David Shiner, the first American writer and creator of a Cirque du Soleil show, has roots in the Washington area where he attended junior high school — but his real education was the world.
The theatrical bug bit him hard in the sixth grade, playing the role of Bob Cratchit in “A Christmas Carol.” Much later, in 1981, he took off for Paris to be a street mime — an honorable profession on the Continent, where he ended up spending most of his adult years. In time, he appeared with the German Circus Roncalli and the Swiss National Circus, known as Circus Knie.
“I was completely self-taught,” he says by telephone from Montreal, where he is at work on his second production for the famed Canadian-based company due in 2010.
“I mean clown in the traditional ways, which are highly respected in Europe. In the United States, say clown and you think Ringling with fright wigs and garish costumes.” Nor did he adopt a special clown name. “That’s silly. My style was improvisational, bringing the audience into the scene.” His idols, however, always were American slapstick comedians such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.
The techniques he developed were good enough to propel him into the profession permanently except for a 10-year period spent building houses and working with wood. At one point, he says, “I never dreamed I would be inventing a million-dollar show.”
His career path since then has been full of such accomplishments as winning a role as a clown in the Hollywood film “Lorenzo’s Oil” in 1992; a Tony Live Theatrical Presentation award in 1999 for “Fool Man,” a wordless two-man show created with Bill Irwin; and the role of Cat in the Hat in the Broadway stage musical “Seussical.” In 1990, he was featured in Cirque du Soleil’s production “Nouvelle Experience” and toured at length as a performer with that show.
“Cirque asked me in the early days, in 1985, to join them, but I was quite busy and on to something else. I had been creating and designing my own acts since 1990,” he notes. “Guy Laliberte [Cirque’s founder and CEO] always had talked about doing a show for him.”
That time finally arrived with “Kooza,” in 2007. Its Washington premiere is Thursday at the Plateau at National Harbor, where it runs through Dec. 14, one of Cirque’s 15 shows running worldwide. The name comes from the Sanskrit word “koza,” which means “a box containing beautiful things” - “I had traveled to India a lot,” Mr. Shiner explains.
“It’s fun to be the first American,” he says. “I think I brought some American influence to it — definitely the slapstick clowns — and also some European influence, although there is a very modern set design. It is in essence a one-ring circus, basically about a king and two fools. The only thing I wanted to do is make people happy.”
When he isn’t working or traveling, his home base is outside Munich, where he lives with his German-born wife of 26 years, an equestrienne. He won’t be present for the show’s local debut but expects to drop in another time, especially because his parents and siblings live in the area. His father is a retired government computer analyst.
“’Kooza’ draws on my experience in the circus and in my life and my wanting to make something simple, in the circus tradition,” he says. “It focuses on the artists and not high techniques. In a big-top show you can’t write a story that is too complicated, because when the acts are the best in the world nobody cares about the story. Here, I focus on the connection between the artist and the audience. There is no fourth wall. What you see is what you get. It is very raw and unpretentious.
“The circus will always remain circus no matter what you do with it,” he adds. “At the end of the day, it is either acrobat or clown.”
Mr. Shiner’s throwaway statement covers up more insightful remarks he has made elsewhere about the nature of his work.
“At the core of the clown’s character are the ultimate questions of life: Why am I here? Where do I fit in?” he reveals on the Cirque du Soleil’s Web site. “Many people who go into clowning are trying to heal the world, but in fact they’re just trying to heal themselves. By taking our deepest human weaknesses and making them funny, the clown confronts us with tragedy and suffering but also with the fragile beauty of the world. … The clown is also an anarchist. The clown gets to break the rules.”
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