A NEW ADVENTURE 🤯🎪🌞 (Patreon)

HELLO, DEAR STRANGE AND WONDERFUL PATRONS!

TODAY'S UPDATE IS COMING AT YOU WITH A LOT OF EXCITEMENT, WONDER, AND CAPSLOCK BECAUSE ... I JUST FINISHED A SPECIAL EVENTS CONTRACT WITH CIRQUE DU SOLEIL.

Okay, okay, I'll calm myself and take the capslock off. 

But it's true. 

I'm back home and settled in Toronto for a few weeks following a one-day show in Brooklyn, NY for a Cirque du Soleil special events contract. 

The show was to launch the new Motorola Razr phone and was in a giant old bank that's been redesigned into an event space, called 'Weylin'. 

I did a contortion performance and played the main character in the show, "JUNO". It involved a LOT of costume changes, some very high heels, and some incredible wigs. 

And, like all good things in my career (apparently) – it involved no small amount of stress / chaotic change, too. 

I didn't want to say anything when I was first contacted about this back in late March because I was convinced it was going to go away / disappear, as things like this tend to do in this industry. 

And then, once contracts started getting signed, I still didn't want to say anything in case it jinxed it in terms of injuries and mishaps. (Well ... more on that, soon).

But now it's all said and done, so ... I guess it's okay to talk about!  I have a lot of stories from this adventure – and, in fact, just like old times on this Patreon, I wrote voraciously throughout the entire thing. 

I've got 30 pages so far, and at least 10 of those pages are just jot notes that I recorded in the flurry of rehearsals and makeup tests and costume tests and travel days and dance practice and and and -- 

So there's going to be LOTS to read. 

I think I'm going to polish and edit this collection a little more than my usual stream-of-consciousness blog posts that you get here, and release it all in one go digitally (like I did a couple years ago with The Germany Story). 

I'm also thinking I'd love to collect this writing and put it out as a special edition of Writing the Circus, so that there's physical copies of this story out there in the world people can have on their bookshelf. 

There's just one teeeensy itsy bitsy little wrinkle that I want to iron out before I start sharing that writing with you – and that's checking with Cirque du Soleil's legal department that that is okay to do and I'm not violating any part of my contract somehow by doing so. (I think I'm safe; but with a company as big as Cirque du Soleil I am absolutely not taking any chances lol). When I hear back from the content director, I'll start moving forward with that!

In the meantime, I put together a whole bunch of my photos lurking on my camera reel from my workshop week at the Cirque du Soleil International Headquarters in Montréal in late May, and the week of rehearsals and show itself in Brooklyn last week. 

I've also made a vlog of my first day at Cirque HQ that I'm adding the audio to this week for your viewing pleasure – it'll be up soon.

If you'd like to see the little initial primer vlog / trailer I made about this whole adventure in the meantime, you can check it out here on Instagram or on Tiktok.

TOMORROW you have your first of many instalments of "Barbette Behind-the-Scenes": photo albums of behind-the-scenes photos from the May 1st filming day at Le Monastère in Montréal QC and discussions of the costumes, filming, philosophy, etc. behind each of those moments. 

Tomorrow's post looks at some of the dressing room photos that are pulled from the opening moments of the Barbette short film I'm editing this summer. It also goes into a bit of a discussion about trans vocabulary, identity, sex change, trans and queer histories, and all that good stuff. 

Want to hear more about any of the specific photos in this album here today? Drop me a comment and I'd be happy to elaborate in the meantime! 

Until then, stay strange & wonderful -

XO s.