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  • Performers from Kooza, one of Ste-Croix's latest projects

    Performers from Kooza, one of Ste-Croix's latest projects

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Terence Loose
Join the Circus
Global Citizen :: No, we don’t mean
climbing 20 stacked chairs or spinning
plates; we’re talking about becoming
a Cirque du Soleil Global Citizen.
Through its partners around the world,
Cirque du Soleil is involved deeply in
communities, funding everything from
steering at-risk youth in the right
direction to fighting hunger and poverty.
:: cirquedusoleil.com

Kooza Baby! :: See Kooza when the
show comes to the Cirque du Soleil
Grand Chapiteau at the Orange County
Great Park January 8. Tickets for adults
start at $65.
800.450.1480 :: cirquedusoleil.com

While living in a commune in Quebec in the late 1970s, Gilles Ste-Croix needed a better way to pick apples for the group. He figured stilts would be a lot faster than a ladder. It was; he picked a lot more apples. But it was also the seed that would lead to the phenomenon that is the Cirque du Soleil, which today has more than 4,000 employees from over 40 countries. Amazing, even to Ste-Croix, who founded the company with his friend, Guy Laliberte.

It all started with a colorful band of 20 or so street performers, roaming the streets of the small town of Baie-Saint-Paul near Quebec City while stilt-walking, juggling, breathing fire, and playing music. Ste-Croix had found a better use for his stilts: to entertain. And it would really pay off in 1984, when the Canadian government agreed to fund a crazy idea named Cirque du Soleil. The performances would take place under a big top in cities across the province to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Canada’s discovery by Jacques Cartier. We asked Ste-Croix about his crazy, colorful ride from stilt-walking street performer to senior VP of Creative Content for one of the greatest shows on earth.

Ste-Croix’s latest collaboration, Kooza, with Director David Shiner, comes to Orange County January 8 under the Grand Chapiteau at Orange County Great Park in Irvine.

When did you catch the performing bug and what did your parents think?
They said, “Anything but that!” But performing was something I had a drive for from secondary school when I was doing plays. My parents thought it was a hobby and it was not something serious enough for a career. I understood their concern because my father was a farmer and my mother was a teacher and they were struggling to survive. So they didn’t want me to have any misery and show business was very difficult at that time, in the 1950s. It was not as popular as it is today. Television was barely started, especially in Canada in the countryside, so it didn’t look like a promising career, it just seemed crazy to them.

Then you became a self-professed hippie.
I was part of that period in the ’60s when you dropped out and got together with different people and experienced new things. The ’60s and ’70s were a very exciting time for my generation and my way of working is still based on teamwork and everyone working together, striving to be as creative as possible and make a better world with what we do.

How did you become a street performer as opposed to some other, more common, entertainer?
My ideas in the hippie world were contrary to the ideas of going to college and studying specific forms of performing arts. And when my path crossed with the Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont, I thought, “Wow, this is the answer,” because I saw myself as being a self-taught man in everything I did in life and I learned from meeting people with various views.
 
So you never studied formally?
In the 1980s I actually did go back to university to study. But after one year I realized I knew more than the people who were on the stage with me. In fact, the professor told me I should take all the students with me on the road because they would learn more with me than they would at school. So that reassured me and I didn’t think I needed a degree to be successful.

Did your hippie days inform your work with Cirque?
Definitely, because right from the start, when I formed my first group of street players, Les Echassiers de Baie-Saint-Paul [The Baie-Saint-Paul Stiltwalkers], we worked on a basis of consensus. There was no boss. We were all involved. It was taken directly from the idea that we were all in it together. It was very communal.

Yet your first time on stilts was out of practicality, not performance; you wanted to pick more apples.
It was a crazy idea at the time because sure, you can pick apples faster, but you can also break your leg. But it did lead me to people who helped with my performing. So as they say, you find your direction in very strange ways.

To get the initial funding for Cirque, you walked 60 miles on stilts. Is that true?
Yes, after I performed with a theater group in Vermont, I wanted to start my own group and thought a grant was the way to do it. But no one had any idea who I was and certainly didn’t believe in me enough to give me money. A friend said, “You have to do something extraordinary.” So I thought, “What if I walked 60 miles on stilts from [town to town]?” So I did and the people I originally asked for money called and said, “You’re really crazy! And if you have the motivation to do that, you can probably make your project happen.” So they gave me $75,000 to start my street group. So in 1982, we started performing in a ring and put a big top over it and that was the beginning of Cirque du Soleil.
 
And that led to a government grant?
Yes. In 1984, we got a government grant to buy a big top and present a street gathering show in 13 different cities in the Quebec area. It was not designed to build a long-term circus. But in 1985, after our success and good press, we were able to get loans from banks and another grant from the government to really start Cirque du Soleil as a circus and not merely a gathering of street players.

Why do you think it took off as it did?
It was successful because it was theatrical and unique, especially the circus aspect to it. It wasn’t a great success; 1985 and 1986 were hard. But in 1987, we were invited to the Los Angeles Festival and that was our big break.

Did you envision the current form of Cirque from the start?
No. At the beginning we thought we were creating a circus, but as it evolved, it became less and less a circus. I always say we were street players trying to be a circus, and then we were a circus trying to be [a] theatrical troupe, then we were a theater with circus performances, then we became a musical, theatrical event with circus performers. It’s definitely not a circus but it does have some sort of a circus aspect to it.

How do you find performers?
We have 1,200 artists under contract and every year five to 10% leave or change careers, so we have to replace them. In addition, we need to find new talent for the new shows we are producing. So it’s roughly 200 or more performers we must find every year. So we have a full-time casting crew that goes to festivals and auditions performers to find new talent.

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Talk about this new show, Kooza.
[Kooza] has a former clown, David Shiner, as the director. So it’s more light-hearted and whimsical and has a lot of absurdist humor. As a former clown in our productions, David created humor by interacting with people from the crowd. He has also directed shows and had his own show Off Broadway. When he approached me about directing a show, he said he wanted to do a circus show, with high performance, absurd clowning and a story in small sketches with strong comic characters. He was very emphatic on creating the style of Kooza, which is really a low-tech show that relies on the human performance. So it’s a fun show because of all the unexpected audience interaction.

You mentioned a strong storyline in Kooza, which is somewhat unique among Cirque shows, which rely heavily on evocation rather than story.
Yes, David wanted to tell a truly universal story, one that could happen to anyone. So Kooza speaks to the innocent child in each one of us to bring us into facing our fears and enjoying life. The character, The Innocent, discovers he can take control of the situation and himself. His journey is our journey.

What is your vision for Cirque’s future?
We will continue to develop more musical productions and we are working on a new production with David to recreate a vaudeville-esque production for the stage. That will go to New York next year. And there are of course many other projects and productions. There is no lack of possibilities or ideas yet.