BWW Interviews: High Flying Fun - A Conversation With CIRQUE MECHANICS’ Founder Chris Lashua

The McCallum Theatre presents the Cirque Mechanics' critically acclaimed BOOM TOWN April 5-7. Cirque Mechanics was founded in 2004 and quickly established itself as a premiere American circus. With its unique approach to performance, inspiring storytelling and innovative mechanical staging it has been hailed as "the greatest contribution to the American circus since Cirque du Soleil". I had the chance to sit down with Chris Lashua, the troupe's founder and Creative Director, to chat about all things Cirque. Here are a few highlights from that conversation:

DG: What sets Cirque Mechanics apart from any other 'cirque" or circus experience?

CL: Absolutely. Sure. The approach between most people who are doing new circus is similar in that we're taking these --- and this is really sort of "101" on what makes a cirque a cirque --- and that's the combination of acrobatics, in some cases centuries old acrobatics, with theatre and dance, choreography, lighting and storyline. And what we do slightly differently than the cirque aesthetic – most people, when they think of the new circus they think of fantasy based shows with kind of the worlds of dreams and mystery --- and the major difference, what we're doing differently is we're setting our shows in a real time and real place, in this case it's in the 1880's and the gold rush. And we're using mechanical apparatus. At the heart of our shows are these machines. And the machines actually – they help us to achieve the circus. And we really want to show those machines off. We demonstrate the relationships between the mechanical apparatus and the acrobats. And that idea of opening up the clock and seeing how it works is at the heart of what we do and what we do differently. We're not only showing off the flying, we're also showing off the "how is works" side of it.

DG: Tell me about BOOM TOWN. What can The McCallum audiences expect to see?

CL: Sure. Well, to elaborate on the first point, we start with the machine development so, for example, this crane device that I explained earlier – this bicycle driven device –became the crane in our mining town. And then we have this other apparatus that's a series of poles – an 18 foot high pole that you can climb up much like you've seen in the ancient Chinese discipline of these people climbing these vertical poles and they do flags and hold their bodies horizontal and things like that – the difference is we actually have these poles interlinked with a cable and they operate like a vertical teeter totter – and these poles in our show are a set of telephone poles. We also have some ore carts that would have been pulled in and out of the mountains filled with gold and ore – and we have trampolines on them, and so they are these trampolines rolling down the train tracks with people bouncing on them. There's all the crazy, kooky stuff you'd expect to see happening in a circus mixed in with and insinuated into this mining town. We have a saloon with a barroom brawl, we have a saloon can-can girl that's doing a handstand act on the poker table, we have people swinging from chandeliers, we have a guy balancing on some whisky jugs, we have clowns interacting with the audience. And all of these are set within the theme of the 1880's mining town.

DG: How did Cirque Mechanics come about? Give me the cliff notes version of your history.

CL: I worked for Cirque Du Soliel for fifteen years – well, actually closer to twenty years. I started with Cirque du Soleil in 1992 as a performer and I created an act called "The German Wheel Act". And that act used a seven- foot wheel. After doing that for several years I was looking for a different way to perform that act – I built a mechanical apparatus that would house that wheel – essentially it would allow that wheel to rotate in space on a set of rollers – and the reaction I got from my friends about the machine-man interaction nature of that project really spurred us on to create more machines. We built several machines and we got an opportunity to put those machines into a show called "Birdhouse Factory". That was our first production. We toured that show for several years. DG: How did you, personally, get started in the circus world? CL: I was a trick BMX cyclist. I did what's on the X-Games now that they call extreme BMX with the back-flips and twisting and acrobatic BMX bicycling. And that was my entrée into Cirque du Soleil. I was in a festival in China doing my BMX act and I met ne of the founders of Cirque du Soleil and they invited me to join that company. And form that day forward I just knew that I wanted to continue mixing performance with acrobatics. When I got into the circus, because of my background, I started to lean toward the apparatus that were more mechanical. Many of our machines are pedal driven devices.

DG: If you weren't doing this, what would you be doing?

CL: Wow. Hmm. Well, I studied advertising at Boston University. That's what I got my degree in. You know, it's funny, I started doing performance bicycling and I went to University to kind of be responsible and get some kind of degree I could use and then before I could even put that into place I got back on stage. When I can no longer perform I will concentrate more fully on designing apparatus and building them. I enjoy doing what I'm doing so much I just want to build more stuff.

DG: Describe the creative process of putting together a production like this?

CL: Our process is kind of reverse-engineered. We actually start with the research on the mechanical apparatus and those machines dictate to us what kind of setting makes sense for those machines to be in. And in the case of BOOM TOWN we had this crane and we had these poles and we had these rolling trampolines and we began searching for that backdrop, And the mining seemed like a cool backdrop for the use of the machines to feel at home. Then we start to think – well, what's the time period – because we could have done coal mining in Tennessee – or, in this case, the gold rush – and there seemed to be much more zing and energy and playfulness and potential for all the hi-jinx we imagined from Chaplin's "Gold Rush" to Bugs Bunny in this setting.

DG: What is the most unusual or dangerous circus act in your production?

CL: I would say the unusual and dangerous thing – our moving trampolines. Trampolines in general – you know, you've got these 11-foot by 17-foot trampolines with people doing double and triple flips on them – but they don't move. We've got a 4-foot by six-foor trampoline and it's moving down a set of train tracks while you're flipping on it. So that is both unusual, in the way that it is generally not done – it's very unconventional to move a trampoline underneath somebody – and it's dangerous because it requires teamwork. The inter-connectedness of this is very invisible to people as well. So now we have a trampoline, which isn't generally a mechanized apparatus, but in this case it's on wheels. And then we have people on ether side of it that are rolling it underneath a person who's flipping. So those people on the ground are responsible for getting it underneath the acrobat. When that performer starts flipping forward, the people on te ground have to run forward with the trampoline and catch them. And so that provides both the acrobatic element of watching someone flip, but also it's impossible to miss how connected and in sync that acrobats on stage have to be with each other – cause they've got to be there to catch that guy as he launches himself down the train tracks.

DG: What are you planning next?

CL: We have a show that we're building now that will interact with a symphony. And we're touring Birdhouse Factory again.

DG: There are undoubtedly young people in your audience every night that say, "Hey, I'd like to be doing that." What advice would you give aspiring performers who want to run away to the circus?

CL: There are lots of places to go. There are three different circus schools in Los Angeles and they teach everything from adults who just want to do it recreationally – because there arte plenty of people who see the show and say "wow, you know, I always wanted to swing on a trapeze and I never did and I want to try it" – and they other people say "this is something I want to do with my life" and so they go to these circus schools. The premiere circus school happens to be on the campus of Cirque du Soleil in Montreal and that's The National Circus School of Canada. So there are plenty of places for people to go. I would say, to see as much Circus as possible. Most of us who are in this go to see anything we can – you know, to broaden our scope of what can be interesting. Because part of what is Cirque Mechanics and what is new circus in general is finding a way to do things that we might have seen before but never quite in this way. We sort of take the ideas we see from other art forms and disciplines and mix it all together.

The McCallum presents Cirque Mechanics: Boom Town April 5 and 6 at 8:00pm and April 7 at 2:00pm and 8:00pm. Tickets are available by calling the McCallum Theatre Box Office at (760) 340-2787 or online at www.mccallumtheatre.com.