Chapter 29: Opening Night
"Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…"Wolfgang wondered if this was what it was like to have an out of body experience. He wondered if the rest of the circus felt the same way he did. He was wandering aimlessly through their backstage, a second tent attached to the main tent. The pre-show activity was underway. Along one wall there was a row of tilted mirrors where a few of the performers were putting on their makeup. In the middle of the room, on the large expanse of mats, Kurt and Petra were stretching and occasionally running through a few of the moves from their duets. Everybody was busy and yet Wolfgang felt completely detached.
This was the hardest he had ever worked on anything. And the entire circus had been behind him the whole time; they had as much stake in tonight's outcome as he did. Maybe it was a defense mechanism to keep him from feeling nervous, but as Wolfgang toured the backstage he felt like he was watching a film. The radio headset he wore crackled to life. Though the roustabouts were no longer carrying props around the played an integral part in the show as technicians, responsible for light, sound, and controlling the various pulley rigs for the flying equipment. And he, Wolfgang was somehow supposed to be overseeing it all.
"Five minutes to first call." Wolfgang shouted, repeating it from the radio.
The audience was already trickling in and the real show would not begin for another ten minutes. But performers wandering through the audience and hanging about on the platforms would set the stage early. Wolfgang watched as the random activity ceased. Kurt, Christian, Gretchen, and several of the others who would go on first checked their costumes, making sure they were complete and properly fastened.
Wolfgang walked over to Kurt. He would be the first one out. "Are you ready?" He asked.
Kurt shook his head. "No." He said.
"No?" Wolfgang repeated, so on edge that he was already starting to panic. "Why not?"
Kurt took Wolfgang's hand in one of his and Gretchen's in the other. Gretchen shrugged and took Lars' hand. Soon the entire group was in a circle, all holding hands.
"I just thought we needed some insurance." Kurt said. Everybody looked confused until Kurt began speaking again, his eyes cast toward the floor. "Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever."
Wolfgang smiled. He supposed that if Kurt had asked him if he could say the Lord's Prayer before they went on he would have said no as the circus was strictly a secular affair. However, listening to the way Kurt said it, the Lord's Prayer actually made sense to him for the first time.
"I'm ready now." Kurt said after the group had said amen and released hands. He and Wolfgang walked over to the closed tent flap that separated the backstage were life was safe and predictable from the big tent where anything could happen. The rest of the early performers followed them as shortly they would be following Kurt into the tent.
"I'll see you in about 90 minutes." Kurt said, opened the flap, and was gone.
Wolfgang peeked out and watched Nightcrawler, almost completely obscured by shadow climb the ladder to one of the many static platforms scattered around the tent. There was a brief hush in the audience when he stepped into the light where he sat down and let his tail hang over the edge of the platform. When he didn't do anything besides sit and watch the audience, they quickly grew bored and started talking again. Wolfgang grinned as Kurt shifted positions and started pretending to file his nails with the spade of his tail. A moment later Christian made an entrance from the opposite direction, riding one of his homemade bicycles. Wolfgang backed away from the flap; the show was in good hands.
Once the forest had been established, the creatures slowly melted into the background and made their exits. The accordion player and the narrative female singer stepped into the middle of the ring, which was lit by a dim mottled light, like a forest floor. Kurt used the distraction of their entrance to climb up to the top of the trapeze rigging. As they began playing, he slid down the ropes onto the trapeze where he stood and started swinging.
Wolfgang had written this song in Italian and it had been James' idea to set it to a waltz, which since Kurt was alone, emphasized his loneliness. It took Kurt awhile to get enough momentum to do anything. Meanwhile, James who was with the rest of the band off in the shadows slowly began to join in and pad the accordionist's performance. As the violins took up the melody from the lone accordion, Kurt did his first trick and the audience applauded. The film stopped and Wolfgang was reconnected to the world; the circus had begun.
The next 90 minutes seemed to pass in 90 seconds. Kurt ended his solo by leaping off the trapeze and landing in the outstretched hands of Nils and Sven who bent their knees to absorb the momentum as they caught him. Because of the lack of nets, all dismounts from the higher equipment would be handled this way. The hardest part for Kurt was not speaking to them since they were supposed to just catch him and then fade into the background. His exit was to climb back up one of the platforms and watch the gypsy tribe make their entrance.
The entrance of the tribe was where the show got big. The lights came all the way up and the band kicked in in full as the entire circus streamed in through every entrance and marched past the audience into the ring. Planning this was a logistical nightmare since it required the performers to stage themselves in an area that the audience was using, but with the help of their roustabout ushers, it went smoothly. The group was carrying most of their equipment with them so it acts as a sort of overture of what was to come. Plus it really gave the impression of them moving in since they had to set everything up, or at least store it to be set up later. Once everyone was on stage and the props in their places the music switched and the celebration commenced.
This was the product of Brin's many dance workshops and when Wolfgang scanned the group, he could see her as she had chosen to join the performers in the ring for some of the larger numbers. It was one of the few totally choreographed numbers so while it didn't include any difficult tricks, it was striking to see so many people out in the ring at the same time. Everyone looked like they were having fun, particularly the youngest performers who were being tossed in the air by their various older relatives. The whole party came to an abrupt end when Kurt dropped into the middle of it.
There was a moment of stunned silence and everybody backed away from him except Petra who took a several steps towards him. They were about to touch each other's hands when Lars pulled his sister back. Then, led by Lars, Nightcrawler was chased away. This segued into the first big act, the Wolleck's tightrope act.
The Wollecks had taken a unique approach. Instead of putting the high wire way up above the audience they lowered it to about 12 feet above the ground. The point of their act was not how high they could be, but how many things they could do. To make it even more interesting, there was not one high wire, but three. On the end furthest from the audience the platforms were connected, but on the nearest end there was hardly room for more than on person to stand. This was one of Wolfgang's favorite acts, mainly because it was so outside the box, so different than any other tightrope act he'd ever seen.
The three ropes allowed for all sorts of synchronization and they started out doing cartwheels that led to flips and some simple stacking. After that they moved on to tricks with props such as jumping rope or riding a bike. As each person finished their performance on one wire, a new one would begin on another so that there was constant movement. The finale was Laurentiu's eldest son who carried a chair out on to the center wire. He put it down on the wire and stood balanced upon the seat. The audience applauded. He then put his hands on the back of the chair and pulled himself slowly into a handstand. More applause. Finally he slowly shifted position as he turned and tilted the chair so that it was balanced on the tight rope on a single leg and he was balanced holding a single corner of the chair back. Wolfgang had never seen anything like it ever before. The audience went wild of course.
After pausing the music long enough for applause, James started the band up again still playing the tight rope theme so the Wollecks could climb down from the platforms and distract the audience with additional acrobatics while the first major equipment change occurred. Lars, Sven, and Nils each went to a rope while across from them Kurt leapt from platform to platform releasing the tightropes and attaching a guide cable to them so they could be reeled in without falling on the performers below. Once the tightropes were secured James wound the band down and the Wollecks took their bows before running off stage.
The show went from act to act with the story interwoven between them. Lars tried to tempt Petra; Gretchen tried to tempt Lars. Kurt watched from above. Finally, after Lars threatens her with violence, Petra runs off stage and in to the forest. To set the stage from village to forest the lights changed again and as Petra stood alone in the center of the ring, Christian reappeared on his bicycle and performed his solo.
The stage set included curved ramps that most of the time they were around the perimeter and hardly noticeable. Part of the shift from village to forest was pushing the ramps in close. Christian rode around these and used them as take offs for a variety of inverted aerials that were so graceful they hardly resembled their street park roots. His solo actually happened around Petra who acted frightened at first, but quickly became fascinated. After Christian took his bow there was a moment of comic relief when Christian rode back out with Kurt standing behind him on the foot pegs of his bike as they attempted to cheer her up.
They took the "Full Time Forest Creature" title that Brin had given them very seriously. Despite Kurt's earlier trepidations about working with the bike, they'd worked out some very technical tricks as well as some hilarious gags. After a few passes around Petra they left and a pair of deep green silks was lowered through the trap door above.
For Wolfgang, Petra's solo and subsequent events was the most sublime moment in the show. The flying silks were related to the trapeze in that they hung from the ceiling but that was where the similarity ended. Through a series of slow twists of cloth and turns of her body, Petra climbed to a point high above the audience. From there Petra performed a graceful, angry, yet contemplative aerial dance, using only the knots she tied around herself to keep her from falling to the ground. She arranged the silks around herself so they fell like a great curtain and as the music softened Kurt stepped out from behind them.
James had written a beautiful love theme for the two of them and though a few bars could be heard during their initial meeting, this was the first time the audience would hear it in full. It was the music of falling in love – there were no words only the emotion of longing expressed so beautifully by the young soprano. At first Kurt simply circled around her performance, enraptured by her. Then he grabbed the bottoms of the cloth and slowly twirled them around so that the wrap Petra had started around her hand became entwined around her body so she could spiral down until she and Kurt were inches apart. Then as Kurt let go she twisted herself back up to the top again and looped the cloth around and over her outstretched arms. Kurt grabbed the fabric again and this time pulled her back as far as he could and let go so that she soared above the crowd like an angel, the silk streaming behind her.
What had surprised Wolfgang the most during dress rehearsals was that he had never considered Kurt to be much of an actor. Nightcrawler was just a really extreme version of him. But watching him and Petra together, he was convinced they really had fallen in love. Unfortunately their moment together was cut short by the appearance of the wolves.
The Olsson men, stripped down to their basic gray unitards and covered by fur capes and masks were revealed, each poised on a different pole or platform, one after the other by spotlights. Once the whole pack could be seen, Sven lead them down to the floor where they pulled Petra from the silks and carried Kurt away. Sven carried his cousin up to the top of the trapeze platform, the furs and masks were shed, and Lycka Pa Himmelen performed.
This was Lars' other showcase performance so he was the main flyer. Petra actually didn't do that much since there was no time to really rest after her strenuous solo and she didn't want to get hurt. It worked out though because at the end, after being tossed from catcher to catcher like a rag doll, she struggles and falls. For a moment the audience gasped and then gave a short cheer when Kurt caught her. It was a great device because it really did look like Sven dropped her by accident. With Petra safely in his arms, Kurt ran off stage.
The scene switched again to the village where the women of the village, Annika and her sisters, attempt to use their magic to call out to Petra. Wolfgang had gotten the idea from Margali's stories about her mother. He had never seen an aerial hoops act before this show so he hadn't known what to expect. He'd been pleasantly surprised by the women's performance, but this was really the musical highlight of the show.
Despite having three very talented singers to work with, James still wanted more; he wanted a great chorus of voices to go with the kaleidoscopic patterns the women created on the hoops. He recruited any of the male members of the circus who wanted to sing and then auditioned them. Those who could sing on key became his choir. While the two lead women sang the main melody, the male singer provided a counterpoint. His counter melody was reinforced by a third much simpler melody sung by James surrounded by acrobats all singing into one microphone. It had been a lot for James to juggle trying to sing, direct his singers, and direct the band all at once, but it was worth it. The result filled the tent with sound and as the women dropped off the hoops into their catchers' arms, nearly half the audience was standing.
The aerial hoops also marked the turning point of the show. From then on it was more than half over, the story resolving itself and coming to a close. The women find that their call to Petra worked because Kurt arrives at the village with her still in his arms. She wakes up, but is quickly pulled away from Kurt by Lars. Kurt is then caught and strung up in a net.
It had actually been Kurt's idea, but Wolfgang hated it. He didn't like the idea of stringing any of his friends up in a net, but it especially bothered him to do it to Kurt. Perhaps it was because even though Wolfgang felt that Margali's paranoia was unfounded, there was a tiny part of him that thought maybe she was right. He'd been in New York City and had seen first hand the near weekly anti-mutant demonstrations in Washington Square. More than once he'd witnessed discriminations, even violence against those with obvious mutations. And none of them were even half as obvious as Kurt. It bothered Wolfgang in a way he couldn't quite explain. He knew that it was Kurt's status as a performer that insulated him from most if not all of the ridicule he might have faced. To then place the very thing he was protected from as part of Kurt's performance made Wolfgang nervous.
Nonetheless the short scene was quite touching. It started with a dance between the triangle of Petra, Gretchen, and Lars, but their movements then echoed from above by Kurt who was trying to extricate himself from the net. He manages to open up two sides so that the net hung like a sling and in the midst of his own struggles he reaches down to pull Petra up to safety.
This was followed by the fire knife dance performance by Kiwi, Feuer, and Amiri. Though the aerial hoops were considered the musical highlight, the fire knife dance was the only time James could write the kind of music he did best. James could write in a multitude of genres and styles, but his favorite was electronica. Techno, trance, ambient, jungle, it had so many names and so many possibilities for textures and layers. Since the fire performers could choreograph their routine to the music, and they needed very fast music as well, James was free to compose a magnum techno opus. It gave the band a little break too since he was responsible for most of the performance, triggering pre-recorded sequences and samples off of his master keyboard.
The highlight of the fire act was after Feuer and Amiri took their bows and gave center stage to Kiwi, holding a rope with a small cup attached to each end looped over his shoulders. Amiri and Feuer came forward to light the fuel in each cup. Kiwi then spun around once so that the weight of the cups and their momentum stretched the rope out straight. Then he spun the flaming cups of burning fuel in a dazzling array of patterns.
As much as Kiwi wanted to put "fire meteors", the most difficult of the Maori fire arts, in the show, it scared Wolfgang to death. It was difficult enough to begin with to insure a circus let alone one where a performer came out spinning cups of flaming oil that could splatter the audience if he missed. But Kiwi never missed.
The last act before the finale was the Russian Bars, the culmination of nearly two years of training. With the addition of the Wollecks the act had become much more than what Kurt and Lars had started with Lars' cousins. Besides being an amazing act, it was an important story element as well.
They began with Lars, Ivan, and one of Ivan's older brothers doing synchronized flips. Then the trio took their bows and Lars and Ivan returned to the bars in a sort of competition, which Lars eventually wins. The arrival of Nightcrawler made for a brief humorous interlude as Kurt hopped down on to the bar held by Sven and Nils from above. They tried to shake him off, but he hopped to the next bar where he got a similar treatment, each time landing more like a cat than an acrobat. Finally, after being tossed to the third bar Kurt manages to land on two feet and hold an exaggerated "ta-da!" pose. It was classic Kurt and the audience laughed and clapped until he got tossed onto his head, which got even bigger laughs.
The porters with the large bars stepped aside to allow a pair of porters carrying narrower rounded bars. On these two of the Wolleck women performed several tricks before, still standing on the bars, they were carried off stage. Sven and Nils returned so that Lars could face off with Kurt and for the next few minutes the two of them did their most elaborate tricks. After Lars completes a trick that Nightcrawler can't top, Kurt instead invites Petra up on the bar. Then, with Kurt holding her tightly, she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Obviously strained by the weight of two people on the bar, timing themselves to Kurt, Sven and Nils bent their knees and started the bar bouncing. Kurt used the momentum to turn a single backwards salto with Petra still held in his arms. He landed, letting his tail stabilize them and then the two of them hopped off to even more applause. At that moment, Gretchen comes forward to soothe Lars' hurt feelings, but Lars knocks Kurt to the floor, grabs Petra and runs away. The entire cast follows them so that Kurt is left alone on the ground. When the music starts again, Petra is lowered from the ceiling rig as the finale begins.
It was the finale that they had worked so hard on, the one where Brin had allowed Kurt to carry her up into the ceiling as they danced together. From the side Brin watched; all those problems had been solved. Petra's timing was perfect and she and Kurt spun in a graceful arc as they rose high above the audience and finally disappeared.
It was at this point where they had come up with their most creative and unusual solution for the show's ending. It had started out with technical problems with Kurt's costume. Lysette had delivered a fantastic frock coat in deep brown suede to match Kurt's tunic and pants. It was spattered with glossy black paint that glittered in the light as he moved and it fit him perfectly. The only problem was the nine tiny buttons running down the front.
"How much time to I have?" Kurt had asked with doubt in his voice as he carefully manipulated one of the buttons into its hole.
Wolfgang tried not to appear angry with Lysette though it seemed impossible that she wouldn't have noticed such a thing. She had, after all, been making clothes for Kurt since he was a baby. Had it not occurred to her that Kurt wasn't exactly dexterous when it came to his hands?
"Maybe I could do it." Petra said.
Wolfgang paced around them. "Okay, so you guys go up into the ceiling, Petra puts on her costume, then she puts Kurt's costume on him."
"Not the costume." Kurt interrupted. "Just the buttons. I can dress myself just fine."
"Petra buttons Kurt's coat." Wolfgang corrected, "And then they get lowered back down. How long will that take?"
"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about the lowering down thing." Brin said.
Wolfgang looked panicked. "What's wrong with it?" He asked.
"It's just looks sort of dumb. They go up, and then they come down in different costumes. It's so obvious. Can they make their re-entrance in the new costumes from somewhere else?" Brin asked.
"How?" Wolfgang asked. "They'll be up there." He pointed to the dropped ceiling for emphasis.
Brin shrugged. "Maybe they could climb down unseen." She said.
Wolfgang slapped his hand to his forehead. "Okay, they go up. Petra puts her costume on. She buttons Kurt's coat. Then they climb down without being seen. Then they finally make their entrance. James, are you getting this? How much music are you going to have to write for them to do all that?"
"You might as well make it an intermission." Said James.
"It's impossible Brin." Wolfgang said.
"It's not impossible, Wolfgang." Brin shot back. "Nothing's impossible."
"I know a way to get down quickly." Kurt said so softly that he was nearly drowned out by the arguing pair. For a moment it appeared that neither heard him as Wolfgang and Brin continued to debate the staging. Then Wolfgang went silent and turned around.
"Hey, that's right." He said. "You do."
The discussion ended and the end was reworked so that Kurt teleported himself and Petra to a spot backstage where Lars and Gretchen were waiting. Even though he had suggested it, Kurt wasn't happy about teleporting during a show. Even though he had told Margali and most of his friends, he heeded Feuer's advice and kept it from public knowledge. Lars and Gretchen were responsible for keeping the backstage clear of people and James made a few changes to the volume of the music to cover the sound. Except for the fact that Petra always looked a little woozy during their entrance, the audience was none the wiser.
Wolfgang had intended to watch the show, but he was a lot busier backstage than he had expected to be. The next time he peeked through the tent flaps, the entire cast was on stage taking their bows. He tried not to be disappointed because given the fact that the entire audience was standing, he suspected he would have many more chances to see Les Chansons performed. Smiling, he joined the audience's applause. They had done it. It seemed like only yesterday it was he and Kurt discussing the plot for the show over a beer in his crowded trailer. So much had happened between then and now and yet it seemed like it was seconds ago.
Wolfgang was woken from his reverie by the appearance of Kurt, Sven, and Laurentiu backstage.
"No, I'm not going out." He protested. "This is your show."
"Shut up Wolfgang, this is no time to be modest. It's our show." Kurt said and before Wolfgang could escape, Sven grabbed him and carried him out into the ring. It was a strange time to discover the depth of his stage fright and it was a combination of sheer willpower and Kurt's powerful three fingered grip that kept Wolfgang from retreating to the sanctuary of backstage. From that point on he would hide behind his numerous shields, from a painted canvas to his own checkbook, but this night would never be repeated and so Wolfgang took a bow with everyone else before accepting the biggest bouquet of red roses he had ever seen from Maria.
After that night, during the bad times, Wolfgang only had to remember her smile, her lips gleaming red and lovely under the bright white lights, her black eyes brimming with her love for him and be reminded that there was good in the world after all, that there was no reason to ever fall completely into despair even when there seemed no other option.
