With Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo opening tomorrow, 9 January, at the Royal Albert Hall, its technical director Gerard Edwards-Webb discusses how and why his team completely redesigned the layout of the venue for the show.
Since Queen Victoria opened the Royal Albert Hall in 1871 you could be forgiven for thinking the venue has seen it all. It has hosted everything from Jimi Hendrix to The Proms, Sumu wrestling to an indoor marathon, but it has never been transformed in the way that Cirque du Soleil has for its production Corteo.
The show will run at the hall from 9 January through to 2 March, and during that time visitors would be forgiven for not recognising the interior of the beautiful old building.
The Cirque du Soleil team has completely redesigned the layout of the hall and split it into two halves, with each half of the audience facing the other and the stage in the middle. As a result, attendees have a performer’s eye view of the audience. Many of the boxes and stalls have been moved to create this new look. It is also the heaviest show that Cirque du Soleil has bought to the Royal Albert Hall since it began working there nearly three decades ago, with 67 tonnes hanging from the grid.
Overseeing the complex staging and production process is Cirque du Soleil technical director Gerard Edwards-Webb. He talks Access All Areas through what is involved.
Q. Cirque has been staging shows at the Royal Albert Hall since 1996. How does that long lasting relationship benefit you from a production perspective?
Over the years at the Royal Albert Hall we’ve added to the building collaboratively, many, many different anchor points and structures that are required to secure the shows, because an acrobatic performance puts a lot more dynamic load on a building than even something like moving set pieces. Acrobats are typically smaller and lighter than the average human in the air but when they get moving, they can generate a lot of dynamic forces.
Q. To prepare for the arrival of Corteo you have transformed the Royal Albert Hall to accommodate it. What has that involved?
This is a traverse show, and as far as we’re aware, it’s the first time anyone has put a full traverse show in the Royal Albert Hall because it would be a crazy thing to do, right? It means you’re basically going to kill a whole bunch of seats. The project has involved us changing the entire building. Historically, we would put in what we call the Cirque floor, or the lower exhibition floor, where we extend the venue’s stage out over the arena, but for this show we put in the higher exhibition floor, and that only leaves the top four rows of the stalls exposed. We have widened the auditorium, or at least the show deck, to make it considerably longer, and then we put our set on top of that and extended it out level using temporary structures. It means that at the north end of the building the primary seats there are in a backstage area. Getting the agreement of the Royal Albert Hall seat owners has been a major facet to this whole project, because there was obviously a requirement to move a lot of the seat owners from their usual positions. They’ve been very generous in allowing us to do this. We’re very, very excited about this whole project, it is a real first for the venue.
Q. What impact will that transformation have on the venue’s audience capacity for the show series?
The venue at full capacity is typically around 5,200, and when we bring in a Cirque show that usually goes down to just over 4,000. For this show, we’re going to have 3,099 seats. Normally, with the big top shows, which are 270-degree thrust shows with a centralised set, we would not have the choir seats on sale. With this show being long and narrow, we’re able to put the choir seats on sale as well as the main seating.
Q. Aside from the new look, obviously weight is an issue as well. I’m told it is the equivalent to hanging 11 elephants from the ceiling. Has it meant that you’ve had to make any major adaptations to the grid system?
The big top shows are technically more challenging in that regard. As I mentioned, over the years we’ve added anchors permanently to the building specifically for Cirque du Soleil. Because it is a traverse show, and there’s three track and trolley systems above the show, we’re using anchors that we call chicken feet. There is a three-way bridle to align it and that goes out to stabilise the grid to prevent it from shunting. There are fewer anchors required for this show, because it is designed to go into buildings, than a big top show. Most of the forces inside the engineering of the show resolve themselves inside the structure but we’ll be hanging a huge spreader grid.
Q. Is the idea of this show format to create a more intimate atmosphere for the audience?
It’s going to be like having two proscenium theatres back-to-back. Both audience sides can see the reactions of the opposing audience. We’re particularly looking forward to this one, because, of course, the audience will be considerably closer to each other. In a typical arena, the lower bowl and the upper bowl get further and further away. But here, with the box fronts and then the circle, the audience members are going to be considerably closer to each other and the performers. We’re very much looking forward to seeing how that’s going to drive the atmosphere in the room.
Q. Is there any concern that because the Royal Albert Hall is such a beautiful space, not least to watch a Cirque du Soleil show, that there might be a negative reaction to it being transformed?
I don’t think we’re going to see a negative reaction at all. I think people are going to be fascinated by what we’ve done. We’re aware that you won’t get the same overall grandeur of the auditorium that the audiences are typically used to when walking into the circle or the stalls or one of the boxes. It was carefully considered, and we really believe this show is going to be quite spectacular.
{ SOURCE: Access All Areas }
