To Macau and Back: 'Away' Shows for the Int'l China Circus Festival (Patreon)

One of the things I love most about the circus is the mix of languages that surrounds you wherever you go. Russian, English, French, Spanish, Swedish, Mandarin, German, Portuguese, Polish . . . your ear begins to acclimate to all of it, the edges of phrases and familiar cadences, simple words used over and over again that you can glean the meaning of through context and association. It's a wonderful feeling to stand in the midst of such a varied linguistic chorus (and the logic-defying acrobats that usually accompany this symphony isn't too shabby, either). It makes my heart happy. In the circus, you will hear this symphony against the backdrop of a rehearsal space, or a backstage area, or . . . a crowded coach bus on its way to a stadium in Zhuhai City, or Macau. 

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We’ve been scheduled to do two days of shows off of the Chimelong Ocean Resort (where the festival is hosted): the first day has a show in Zhuhai City; the second day has a show in Macau.

With the exception of only a few acrobats, none of us have been allowed to leave the resort to do any exploring, any shopping, even make our way to the other side of the property to have some fun at the theme park or pool or aquarium that is apparently not too far away at all. Everyone is itching to get out and see something different. 

Troy and I were briefly wondering if we might have two days off in all this business: we received no schedule detailing the content of the days leading up to the start of the festival (only that there would be rehearsals throughout the first week, and one show in Zhuhai – which I’ve already told you about in a previous post), and it seemed as though the acrobats and performers performing at these away shows were already aware that this was part of their schedule. 

We catch Leonor late Sunday afternoon: “Hey – are we doing these away shows that some of the other performers are doing tomorrow and Tuesday?” I ask. 

“Oh, yes!” she nods. 

Ah. Troy and I look at each other. No rest days for us, then.
Adventure time off the resort, it is!  

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DAY 1: ZHUHAI
We drive for close to an hour, pulling up to the back of a space-age looking stadium, low and round like some UFO coming in for a landing, with big spidery legs arcing out from its centre. 

The smell of cigarettes follows you everywhere in China, or so it seems … every taxi stand, every parking lot, the backstage of Old Circus and New Circus, right into the interior of the hotels (which uniformly have “no smoking” signs tacked to the walls – usually directly over an ash tray / garbage can combo). This is the smell that greets us as we walk into the back of the stadium. We all march down a plain, whitewashed hallway into a broader, open area filled with some chairs and a low bench running the length of the room. There are a few washrooms along the far wall, and Ezra – the translator travelling with us – tells us that there are two dressing rooms here. 

We all seem to be suspicious of the existence of dressing rooms (or, if they do exist, that they are probably a single stall washroom or something to this effect), and settle in on the floor or chairs to make use of this holding area as our collective green room. 

A short flight of stairs leads up into the heart of the stadium: 

The overall first impression is of a Communist-era space for public announcements and ceremonies, converted into a … well … non-Communist-era space for public announcements and ceremonies, I suppose. Everything has a slightly bare aesthetic, bordering on the dystopian/post-apocalyptic. The architecture of the struts and truss composing the domed ceiling are open to the air above us. An ancient looking sound system hangs from the centre of the dome, though it seems they are defunct as there are already technicians setting up different speakers around the auditorium. There are high stands of seats circling the floor area. Rows and rows of yellow and green plastic chairs are set up to face the long, rectangular stage they’ve installed, which is flanked by two huge video screens. A monstrously large printout of the festival banner – bright yellow with a clown gleefully jumping in the centre and the name of the festival and its dates in both English and Chinese – has been installed as the backdrop to the stage. This is the image currently showing on both of the video screens as well. 

A quick march up the backstage steps and onto the surface of the stage – elevated some four or five feet above the ground – reveals that it is some kind of uneven wooden construction that has been covered over with the now-familiar red carpet of the festival. Comments had been made by performers at the street shows in Zhuhai last week about the problems (read: dangers) inherent in performing on a carpet that is not affixed to the surface it is laid over; it seems as though these comments were taken to heart, as this carpet has been fixed firmly in place with many, many metal staples. Unfortunately, it is hit or miss as to whether these staples are actually flush with the carpet or not (read: are sticking up enough to stab oneself in the foot or the face with). 

Oh boy. 

One of the other duos quickly makes a point of this to Ezra, insisting that it be remedied. A team of black-jumpsuit wearing Chinese festival employees are quickly set to the task of smashing every single staple into the floor extra good.

I’d better not forget to put tape on my chin today, I think to myself. Just in case …

The lighting set-up is less-than-ideal for what seems like all parties: 

Big overhead lights illuminate the general area of the stadium, and then two vertical pieces of truss on either side of the stage are blasting several strong, white stage lights at us: the latter lights are directly at eye level for the performers who are doing stuff like … you know … flipping through the air, or trying to catch precisely thrown small objects ... AKA, doing things in which it would be preferable not to have a light shining directly into your eyeballs. 

For Troy and me, it’s more that we designed our act for a very specific purpose and a rather specific stage, and this is not that. Our act’s opening is most effective when we are hidden from the sight of the audience until a spotlight slowly comes up on each of us. Without rather specific lighting elements, the weirdness and suspense of the act opening on me as an unfurling little ball of limbs, and Troy’s shocking ‘drop, jump and scare’ is … kind of lost. 

Whatever. It is what it is! We’ll make the best of it. 

“Hey Ezra,” I say, catching him as he walks by to start the first act’s tech run. “Is there any chance they can turn the lights off in here briefly for the start of our act?” 

“Uhhh,” he says, smiling in confusion. 

“Not like, big crazy lighting cues,” I rush to continue. “Just – off, at the beginning, so we can sneak on stage. Otherwise the beginning of our act is kind of … bleh. 

“Ohhh, okay okay, I’ll see what I can do,” he says, and runs off. 

There is a big set of red-carpeted stairs leading down the front of the stage to the first row of chairs – Troy and I decide we’ll finish the act by running down them towards the audience instead of holding our final shape, in order to make up for what seems doomed to be a lacklustre beginning.

I look back out at the empty seats from the stage one final time before we return to our backstage holding area. This place is huge. They can’t possibly be filling this entire thing … it must just be the seats on the main floor that they’ve sold tickets for or something. 

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After all the performers have made it through tech run and are backstage, we hear the theme song of the festival playing out across the stadium. It’s a poppy, catchy little earworm that burrows into your brain long after you think you’ve gotten rid of it, a mix of Chinese and English lyrics layered over the melody. While we’re not quite sure what it’s saying in the first couple verses of the song, the English lyrics are clear enough, delivered in a slightly clunky syncopation like a slightly-out-of-place hip-hop bridge (and accompanied by enthusiast hand-clapping, naturally): 

EV–ERY – CIRCUS IS – FULL OF – MAAAGIC;

IT’S _____* FOR ME AND YOU; IT’S _____* FOR YOU AND ME!
*(Good? Fun? Made? We all change our minds on what this word is each day)
 

EV-ERY – CIRCUS IS – FULL OF –MAAAGIC

‘CAUSE WE – ARE – TOGETHER!

WE ARE TOGETHER!
WE ARE TOGETHER! 

And so on. 

We have all come up with several less-than-appropriate versions of this theme song by this point in the festival, as it seems to follow us literally everywhere. It filters into the backstage holding area only as a muffled but familiar tune; whoever is sitting out there must be really ready to here something else at this point because they play this song – and only this song – on repeat for literally an entire hour while we are all backstage putting on makeup, getting into costume, and picking at the unlabelled boxed lunches that have arrived at some point while we were all out front doing tech run (is it chicken? Fish? Tofu? Organs? A surprise every time!). The Columbian dancers who have come to this show with us have somehow managed to procure McDonalds for themselves and are avoiding this provided fare, which does little to inspire confidence in the rest of us 

Troy and I are about halfway down the list of performers for today’s show. I poke my head out into the stairway leading to the stadium very briefly as the show starts – and see that it is packed. As in, up to the rafters full of people. All of the plastic chairs at floor level, as well as the rings of seats climbing up in tiers higher up in the stadium. 

Okay, then! 

We carefully paint our extra eyes onto our faces and pull sweatpants and back warmers on over our costumes before it’s time to trot out to opposing sides of the stage and take our marks for the show. 

The hosts wrap up their banter and introductions and trot offstage to my side. I strip off the warm little booties that I like to shuffle around in backstage to keep my feet from feeling freezing cold right before I get on stage (My feet are ALWAYS cold. I feel inclined to blame this on 1 – or 5 – too many bouts of frostbite thanks to long, cold exterior winter stunt days in flimsy wardrobe boots AND/OR a dive expedition to the Arctic Circle in Norway in which it seemed I was dangerously close to losing my toes at one point. I suppose all of the above are stories for another time …). 

Okay … lights should be going out … in just a second …

The stage dims ever so slightly. 

Oh jeez – they’ve certainly turned off the stage lights. Except – there’s an entire stadium full of overhead lights out over the audience still rendering the stage perfectly visible. Except now it just looks unlit in a weak, this-looks-unintentional, maybe a fuse blew, sort of way. 

Crap!

Is what it is– I make eye contact with Troy from the opposite side of the stage and we both march up the steps. Time to improvise – ! A low murmur sweeps across the audience as we walk out, standing tall for just a moment and looking out across the space. Our track begins. I melt slowly backwards over into the cheststand that I usually begin the act with – which elicits some reaction from the crowd. I guess a tall white person on stage isn’t the kind of body they expect to smoothly fold itself up into a much smaller little ball? Hooray for the element of surprise. Troy’s fall doesn’t do much – but his jump up and first shoulder roll gets at least some of the usual gasps of horror / disgust / shock from the audience. 

We move smoothly through the rest of our choreography, serving the best terrifying-monster-faces we can. Our descent down the stairs at the end gets some satisfying screams from the audience, too. 

Good enough!

On the bus ride back to the resort, Ezra informs everyone that we are to be back out to the loading zone of the resort at 7:30am to make the trip to Macau.

The entire bus groans – though perhaps none more so than the poor Scandinavian Boards team, who are told that the soonest they will be able to pack up their mats and equipment will be 10:00pm tonight.
 

DAY 2: MACAU
The first night since I’ve arrived here that I felt like I might get a full, good night of natural sleep and … my alarm goes off at 6:30am. 

The indignity of it all.

Making sure that my passport is firmly zipped into the backpack I’m taking with me first, I zombie-walk to the buffet hall to grab fistfuls of bananas and clementines to shove into my bag for the day ahead. I’ve clocked maybe 5.5 hours of sleep. It’s too early to put much food in my stomach. I choke down a couple small slices of toast and butter and keep on shuffling my way back down to the coach bus that will take us into Macau. 

I slump down into a seat midway down the bus. Half of the other performers are already onboard; the other half is trickling in. Troy is sitting in the seat in front of me. 

“Got your passport?” I mumble.
“Yes, of course,” he says.
“Let’s see it,” I say, waving mine.
“What, you don’t believe that I have it?”
I think about all the times this week that Troy has had to run back to his room to retrieve the badge that permits us into all the backstage areas of the circus (which we are supposed to wear at all times), the third hotel room key he has had to acquire in our time here, and the phone call interviews with important people from France’s Got Talent that our agent tasked him to organize before we left for China which he … didn’t organize. 

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I laugh.
“I have it, Mother.”
Oh, you, motherf–

I let the air go frostily silent as a few members of the Scandinavian Board team sitting around us perk up their ears. I don’t blink as I level my best death glare at Troy, who laughs nervously into the icy vacuum I have created.

I speak very quietly:
“One: if you EVER … refer to me as your MOTHER again. I will f***ing end you. Two: don’t give me that shit when you’ve forgotten half of everything all week and it’s all of us who will get screwed at the border if you’ve forgotten something.”

I can’t keep the tiniest hint of a smile off the corner of my mouth by the end of my melodramatic response.

“I –“ Troy tries to laugh out a retort. 

“–ALSO,” I add, “the fact that you refer to your mom as ‘Mother’ gives off a real Psycho, stab-people-in-the-shower vibe.”

The Scandinavian Board guys burst into laughter. “’Mother’!” comes the rolls of laughter. “It’s true!” “That’s kind of weird, man.”

“WHAT!” Troy exclaims, laughing too. “It’s RESPECTFUL!”

“I dunno man,” I deadpan, leaning in to the joke. “Kind of implies a really disturbing relationship. Another reason why you will never call me that again.”

The bus pulls away from the hotel.

 The border process to leave mainland China and go to Macau is less straightforward than you’d think. Despite the fact that China ‘welcomed Macau back into the glorious motherland’ 20 years ago (the mayor of Zhuhai’s words during Opening Ceremony, not mine), the usual ‘you’re crossing a border from one country to another country’ thing still stands:

At the first checkpoint, we all pile off the bus, have to take everything with us, and walk it through the customs and security lines.
We fill out little arrival cards.
We wait in line.
Our passports our scrutinized, our fingerprints are scanned, our passports are scrutinized closer (my passport is the 10 year Canadian passport, and I definitely had the photo taken for it about 5 years ago, before my head was fully shaved again. In short, I look REAL different than my passport photo. At least the photo I had to take for my Chinese visa is up to date).
We chuck our bags onto an X-Ray belt and walk through a body scanner that nobody official seems to be paying much attention to – it beeps for every person that walks through but no one is scanned further. 

That’s the Chinese side. We all pile back onto the coach bus, and drive for maybe 5 minutes over a winding series of overpasses that climb higher and higher, culminating in a short bridge that brings us over to the Macau-side checkpoint.
Then we do it aaaaall over again.
It’s like Macau doesn’t trust China to do a thorough screening job one way, and China doesn’t trust Macau to do a thorough screening job coming back the other way, I think to myself.

Once we’re into Macau things instantly feels different: the first 10 minutes of driving past the border is essentially like driving through a big, shiny replica of the Vegas strip.
There’s a mini Eiffel tower.
A towering hotel with massive circular cut-outs in the centre of it that have little gondolas going round and round.
A miniature Venice, complete with canals.
The first billboards I see are for a watch brand that has starting price points in the tens of thousands. 

But then – five more minutes driving past that, and you’re in what looks like an older, less developed part of town. Apartment buildings with a slightly neglected feeling, bars on the windows, black mold and pollution residue marring the whitewash of the walls, vines from the nearby trees crawling their way up the sides. The greenery itself is refreshing – I realize that in any of our trips outside the resort in Zhuhai there’s maybe some palm trees lining the streets, but nothing like the old-growth looking trees winding their way up the hillsides to one side of the road, the natural variation in vegetation that I see here. 

We make our way across an absolutely massive bridge – it has several rolling waves to its design, up and down, like a gentle roller coaster – and descend into the heart of the city. Tall new skyscrapers and avant-garde looking architecture mixes in with towering apartment buildings that look more like the photos I’ve seen of dense Hong Kong infrastructure than anything so far in China. It feels old, and new, at the same time. 

We pull up in front of today’s venue, which has the festival’s yellow posters pasted one after the other on the walls, leading in through the front doors to a large lobby and into a big public arena which . . . 

Oh man…this is even worse than yesterday! 

A huge, open floor space – with the usual red carpet centred in the middle –greets us, surrounded on all four sides by tiered stadium seating. And the carpet is completely isolated in the centre of the floor space – a floor space big enough to hold a couple ball hockey games in side-by-side. There is no sneaky or secretive way to get on ‘stage’. It’s like a rectangular gladiatorial arena. We’ll have to march our way over to just get to the red carpet in a timely fashion. 

I turn to Ezra.
“Hey – is the audience all the way around? Or is one of these sides closed off?”

“Nope all sides!” Ezra replies, beaming. 

I look over at Troy, who pulls the corners of his mouth down and out in the kind of obviously fake smile that doesn’t reach your eyes and communicates the “oh crap…”-ness of a situation. 

“Cooool,” I say in a neutral tone, drawing out the middle vowel. “And, um – I’m guessing this lighting is as we see it now? These overhead lights?”

“Yes!” Ezra says cheerfully. 

“Okay great!” I say, letting the smile drop from my face and my eyeballs roll up to the heavens in supplication as I turn back around to Troy in a silent but crystal clear, Whyyyyy . . . 

Okay – no – stop it. It’s fine. It’s a public show; this is one show in your life; it’s not gonna be received great but – that doesn’t stop you from running this act as best you can. Practice for the festival! Yeah. Let’s go with that. 

“We’ll just do our best,” Troy says. 

This set-up works pretty great for Scandinavian Boards, who are with us today – lots of space, great sightlines. The hand to hand duos and the clowns make pretty good use of it, too. The crowd is mostly made of schoolchildren, who scream at the top of their lungs and lose their goddamn minds for the aforementioned acts. Troy and I do our best with what we’ve got: we stride out boldly onto the floor, standing for a moment and looking intensely out at the crowd while we wait for the music to start. There is a wave of increased volume that sweeps around the arena – I guess our aesthetic is mildly stimulating from a distance, at least – and a few appreciative ‘ooohs’ as Troy and I move through our opening solos, but the energy falls pretty flat after that. 

Our act was only ever built to work to the front; even in the three-sided style circus ring stages we’ve performed on, there’s a solid chunk of the audience who isn’t seeing the best possible view of the act. Just is how it is, is how we’ve mentally settled on it. It is extra unfortunate that it is one of the long sides of this rectangular arena that makes up the ‘back’ wall of the stage; meaning, it is a much larger chunk of the audience who is seeing the back of our act which . . . looks like … nothing. We finish, bow, and walk back out of the arena. I realize I feel pretty crappy. 

The crowd slowly begins to thin out as we pass the halfway mark of the show; the attention span of children isn’t so long, and the venue isn’t exactly holding people’s attention in the way that the lights and smoke machine and magic of the Old Circus back at Chimelong Circus Resort can. 

The final act wraps up, we all file back out for the finale bow, and begin tearing down as the seats above us are rapidly evacuated by the remaining audience members. Bags get packed, mats and equipment gets loaded, and we all wait for the coach bus to reappear and take us back to the double border crossing that awaits us. 

I put my bag down on the floor of the now-empty arena, lie down, and rest my head on it. Closing my eyes, I let the feeling of intense physical exhaustion wash over me that I’ve been trying to repress all day. The entire 10 days I’ve been here I’ve been clocking maximum 6 hours of sleep per night. Even if I’m feeling emotionally and mentally more stable by now, and I’ve managed to coddle and persuade my injuries into a state that is functioning and manageable, my body is worn out. My mind drifts back to the performance. 

Troy and I had a solid, good run of our act, I think, re-playing it in my head. 

We had good energy with each other; we hit all our musical landmarks; all of our tricks came off well. I realize that this is one of the first times we’ve performed somewhere where we’re getting what feels like zero energy back from the audience. The crappy feeling I was left with at the end of our performance wasn’t because he and I did something poorly. We did good, at the end of the day. That’s it. 

It makes such a difference to have a generous audience, I think sleepily.