Monday, February 07, 2011
Cirque du Soleil: A Very Different Vision of Teamwork
Fast Company: "The success of Cirque du Soleil, however, is not based on unbridled creativity. The diverse team brings a wealth of creative ideas to the initial development phase, but thereafter it's about discipline and hard work. Taking a production from concept to stage takes years. Kà--showing at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas--took four years and cost $165 million to conceive, cast, design, train, and produce.
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Years ago there was a documentary that was made about the making of Varekai, called "The Fire within". This Documentary shows the inner workings of the teamwork explained in this reading. It also is very intriguing, I highly recommend it.
Reading this article this first thing that hits me is that they get most of their performers from the professional sports world and not from the world of circus. Obviously this makes sense. I'm sure there is a much larger pool to pull from in sports but I do find it interesting that they can so easily get people who are all about doing it the fastest or best, to do things gracefully and with beauty. I also think the comment that Cirque has more reach then Macdonalds, Microsoft, and Disney is pretty impressive, and shows the true power theater can have over the world.
Their audition/recruitment process sounds fascinating and I would love to read more about it. When you're putting on a show that is at the intersection of so many varying disciplines and such a huge scale, it's unsurprising how wide a net they cast in finding new talent. What I found surprising, however, was how aggressive they appear to be with regards to recruiting. It sounds expensive. Clearly, Cirque is a large scale endeavor with large scale funding to match, but it is still amazing that their recruitment process is sustainable, on top of the actual development of a show. "Cookie cutter" or not, that sounds like a very well planned and specific process, despite looking across multiple disciplines and globally.
Recruiting rather than auditions is a unique approach, and seems to leave them with something powerful: theatre artists / athletes capable of innovating something from very little rather than filling and building off a pre-envisioned role. Cirque's rehearsal process is similarly unique: in addition to honing physical skills not associated with other types of show, Cirque casts will spend lots of time brainstorming every possible error in a show and rehearsing recoveries, making performers and production staff more agile. I hadn't realized the extent of Cirque's global reach.
I enjoyed this article because, it was interesting to hear about how Cirque goes about recrueting and training it's performers. I've learned alot about how cirq works behind the scenes from the technician and manager point of view from their employee's and USITT presentations. I knew they were dedicated, but I didn't realize the scope of their dedication to their performers training and perfection. Cirque's approach reminds me of some of the last few full production houses left in the states. Where thoughts, idea's, and themes can be explored and fostered completely in house into an awesome show.
Bouncing off of Cass's point on recruiting. I actually don't find it that surprising how agressive they are. With the long track that have setup for new performers, it makes sense that you would need to keep people "in the pipe" to say, to keep your shows staffed.
Anyone that knows what Cirque du Soleil is knows that these performaners, no matter if they are gymnasts, dancers, or skateboards, are extremly talented. It is nice to heard that they do not look just for the former Olympic champion; potential is also important factor. Even though someone are not a particularly performer they can still have the potential to become something great. Its nice to hear that Cirque considers this above all else.
What's most fascinating to me is how Cirque has to battle a 20% attrition rate. What makes it better is that there are no headlining stars to any of their shows which enables them to replace performers continuously. I'm sure there are a plethora of reasons as to why this happens, but I'm sure the wear and tear the average cirque performer sees means they can only perform for a few years before their body can't take 8 show weeks.
The new and innovative ways of Cirque has always been fascinating to me. The fact that they have catered their requirement process to their needs and have truly refined how they do shows is something we can all use as a model. The dedication to not only finding the talent but potential talent shows a level of sophistication to me in the way they can achieve their goals and concepts.
Cirque du Soleil is really the best example for collaboration and corporation. Never before have I seen so many people that are diverse in talent and abilities working together to create an amazing show. Not only do they have a system on stage but backstage too, constantly working together so that each act is a success. It's also interesting how a lot of their performers aren't from the circus world but from the athletic world as well. It's so fascinating how they find their talent and then rehearse them and integrate them into the show. I wish I could read more about the process that goes into the show, it is so fascinating.
While there is a lot of interesting information in this article I want to focus on one specific portion:
"In a poll of brands with the most global impact, Cirque ranked twenty-second--ahead of McDonald's, Microsoft, and Disney."
At first this makes us thing there is a lot more publicity of cirque than we would expect. This portion seemed a little odd to me so I decided to investigate it. When searching with these keywords all that turned up was almost the exact same quote in similar news articles about cirque and no one referenced which survey they were getting these results from so most likely one person included it in some press release and now several bloggers use it as a neat little tidbit of information for their posts.
Upon further search I came accross the study that was being referenced, a study conducted by brandchannel.com. Here are the first 22 of the cited poll:
1 Apple
2 Google
3 IKEA
4 Starbucks
5 Al Jazeera
6 Mini
7 Coca-Cola
8 Virgin
9 eBay
10 Nokia
11 Sony
12 H&M (Hennes & Mauritz)
13 BMW
14 Puma
15 Zara
16 Samsung
17 Nike
18 Amazon.com
19 Olympics
20 Yahoo!
21 adidas
22 Cirque Du Soleil
While it seems shocking that Cirque is ahead of Microsoft, Disney and Microsoft look at the equally famous brands ahead of cirque. I am not saying that cirque doesn't deserve this recognition jus that the results of this survey are quoted in such to make it seem like more of an accomplishment than I feel it is.
The survey conducted was of brandchannel.com users which is a very specific sample group and by no means representative of the entire global population. These are users that are interested in branding and probably like the creative branding of cirque and are probably bored of giants like McDonald's. 60% of those surveyed were middle-aged men, again not representative of the global population.
Also in all the other years the survey was conducted at least 2 of the 3 brands mentioned behind cirque were generally well ahead of cirque if not all 3. Also 2004 was a big year for cirque between shows, films, and legal issues which could effect its popularity in this time.
Again, I am not saying cirque is not worthy of this achievement but rather commenting on how one oddly quoted result of a very obscure dated survey can be echoed way too much and many people believe it without much second thought. I am not calling this author out on this just the fact that we need to take every one-liner statistic like this with a grain of salt.
I wonder if the reason why Cirque is so widely recognized is that they are the only game in town. I'm sure nationally (and maybe globally) everyone acknowledges the WWE as the force in professional wrestling. They are the biggest because other companies can't compete. So I'm skeptical of the big guy in a market, especially if he is the only one. Though I don't doubt the artistic side of collaboration, the celebrated recruitment techniques cirque practices may be shedding light on something darker. How well does cirque treat their actors and how great of a job is to land a role in a cirque show if you are working for a huge entermainment machine, designed to replace you when and if needed. Imagine conversations at cirque headquarters: "You are now out of a job. Sorry but we just found a midget in Mongolia who can juggle 12 asian boys, you can only do 9."
"What's that? You've been in our water show for how long? Well we just found a former gold medalist."
That gold medalist may be soon be the next on the chopping block. I'm speculating but what does it mean to have global recruiting power and be the biggest game in town? Labor and big business (albeit entertainment) might not coexist as well as we think.
Cirque du Soleil is an extremely fascinating style of theatre. They're accomplishments, the magic, and only what can be described as creative insanity(this is a good thing), is spectacular and unmatched. Something surprising to me is how much is spent on their performances. As a result of the media frenzy around Spiderman, I assumed that was the most expensive staged theatrical event (next to things like the Super Bowl), boy was I wrong. I would love to get into the show's of Cirque's designers and live a day in their life.
I think the most interesting part of this article is the recruitment process. I suppose I just assumed everyone flocked to Cirque, I didn't realize that they had such an active outward looking scouting system, akin to professional sports.
I think going hand in hand with this is the 20% attrition rate. I had no idea that the organization lost 1 in 5 annually. It makes me curious as to how they handle replacement actors. What, do they have to do a put-in a week?
I'm truly fascinated by the recruitment process in comparison to the most common auditioning experiences I'm used to hearing about. I'm sure this also helps them manage their time considering how lengthy the auditioning process would be, both in concern of talent and ability but also with people who just want their 15 minutes. What interested me particularly about it was that they pull past Olympic artists. I'd always been curious about what happens to a person post-Olympics and it's nice to hear that their years of training is put to creative use.
Reading about how this company was built from the ground up was truly the most inspirational aspect of this article for me. Yes, there was much more that went into it than the author stated in a sentence, but it still provided a sense of "what if" for me. I think that Cirque's success is unbelievable and it's a great path for many designers who are interested in entertainment and do not want to pursue theatre in particular.
It is interesting to read this article with someone who knows the ins and outs of the business of Cirque. Reading the numbers that are listed in this article-- 25 languages, 4000 employees, a friend of mine who works at Cirque scoffed at those numbers as being too small! This company has definitely found a formula that works for them and that has had great success for the last 20 some odd years. I am fascinated by the idea of talent scouts all over the world who keep an eye on emerging talent for Cirque. The fact that they craft much of their shows around the talent that they can find is rather unique. I can't imagine having to re-train skilled athletes to become attuned to their creative sides in order to put these shows together. Athletes as artists...very interesting indeed.
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