid=0144b9aa e33040c57008455b14f4c310

Big Top Bits: Cirque Turmoil to Byrd’s Big Journey West ...

We’re off on a Cirque thing, courtesy of 18-year-old Logan Jacot, new age contortionist from Ohio with a punk attitude who calls Gunther Gebel Williams his hero and who posts a boxed message that reads “Peta Kills Animals.” Logan just happened to have picked up a copy of my book, Fall of the Big Top, and liked it enough (thank you, Logan) to talk — no, make that chat it up to his cohorts on a Cirque du Soleil fan website. By accident almost, I discovered Logan’s posting, and it feels neat, being able to reach a younger generation born even after Cirque was invented .... On the same website, I also discovered swirling rumors and reports about a number of Kooza performers walking out, reasons assumed to range from displeasure to disgust with the treatment of pushy superiors ...

Who’s to Blame for Cirque Discontent? I’ve always felt that the way a show treats its staff emanates from the very top. So we focus our meditation on impresario Guy Laliberte.... NEVER in the modest history of this here blog has a posting generated so much comment. Heck, four comments is big for little yours truly. Among the reactions, performers breaking contracts is nothing new — “Cirque has never been accused of overpaying anybody.” ... A more sympathetic visitor says that the artists “feel overworked, underpaid, disrespected and underappreciated. How can performers be expected to give their all under such circumstances?” Then comes this rough tough reality check from Ross Hartzell, raising indelicately the alternatives the self-departing might face: “Just wait till they find themselves outdoors in a rodeo arena with mud blowing sideways.” Ouch...

Makes Me Wonder about the Ways of Cirque du Soleil. For example, might they have, early in the run of a Corteo, an opus that left me unimpresso, beefed up the program with better acts? And what might they have been trying to do to Kooza that might have driven the cast to make final exits? Let’s face it, kids, Kooza’s first half was just good rather than great, which is what the show becomes once the power performers arrive about midway through the program — well, at the one I saw ...

About Impresarios: What separates them from all the others? My best guess is a dogged deference to art over commerce. The reason I place Cliff Vargas in the honored circle is that he, in his fleeting heyday years (the mid 80s), would have likely hawked his whole life for a passion to produce that he barely understood. Yes, he needed to go to refinement school, and after reading a piece about him and his “Vargasms” by Lane Talburt in Bandwagon, I am convinced that Mr. V., had he lived much longer, would have sooner than later crashed under a collapsing tent or runaway semi — if not into the Bermuda triangle. Why do most of us love the man? I think because he truly wanted to produce great circus.

Kenneth Feld drifted safely in the opposite direction: He tried his hand at “art” with his more than promising Kaleidoscape, then strangely walked away. Too messy a proposition. A victim, I suspect, of his own artistic cowardice. Back to demographics and marketing surveys. Back to the Disney mode, variations unlimited, which evidently makes big bucks for the fabulously successful Felds ... Speaking of which, a scare-mentioned pair who deserve more attention in history books are Louis Stern and Irving J. Polack, who in the mid ‘30s, made a pledge to turn out quality shows, and were soon the charm of the Shriners. From Ringling to Polack went so many top stars, which spoiled me rotten ...I’m still recovering from post ecstatic center-ring syndrome, having seen Francis Brunn and others of his sainted ilk in my extreme youth ... Logan, now that gave me attitude.

Earl Chapin May Gets No Respect From Bandwagon: Okay, maybe he’s not the greatest author of circus books ever, but I always thought he was a lively and very reliable source. Now Bandwagon’s managing editor, Fred D. Pfennig III has called May’s Circus From Rome to Ringling “surely the most overrated circus book ever written.” No reasons given. Why, Mr. P? Have you details, please? ... And while you are out it, how about your take on a number of my favorite others, among them, Circus Kings, This Way to The Big Show, and Bradna’s Big Top? ... And just for the populist record, I too regard I Love You Honey as the best tanbark tome I ever read ...

Another curious Bandwagon position comes from Al Stencell, recounting numerous circuses seen in Europe and giving prime credit to Bernard Paul for being the true inspiration behind Cirque du Soleil... At least Stencell states his reasons, and surely his proposition merits a merry monograph or two from somebody out there... I defer, in the meantime, to the Russians as the principal source of inspiration for the modern day phenom headquartered up there in Montreal, Florida. Excuse me, I mean Sarasota, Quebec ... In passing, Stencil mentions having witnessed clown Charlie Rivel’s last public appearance, but, drats, does not say a word about what he thought of the act that John Ringling North had tried for years in vain to book ...

If I never see another Hula Hoop, Thank you, Lord! They are talking up the hula hoop’s anniversary, and I am reminded of all the hoop “acts” that I have sat through, not a happy patron ... Only once was I magnificently impressed, thanks to Jim Judkins. On his Circus Chimera a few years back, Jim — for a moment, playing the role of impresario — hired two captivating Russians, four-star illusionist, Olga Timchenko, and her son, Dimitri, who grabbed hold of a dozen or so hula hoops and proceeded to work them as a true juggler. Now that was a turn to remember ...

Big Top Bits: in a Covington Flash: Circus World, which seems to be waking up from a long bad dream, might revive the grand parade in 2009, Hats off to new and improved exec director Stephen Freese, who has the complex on the move once again. The Ringling-Barnum Archives having been opened to the public, at last, should bring Freese Museum Director of the Year Award. And for best supporting player, I nominate self-effacing library archivist Erin Foley ... Ringling’s new edition about to hit the trail is titled “over the top” I’m hoping so. But please, without those you know whats ... Why not marbles --- or skateboards --- or perhaps a ring of anal retentive electronic junkies juggling ipods and iPhones whilst whizzing about on their iScooters?

Into a PC war zone for Barbara Byrd’s Fearless Big Top? Looks like the SF. Zoo fiasco might linger on, with more animal activists claiming terrible conditions there, even after the wall was raised sky high ... And what might they do when Carson & Barnes throws up its tents onto the Cow Palace parking lot next September? Ms. Byrd, we’re in search of the next American sawdust impresario(ess). Your resume, perhaps? I must warn you, however, not without at least a few live musicians will you qualify — even if they play iDisco.

Back to Carnie Basics for Struggling Disney Park

As many know, Disney’s on-the-cheap Calif. Adventure, meant to duplicate the patronage of its next door neighbor, Disneyland, earned a rating of Fiasco+ when it opened in 2001, sometimes looking more like a “ghost town,” as reported in today’s New York Times by Brooks Barnes. How ghostly? Average annual visitors: 6 million, compared to 15 million for the sainted giant next door.

Now they are again trying to reboot the place into a turnstile-spinning success, sinking $1.1 billion over five years of upgrades. They’ve got a new ride about to premiere called Toy Story Mania. At its inception, Disney planners and thinkers took an open-minded walk around the midway at the L.A. County fair and decided to build on fundamental fun — like the dart balloon toss. Beyond that, of course, Pixar and a cast of computer geniuses have been engaged to develop a blockbuster attraction.

Disney fans are all abuzz. Maybe this time. Who was it who said, “ah, the fundamentals.” Comedian Don Rickles provides the voice for Mr. Potato’s total vocabulary of 750 words, so that he will “talk” to various patrons. Sounds like a blast.

To read all about it, grab a copy of the Times. Superb in-depth coverage of how this ride was created, step by step ... When the market speaks, super showman respond.

[New York Times photo, above, by J. Emilio Flores]

Tea Trumps Circus at L'Amyx ...

Showbiz David, from February 9, 2008


Join me for a high-tech laugh or two here at L’Amyx Tea Bar on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. What a trendy night. Ring my Dell! I’m feeling cooler than cool, pecking out this post on my very first laptop. Or have I again arrived just when the latest party is letting out? At the moment mine is the only laptop in the room!... Who knows, as of tonight laptops may be a thing of the past, and all because of me ... Has anybody, by the way, heard of something called a cellphone? Think I should check that one out too ..

Our servers tonight are Will and Boyi, two young guys from China with a certain natural flair for sharing favored tea enthusiasms. Will, who hails from Guangxi, champions an ominous jar of thick black leaves called Tribute Pu-Er, something that looks like it should be served out of an ash tray or wrapped in a cigar. He has tried before to sell me on his pet brew. So far I have resisted, preferring the serene contemplative sanity of Dragonwell or Japanese Rice tea to a late-night emergency room visit ...

Boyi likes Dragonwell, too, and he especially likes Tranquility Mao Feng, which has a nice lingering lilt to it. Says Boyi, raised somewhere in the Chinese countryside, “No matter how long you steep it, it’s still not bitter.”

Ah, still not bitter. That’s too easy a road for Will, who took on Tribute Pu-Er like an athlete scaling a pregnant volcano. “I don’t like it at first.” he admits, laughing over his masochistic attraction to the stuff. “Too earthy.” But Will took the challenge like a man. “Now I like it.” The ashen looking compound rewards courage with residual pleasure. “After feeling it in your mouth, feels an hour later, your mouth still feels sweet”

In fact, Pu-Er is so strong, it has a way of moving permanently into a pot and being the scent that keeps on scenting: After a time, says Will, “You don’t need to put tea leaf in pot anymore.”

All the while, I am wondering, have these guys seen any circuses in China? When I ask Will, he gives off a blank stare. "Circus, Will, you know, ah — circus?" Blank stare bordering on laughter. I try describing circus acts. I motion with my hands. Will thinks. “Not really. I see them on TV.” I remind Will that China is famous for its acrobats. “You never saw any acrobats in China?” He thinks a little more, and I wonder if that ashen tea he drinks has rebooted his memory. “Some small circus,” he answers, “only few people. They like come from small village, three or four people ... riding the one-wheel bike.” He finds it funny.

So much for a Chinese big top audience base. Strange that we know more about them over here than they do about themselves over there. Clearly, Will and Boyi both missed being turned against their will into hoop divers, so here they are in America serving hot water over imported tea leaves to people like me ...

About to leave the place after first-of-May laptop frustrations -- getting adjusted to a new keyboard and to a new spell checker that has already collapsed under the weight of my ignorance -- ah, as the song might have said, "I’ll spell my way by myself." Looking around — horror of horrors — I am still the ONLY one with a portable PC. Now, the others are reading books, pouring over notes, talking to each other face to face ... What next, checkers? Once again, I am trailing a party that closed hours ago. Just once, I vow to get the first next whatever new gizmo, just once to be first in line to the next Steve Jobs premiere ... In the meantime, let’s see, should I take a crack at Will’s favorite, or settle for the lingering sweetness of Tranquility Mao Feng? Or practice shouting out loud in public the most intimate details of my life and prepare to enter the cellphony Olympics?... Nobody wants to ring my Dell...

[originally posted 2/9/08]

Memo to the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization: How to Make South Pacific Live Again

Dear Messsrs and Messrettes Mary Rodgers, Ted Chapin,Estate Trustees, et all.

Wanting as much as any fan of the great R&H to see your upcoming revival of South Pacific succeed brilliantly, I have pondered how to make it work. While walking around Lake Merrit one morning here in Oakland, where I rent a one bedroom, I asked myself: what is the key to revival success for this soaring gem from 1949?

The answer came to me in a word: CONTEXT. You must do everything you can to take the theatregoer back to that period in American history. Here is how:

First of all, sorry to say, you you have booked your bet into the wrong house. Lincoln Center Theatre is way too modern a space. I urge you to break the lease, whatever it costs, and transfer to the quaint old Lyceum. Such a musty place, so wonderfully full of yesteryear's Broadway ghosts. Just stepping inside the place, you can almost imagine Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein lurking somewhere about.

Secondly, decorate, no, DRENCH the theatre in the imagery of the 1940s. Big band sounds upon entering. Photos of movie stars and theatre icons. Ushers dressed in the attire of the times. Purpose being to transport us back. The more we can be made to feel the era in which this melodic masterpiece was created, the better the chances are that we will connect emotionally to its central characters and themes. We've "got to be taught," yes -- all over again.

Third: Your production needs to honor the period, period. No Henry David Hwang deconstructions. No modernizing the subtext or transgenderizing the cast.

Now to the most critical challenge: Nellie Forbush. Not another sugar-dispensing Julie Andrews clone. Introduce your director to sound recordings and film footage of the late Mary Martin. Her soul was carved out of both sugar and spice. Give us a real female hick with downhome authenticity. This is the most daunting task you face.

End of Memo. Break a leg, big time...

Some Enchanted Evening A Long Long Time Ago, They Lit Up Broadway ...

Come March, the Pulitzer prize winning musical South Pacific, created nearly 60 years ago by legendary musical theater pioneers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, will be given its first Broadway revival. Can the kings of the “golden age” do it again? More important, can the 1950s live again? During that outwardly innocent period, R&H dominated Broadway stages. Their songs were sung on radio hit parades. Their made-for-televison original, Cinderella, was seen by over 107 million viewers in 1957 (nearly twice as many as those who watched Elvis Presley shake his sexy hips on the Ed Sullivan Show). A televison tribute to their work in the fifties was broadcast on all three major television networks. Unprecedented?

As much a fan as I am of R&H, I can’t see the odds being in their favor. Times have changed (some would say progressed) so drastically since America embraced tunes about cockeyed optimists, about singing nuns and poetic cowboys breaking into music over beautiful mornings. Now on Broadway, contemporary society — more cynical and disjointed, carved out from all the social upheavals that have split the nation apart since the 1960s — offers the grist that musical theater must confront in order to stay relevant at the box office. Think Hairspray and Wicked. Think any number of Stephen Sondheim revivals — Sweeney Todd for starters?

A fan like me dreams that the younger generations will discover the magic that cast a spell over my boyhood. Dream on. When Robert Goulet toured in South Pacific less than ten years ago, at a matinee in San Francisco I was seated next to a young couple who looked as if they had wandered in on a lark. During the first half of the performance, gratefully attended by a not-young crowd, the younger woman to my left shuffled through her program in the manner of an impatient patron. No surprise when she and her date did not return after intermission. I felt a sadness, though, as if to be witnessing the demise of a theatrical force that once held audiences spellbound. No longer. The fact is, today’s hits inevitably become tomorrow’s fondly remembered chestnuts. Of course there will always be an audience for the older “golden age” musicals. But, on revival row, the likes of a Chicago or a Cabaret (both cynically in step with today) are the rare exceptions. I note that A Chorus Line in revival is not setting the box office on fire.

You almost had to have grown up when South Pacific and The King and I, Flower Drum Song and The Sound of Music first hit the boards. Had to have been young and impressionable enough for their songs to have taken up residence in your soul. I will never forget listening to Mary Martin singing “A Cockeyed Optimist” from an old radio my brother and I shared in our bedroom in Santa Rosa and being absolutely mesmerized by the lyric: “When the sky is a bright canary yellow, I forget every cloud I’ve ever seen...” Something about that moment enchanted me so that my tastes were formed for life. I am sublimely grateful.

Now in song, today’s pop icons celebrate social mayhem. White kids dig what black hip hoppers give them, and, to quote an Oscar Hammerstein lyric from The Sound of Music, “there’s no way to stop it.”

There never was. A very good friend, older, still wants me to take in a Gilbert & Sullivan. I have no interest. In fact, I fear shuffling through a program and wanting to exit at intermission. As the world grows ever more self-centered and expedient and "relationships" are being redefined in so many variant ways, the worlds of Rodgers and Hammerstein feel less relevant, less emotionally compelling. I hope that South Pacific is there when I am in New York in May. Maybe, miracle of miracles, this will be the one that stays on the boards for a very long time, not for a respectably drawn out, money-losing one-year run at best.

The best I can hope for is that The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization will refrain from another one of their lame-brain reconstructions of the sort that mangled Flower Drum Song from charming delight into labored rewrite dishonoring the source material upon which the work was originally based.

The best thing they can do is let Richard and Oscar be — on their own terms. You don’t repaint the Cystine Chapel. Don’t revise Ravel. "Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons. Wise men never try." That's more than good enough for me. So is the libretto, ground breaking in 1949. So please, keepers of the R&H legacy on the Avenue of the Americas, be wise and don't try.