Thursday, June 11, 2009

Est-ce Que C'est Moi?*

There is nothing more glorious than live performance. I say that, of course, with a hint of bitterness. The third show in La Rochelle was one of the most technically disastrous shows I have ever witnessed. The good news is, apparently the show can hold its own, even when the technical side of things go awry.

So what went wrong? There were many little problems, but my favourites were the straps and the mat.

The beginning of the straps number is a bit long. Mostly because there are no straps involved, just a lot of drunken wandering. Part of the scene, doncha know. But normally, after the mood is established, a little firecracker type thing goes off and the straps come down from the ceiling. Only this time, nothing happened. The sad thing is, the intro to the number is so long, I didn't even notice that anything was wrong!

So A. goes over to the piano tell the composer that there are no straps coming, only by this point the technicians have climbed into the grid to get the things down manually. Meanwhile, M. is meandering around the stage improvising trying to cover the gaping hole that the wait has created.

Hilarious!

Then, there's the mat. At the end of the show there's a big group trampo-wall number. Normally, there's a staged fall from the top of the structure and the acrobat who does it, none other than A., lands in a big mat. Only there's no mat. If the improvising during the straps act was hilarious, this was pants-wettingly good.

Now, either somebody has it in for A., or dude just has some seriously bad luck. Considering how often he bumps into stationary objects, I'm going to go with the latter.

Oh La Rochelle! What else do you have in store for us?



* You had to be there.

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