The Big Crunch (Part 2) (Patreon)

During the 3 or 4 times that VACUUM has been requested by a European producer or show, there has been pushback each time on the fact that the act is, in reality, a carefully choreographed duo effort between myself and Miranda. 

Each time, I’ve been asked if I would consider coming alone with the vacuum tower and training a stage technician to do the job that Miranda does. 

Each time, I carefully explain that it’s not as simple as it appears, and that it’s extremely risky. If I'm feeling glib (or, if it's my European agent asking me for the third time), I cheerfully say something along the lines of, "Sure! If you're interested in having someone die onstage that's a great way we could do that!" In other words, there was no world where I was going to let a strange stage technician who has many other jobs to attend to in an evening to distract them, to be in charge of whether I have oxygen or not on stage for 7 minutes straight.

It’s not something I can imagine ever easily entrusting another person to do, unless they were perhaps trained by Miranda themselves, and for no short period of time.

I’ve tried to sweeten the deal for these producers, and it’s worked so far for the gigs that didn’t fall on the sword of COVID-19 cancellations: Miranda and I have been friends for years, and shared many a cramped hotel room with one another, or even several other additional acrobats, for gigs in Canada and the US over the years. I basically tell the booker/producer that Miranda and I will arrange dividing payment privately, we’ll be housed in the same lodgings, and the only ‘hassle’ they need to deal with is simply booking a second seat on the airplane.

I still know that every time I do this, that producer is going back to the drawing board at least a little, biting their nails and adding up numbers in their head. Is it worth it to bring me over?

The European agent messaged me again: the dates for this contract were actually going to be skewing far more towards October than September. Shit.

Rehearsals would start on the 25th of September, with the cabaret continuing until Christmas (and my spot in the roster concluding around Halloween).

I called my technician and explained the new situation.

“Oh … dude, I– er–"

She's stalling. “What is it?” I asked.

“I can’t miss the party I’m producing on the 9th on October.”

She's got to be joking. “I thought you said you could help plan from a distance and have a substitute for yourself on the day?” I said, referring to an earlier conversation we’d had about worst-case-timing-scenarios.

“Yeah but XXXXX [the co-producer for the party] doesn’t want to do it by himself.”

“The payday for this contract will literally be 10x what you’re going to take home from this party.”

“Well, let’s just see how it all plays out.”

I don't like the sound of that.
That sounded like, ‘I really don’t want to do this contract and I’m going to wait until we get closer to the date to actually consciously acknowledge that this is something I’m ultimately going to say ‘no’ to.’

What could I do?

I didn’t want to lose the contract if my technician flip-flopped on me at the 11th hour.

There wasn’t time (or lifted COVID protocols) to train a new technician for VACUUM.

The producer sounded like he’d prefer to have my non-existent solo act vs flying over the both of us for VACUUM already – and (thanks to my bumbling agent) thought that a solo act in a similar vein already exists (it doesn't).

Was there any world where I could actually pull this off in time…?

Was pulling this off actually the only clear way forward, anyways?

I started letting myself dream.

Or whatever the hyper-stressed version of dreaming is.

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[to be continued]