Carefull what you wish for

Damn I am excited!!! So I am in the gantry, doing a little end of the year tidy as I am up to my eyeballs in research/course development/workshop building that if I look up another freaking reference my brain will gush out of my ears. That and the house hang/patch needs desperate tending to. But this is all beside the point. Mike comes to me and says that there is a lady here who went through the program ages ago who is interested in doing a bit of directing for us. I think, sure, no problem.

We start talking, she talks of a couple of fringe-style shows she's done. Cool, we say, then what else were you doing. Then she very casually mentions that she has been an art director/choreographer for Cirque du Soliel for ten years. so suddenly I am all over the idea of getting her in to work with the students. Taking her through the theatre and talking to her about some possible shows and staging, she is immediately looking up at rigging points and throwing ideas out about nets, ropes, silks, trapeze, clown, etc. All the while I am showing an exceptional amount of restraint, and desperately keeping myself from leaping up and down in the air and scaring her off.

Now, that all said, I have been extremely fortunate in the world of training and had opportunities galore which I am very thankfull for. There is however, one area that I feel I need to explore further, and that is in clown work. (not 'creepy guy blowing up balloon' clown, but real clown work, the kind whose tradition dates back almost 2,000 years, through roman mime, Del 'Arte, and Europe) With this lady working with Cirque (whose clowns have reached a legendary status), I ask if she knows anyone she would recommend to do some training with. she says of course and we exchange emails and now I am bouncing off the walls (almost literally) and exploding with possibilities for the students, for myself and for all kinds of show possibilities.

Damn I love this stuff.