INTERVIEW: Artistic director offers behind-the-scenes look at Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Ovo’
Ovo is one of the most celebrated shows in the history of Cirque du Soleil. What started as a big-top extravaganza has now morphed into an arena show that delights audiences around the world. The traveling circus, originally written, directed and choreographed by Deborah Colker, will play July 5-9 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and Aug. 30-Sept. 3 at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island, New York.
Ovo, which means “egg” in Portuguese, is a show dedicated to the insect world — a world populated by bugs that crawl, eat, fly and amaze. In the spectacle, Cirque has many death-defying acrobatic acts and plenty of light-hearted fun from the company of clowns.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox spoke with Ovo’s artistic director, Tim Bennett, who has worked in theater for more than three decades. As a performer, he has graced the stage in such productions as Steel Pier, The Phantom of the Opera, South Pacific and My Fair Lady with Richard Chamberlain. He transitioned into a behind-the-scenes role and served as resident director for The Lion King in Las Vegas, among other roles.
Here’s what he had to say:
On how he came to Cirque du Soleil …
“I have been working in musical theater, both as a performer and a director, for many years, and back in the early ‘90s, I was living in California, still working as a performer. And I saw my first Cirque show on the Santa Monica Pier, and a friend took me to it and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to go to the circus, and it’s something a little different.’
“I wasn’t at the time particularly excited by going to see what I thought was a typical circus and saw the show and was blown away. It was one of the most creative and interesting, exciting things I ever saw. I thought at the time, oh man, I would love to work with these guys some day, but I wasn’t an acrobat. I was a performer and wasn’t a clown, so I didn’t really have skills that fit the profile.
“So over the years, I’ve gone to see every Cirque show I possibly could and have been a real fan, and eventually my career evolved. I started directing and choreographing and then eventually moved into more leadership arts roles, was resident director for The Lion King and entertainment director of Princess Cruises, but I’ve always loved Cirque.
“And when I was in Las Vegas working with Lion King, of course, you’re surrounded by Cirque shows, and I got to know some of the people. And I discovered that they had a role, the artistic director, that was really similar to what I did at Lion King, and I thought, well, here’s my chance. This is the way I could actually work with Cirque in an artistic capacity, and at that time, I was working on Lion King. But once that closed, I reached out to Cirque and have been in touch with people over the years, and something opened up just within the last year for me. And I made the connection, and here I am.”
On his responsibilities as artistic director …
“I’m responsible for the artistic integrity of the show. My job is to make sure that the show looks and feels as exciting, and as clean, and precise and brilliant as it was on the night that it opened to maintain the director’s original vision and the original feel of the show, so whatever goes into that from running rehearsals to giving notes, working with the artists and the acrobats, working with the coaches, replacing people, casting new roles, whatever it takes to keep the show in good artistic shape. So it’s a pretty broad spectrum from some administrative things all the way down to the stuff I enjoy more, which is the creative end of it.”
On his role on the day of a performance …
“I’m at the venue for every performance. I don’t watch every one. I watch about half of them because I discovered this was similar with my job with Lion King. If I watch every show, I start to lose perspective on it. It starts to become just homogenous, so I find going away and not watching every show gives me a better, cleaner perspective on it.
“I like to watch it as if I’m an audience member so that it hits me fresh and from an audience perspective rather than bringing knowledge it that would affect that, so I find that I need to go away. But I have enough other administrative duties and other things working with the background and working with the technical end that the shows I don’t watch I’m still at the venue, still working.”
On how the show transitioned from the big top to the arena …
“A lot changed with Ovo, and fortunately it changed for the right reasons. It changes for artistic reasons rather than just we’re moving from a tent where we sit for three months to an arena where we move every week. The show gets, to an extent, re-conceptualized.
“The original director was brought in. She worked with the senior artistic director in Montreal on restructuring it, re-conceiving it. The stage was redesigned a little bit. Because of the movement, some things were changed scenically. We used a large number of video projections now to enhance the backgrounds of the stage. The structure was changed. A few acts were switched in and out, and I think also what was advantageous about that is they looked at the show as it had been on the big top. And they were able to change things that they discovered they had a different vision for, so I think I can say that the show was improved.
“From the videos I’ve seen of the original — I never saw it in the big top originally — but the changes they put in since then, I think have really elevated the level of the show. And I’ve actually heard that reflected back from a lot of people that had seen it in the big top.”
On working within the Cirque du Soleil family …
“It’s very different here than any place that I worked. It’s very much a family. It’s very caretaking. Even though the company is fairly large — 4,000 employees — it doesn’t feel like a corporate environment by any means. Just the origins of Cirque, that it started with 20 street performers creating this amazing show and has grown into what it has, they’ve kept that small company feel, that family feel, and there’s very much that’s geared toward caretaking of the company, the fact that we travel with our own catering, and they feed us. … We’re very, very well taken care of. The company is very eco-friendly, and there’s a lot of interest and focus on giving back to the community. … It’s a completely different environment than anything I’ve seen and I think that most people work in.”
On the structure and freedom of the acts …
“Because they’re acrobatic acts, certain elements of it have to be absolutely precise and the same each night, and the extent of training that the acrobats do really lends themselves to exact repetition of the physical element and the structure, technical element. So some things have to be disciplined to the point where things are exactly the same. That’s necessary for safety reasons.
“The other side of it, there’s a lot of freedom within the show, and there are elements where the clowns or even the acrobats … have a lot of room to play. And there’s variety to the show each night, and that’s part of my job is keeping the two of those in line, keeping the areas where there’s room to play fresh, and the artists giving them permission to play and encouraging them to play, and then at the same time working with the coach to make sure that the specific acrobatic elements are adhered to.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Cirque du Soleil’s Ovo will play July 5-9 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and Aug. 30- Sept. 3 at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Click here for more information and tickets.
