OVO Eggs, Eggs Everywhere! P4
Lots Of Eggs Backstage At A Show About Eggs
Our tour guide for the Cirque du Soleil show OVO, Janie Mallett, is explaining that ovo is Portuguese for egg, and the unique show is basically about one weird bug carrying an egg like a back-pack, wandering into a bug colony, losing the egg, falling in love with a ladybug and then finding the egg again at the end. In between, there’s spider contortionists atop giant eggs, high flying trapeze acts with glowing eggs and at the start of the show, a gigantic egg taking up the entire stage.
Eggs.
I fact, as we begin our tour of the prep area directly behind the main stage of the upcoming show, we realize that it’s close enough to show time that all the props are neatly laid out, moved into proper locations and ready for the performance. There’s a rack of flowers, the lady bug hat, wings, shoes and taking up a large space right near the stage ramp, two giant brown and white spotted eggs.
They appear to be made of some sort of sturdy fiberglass? Little Bean is instantly drawn to them and reaches out to touch one.
“No no, don’t touch,” Janie says, “those are ready for performers.”
In fact, a few hours later, as we watched the show, we were delighted to see the contortionist using the very eggs that we had seen back stage!
There was one final visit to make. The practice session for the musicians wasn’t for a couple hours yet, so we didn’t get to meet any of them. For the show itself, a violinist, accordionist and singer all take part in the show. The rest of the musicians play from three separate “pits” directly behind the stage and under the climbing trampoline wall.
Janie walks Little Bean into the pit with the stand up bass and keyboard. From the pits, the musicians can see all the action on the stage, but the audience can’t see the musicians.
“Wow,” she says. I can see her staring at the keyboards, and this special space. The musicians for a show like this have a different sort of job than musicians who are just playing direct for an audience. Here, they must take their cues from the performers themselves, and be more nimble in their approach, like jazz musicians would.
Before long, there’s a call from the front of the stage and we all hustle out front to watch as a group of tumblers take part in what’s called a “run through” where they practice their routine to taped music one last time before show time.
They flip and cartwheel and climb about and it all feels funny and inspirational. Little Bean will begin her gymnastics classes and piano lessons again in a couple weeks and I can’t help hoping that a behind the scenes adventure like this will give her a little boost.
Soon it’s time to head home and prepare for the actual show later that evening. We’ll conclude out little series tomorrow with some final thoughts and pictures from the performance!
Endnotes: Hi all, we hope you’ve been enjoying out OVO series. We’ll conclude tomorrow with some thoughts about the actual show and a whole bunch of pictures. Thanks for coming along for the ride and please do share!