The Big Ask (Part II) (Patreon)

As I’ve written about on this Patreon before, one of the questions I like to ask other artists is, “What is your definition of success?”

For circus artists, that usually means that I ask them where they imagine themselves performing, if they let their dreams run wild. What stage, country, setting, do they picture sharing their work in? The answers to those questions can heavily inform the work we make, or the way we go about making that work.

I believe I mentioned earlier this year that my current definition of success was returning to perform at the Moulin Rouge.

I've known for some time that I don't want to do anymore giant nightclub-style commercial gigs in Toronto.

Smaller companies that felt more attractive to me before – 7 Doigts, Cirque Eloize – are either struggling in the wake of the pandemic, or have become even more conservative in their casting choices (aka, returning almost exclusively to work with artists they’ve employed before, and not casting out wide nets for new talent).

I've known for a long time that a big fat 2-year contract with Cirque du Soleil probably isn't the right fit for me, either:

While the travel opportunities that can happen if you land a touring show with Cirque certainly had a certain kind of appeal to me, the company has suffered some serious financial losses and setbacks (cough bankruptcy cough) and is only now slowly rising from the ashes with some residency shows in Vegas and a couple touring shows. Competition is steep, and there are a lot of laid-off former Cirque acrobats out there probably hoping the phone is gonna ring for them with a job offer back on a re-mounted show.

Additionally, a 2-year contract would put a real damper on the other avenues of work and income I've worked hard to cultivate, and one of the ways I handle the anxiety and stress of existing as a professional artist is having diversified income streams. While film industry work is weird and tenuous, it provides a good (albeit highly unpredictable) income that allows me to re-invest in my own art and creations, or gives me the means to train or write grants. Getting any work in the film/TV industry is a highly nepotistic lottery, and while you can check out at any time, checking back in is not a simple thing. In other words, I don’t feel strongly motivated enough by the creative fulfillment working a big long 2-year contract for a major company might offer, to put down all the other things I work at. (Would life be simpler though? Maybe that’ll seem more appealing to me, one day…)  

But the Moulin Rouge? That felt just right.

I had had the opportunity to perform there with Troy James with our contortion duo act in Winter of 2019. I loved working at that cabaret, and I loved being in Paris as an artist, rather than a tourist. I wanted to try to create an opportunity for myself that would allow me to return there on the merits of my solo work.

The Barbette act was – in my mind – a perfect offering to pitch back to this cabaret to try to realize this dream of mine. As we know now, that looks like it didn’t pan out. (Never say never! But, realistically – looks like a “no thanks”).

Cabarets, and the 6-to-8 week contracts usually available as an option within those structures, are still attractive to me – but as we discussed previously, it doesn’t look like Barbette is immediately attractive to those venues/productions. Those kinds of gigs want a tight, clean, technically proficient act, usually 5 to 6 minutes long. They want a show.  And so while I set out to make entertainment when I embarked on the Barbette journey, I guess I accidentally  made ‘art’ instead, and that's not what the producer wanted (To be clear, I’m not lamenting this much; this is a pretty good problem to have, as problems go!).

Further to that, the likelihood that I undergo the time and effort to cook up *another* ~new~ solo act (invest the time, the creative energy, the money, the …) that somehow checks better boxes for the Moulin Rouge within the next few years of my career? It’s unlikely. It was worth trying once. I don’t think that that’s an overall prudent approach to creation, or the pursuit of contracts. So – if we say for brainstorming's sake that “Moulin Rouge is off the table”...

… where does that leave me? If European / Parisian cabarets are not in the cards for my immediate future, what do I want next?

I need a new dream, for practical reasons. (Now there’s a paradoxical sentence, eh?)

So what’s left?

Enter: the Next Ridiculous, Lofty Dream*.

(*Those are the best ones, by the way. You aim big, you create something to meet that big-ness, you more likely than not fall short, but you still ended up somewhere far beyond where you might’ve if you’d set your sights lower. That’s my mentality. Some variation of this exists in extremely cheesy poster form in grade-school classrooms all across Canada, I'm quite sure. It almost definitely involves an idiom about the moon and the stars. But enough about that for now.)

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[ stay tuned for a short little Friday morning instalment to wrap up your writings for this week, dear patrons! All shall be revealeddddd ~~~spooky hands~~~)]