1 December, 2005

Adrenaline therapy started today, with an an email from the Italian circus producer Anna Antina La Valle. I met her last summer through my landlord Paul Magid (actor, writer, director, juggler), when he invited me to play for a big circus spettacolo in Modena. I played music segueing the various acts, and it went pretty well, considering there was no real rehearsal. This time she asked if I was free on New Year's Eve, to accompany a French circus with with my Italian band in the biggest piazza in Naples, Italy. I screamed when I read that email. Dang, I guess I'll have to forego that door gig at the local cafe, and play for a gigantic crowd in one of my favorite cities on earth!

Paul's script was lovely - Man and Woman dance, then fight, then Woman ties him to a cable & he flies offstage, she goes to her vanity & weeps, Venus & Cupid enter and it starts to snow. Cupid, ever the prankster, says - go forth, leave your partner! Venus, the mamma, says - no, work it out, stay! Enter Orfeo with his fiery act (actually a young German medical student), who seduces Woman. Enter Francesca, dangling from a rope and doing dangerous falls, who seduces Man. Enter Viperia, and the Mutant Contortionist in a big bubble partially filled with water. Video screens with cameras behind at Woman's vanity & Man's desk, projecting their faces. Various phone calls, hang ups, arguments between them. In the end Man and Woman come together, Rachel sings from a globe high in the heavens, while a field of flowers (carpet with wire flowers sticking up) is rolled out, and love abounds, with flower petals falling.

Once I bought my plane ticket, I began to believe that this all was happening. I prepared a demo of my Italian band's music & new stuff, and sent it to Paul to bring to Paris for rehearsals with Les Farfadais, the Circus folks. The music went over pretty well, and Paul came back from Paris with notes. I had one day to re-arrange all 15 pieces, which took a day and a night - after which I took a shower and went directly to the airport, to fly to Rome.

21 December, 2005

Of course, our plane's windshield was cracked, so we waited 6 hours to depart SEA-TAC airport, thus missing my Philadelphia-Rome connection. I was sent to British Air in Philadelphia, who put me on standby. Luckily I got the very last seat in the back of the plane (naturally the kind that doesn't tilt back), and flew to London, arriving in Rome after 26 hours of travel.

Saw various friends in Rome, and passed Christmas in Umbria with my friends Gianpaolo & Ale Raichi & her family. Gianpaolo and I did our best to open the video files from the Paris rehearsals - to no avail. Every day it seemed more impossible, the spectre of making a circus spettacolo in front of tens of thousands of people (they predicted 50,000) with one day to put all the elements together. We are both used to rehearsing something for a good month, before putting it on stage. This would be different.

29 December, 2005

Rehearsals went well in Trieste - we laughed a lot, ate very well, and stayed fairly relaxed. We left on a snowy day, driving 10 hours to Napoli. We passed Civitella Ranieri, my castle in Umbria (I lived there for 5 weeks last year), all dank and dark in the wintry night. It was freezing! Near Rome, we encountered a huge traffic jam, as the police were checking that all vehicles had chains on board. We did. Of course, there wasn't an iota of snow on the highway the whole way down.

Though the dashboard clock was wrong, it said 5:55, and that it was 5 degrees outside, the very moment we arrived at the toll booth exit for Napoli. A good sign! But from there on, the incessant chaos doubled.

Around 11pm that night, we ate a fine dinner with lots of local specialties, strong beans, empowering Christmas salad, beautiful grilled vegetables, spaghetti with fresh tomatoes, beautiful olives, half a wood fire roasted chicken per person, and good local wine. Gianpaolo & Ale stayed there at that bed & breakfast, the whole family hung out with us, hilarious people, very warm. Then we spent almost 2 hours driving in a fairly dangerous quarter, trying to find the hotel, a typical Bert & I 'you can't get there from here' situation. We were within blocks of the street - but would find the road ending in stairs, or a blocked pedestrian zone...Finally checked in around 3am, exhausted.

30 December, 2005

The artists arrived around midday (very warm, nice folks; excellent physical artists - from France, Canada, Germany, and Italy), and the hotel staff showed us our rehearsal room. Tiny unheated marble and glass room in a building with no electricity. They sent up a power cable so at least we could have light, and plug in a small heater and the amplifiers. Someone brought up a big roll of carpet & cut 3 long strips so at least the dancers' feet wouldn't ice up. We had a general run-through, with artists randomly coming in and out of the room, total chaos. Paul had arrived from Seattle that morning, so occasionally his eyes would simply close, and we'd nudge him awake. Since there was no rigging, the aerialists couldn't show us their acts. And it seemed no one was interested to follow the storyline that Paul had written, though I'd written lots of specific music cues for them. After rehearsal, I noticed people cutting up funny shaped pieces of that blue carpet, but didn't know what was going on. After the circus folks had left, and we were packing up, a gigantic sheet of glass attached to a glass door shattered spontaneously.  What kind of sign was that?!? Crazy!

31 December, 2005

Piazza del Plebiscito, the biggest piazza in Napoli. Gigantic stage, from which we could see snow-capped Vesuvio, glowering over the bay. The clouds were low, but at least the temperature had risen to somewhere around 50. There'd been a smattering of sun that morning, which made the tropical city deliriously beautiful - 18th century spanish architecture, untouched; palm trees & vegetation all around.

We did a soundcheck that afternoon, but didn't have enough time to run the whole show. The aerial artists checked their rigging, and that was about it. Meanwhile, fireworks were exploding everywhere, all day long. The little firecrackers are called cipollini (little onions); the medium sized are called Tsunami, and the really big ones that made me scream every time are called Ratzinger, named after the new German pope.

We learned that the French artists had forgotten our European Space Agency costumes - what a relief! We were happy all day long, until we discovered that Anna had bought white flannel pyjamas, and crazy blue Martian hats appeared, made out of those carpet fragments from the night before. General revolt! NO! We can not and will not don these togs! Paul the director put on a costume, to encourage us. C'mon! See? It's not so bad. Reluctantly, we donned our costumes, but then laughed uproariously at the effect. The fanciful blue hats were designed to sit low on the brow, obscuring our hair and foreheads completely. We had transformed into a little elfin band.

It started lightly raining around 10:45, as the piazza filled with people and their umbrellas. The electric guitar, accordion, and our parts & show order were still on stage, getting soaked. When it was time to start the show, Gianpaolo was dubious if he would survive if he touched his drenched electric guitar. People get electrocuted on big open air stages, even when it's not raining. Meanwhile, Lukino & Vjeko had left their parts & notes on a little wire stand, and the wind had blown everything off. We took the stage in the dark; they groped around trying to find their sodden parts, while Gianpaolo & I wiped off the guitar and accordion, desperately praying.

Then whooosh! Lights up! We began the first song. All was good, we could hear each other. The dancers entered at the right moment. After the man and woman danced and then fought and then the man was whisked up in the air with a rope (well, he disappeared anyway - we couldn't see what was going on becaus a scrim was blocking the view), the woman sat at her vanity and wept. Meanwhile, the second act was not prepared, so suddenly from the back, they were shouting saying 'keep playing! keep playing!' while Boule (Cupid) inflated his huge plastic bubble, and eventually toddled out on stage. Then the artificial snow started. Very real looking, but made of gigantic ashes, one of which caught in the throat of Anja (Venus), who was unable to sing for the rest of the show, so I took up her parts.

Then God pointed his finger at Napoli, and the sprinkle of rain turned into sheets of water. Luckily, it let up after 5 minutes, so the sea of umbrellas changed back into thousands of people.

Meanwhile, the acoustic guitar immediately went flat after one minute in the pouring rain, while the bass slowly went sharp, thus creating a real circus band sound - the accordion was the only stable voice admist the mess...

At a certain point Rachel was to descend in a ball from the top of the rigging, singing one of our songs, while a field of flowers is unrolled below. The song started, and she seemed stuck up there - the winch for that cable moves very slowly - nor was there a special light on her. Since she was obviously invisible, I decided to mouth the words, so at least something would be going on for the television cameras. The spettacolo was broadcast throughout Europe... Never did I imagine my first Karaoke moment would be in front of a huge crowd in Napoli, while wearing white pyjamas and a martian hat... Finally when Rachel was visible, she was facing the back of the stage, which didn't help in the drama department. Meanwhile, 11 stagehands rolled out the gigantic, heavy astroturf carpet with springy flowers, but it went askew, so they were struggling with it for a good while. Neither had we noticed the 2 gigantic air cannons, which suddenly exploded in front of us, blasting rose petals at all over the stage for the finale.

All I can say is all of us - musicians and artists - did our best to improvise through the parts we didn't understand, and it went as well as it possibly could have.

After it was over, I asked Vjeko the classical guitarist: 'When you entered music conservatory in Trieste, did you ever think you'd find yourself in white pyjamas playing for a French circus, without any rehearsal, in front of thousands of people in Napoli for New Year's Eve?'

'With a carpet on my head?' he said; 'No, I never imagined it.' We laughed uproariously, again.

27 hours later, I landed back at SEA-TAC airport, pondering this most surreal dream.