Beneath, presented by Cirque Berzerk. Performances Thur.-Fri., 8:30 pm; Sat., 7 and 10 pm; Sun., 8 pm; through July 26. Tickets: $25-$80. Los Angeles State Historic Park, 1245 N. Spring St., Los Angeles. Parking in the state park is $10 but limited free parking is nearby. Reservations: 866.55-TICKETS or visit cirqueberzerk.com.
Did you know that downtown LA has a new 1,754-seat theater? And that it’s occupied by a company whose budget has grown from about $80,000 to around $650,000 during this recession-plagued era?
Yes, there’s a catch. That new venue is a big tent, home of the LA-bred circus, Cirque Berzerk. The tent won’t survive the summer in its current location. Furthermore, the state park that houses the tent might soon be closed because of the state’s expected budget cuts.
Still, Cirque Berzerk’s growth is remarkable in a period of economic havoc that has forced many arts organizations to cut back.
The history of circuses in downtown LA offers a tantalizing precedent. Nearly 22 years ago a little-known Canadian troupe, then known as Le Cirque du Soleil, made its U.S. debut at 1st Street and Alameda, near Little Tokyo. That’s about a mile south of Cirque Berzerk’s show, at Los Angeles State Historic Park. That gig worked out rather well for the Soleil outfit. Might Cirque Berzerk hope for similar success?
Both of these cirques use a big top with one ring, no livestock, and a lightly sketched narrative that transports audiences into a temporary alternative universe. But Cirque Berzerk is no import. Most of its performers live relatively close to downtown.
Everett, Bernel and Bourque
In fact, Berzerk is still enough of a mom-and-pop (and pop) enterprise that its three creators and artistic directors work onstage as well as offstage in their current show, Beneath. Suzanne Bernel, billed as the producer, also does a red-toned “silks” act, high above the ground. Kevin Bourque not only composes the music but also, as the emcee, introduces a suicidal young woman character to an afterlife that includes fire, yes, but very little brimstone. Choreographer Neal Everett portrays a shirtless young man who flies through the air with the greatest of ease.
Each performance day, Bourque has the first makeup call in the company. His emcee’s scary visage has to look sufficiently cracked, he says, speaking to me from a director’s chair in front of a mirror, while a make-up artist creates those cracks. We’re in a small tent behind the big top. Soon we’re joined by Bernel and then by David Berrent, the behind-the-scenes executive producer and managing partner who spearheaded the company’s recent expansion.
The group that would become Berzerk started performing publicly at Nevada’s alfresco Burning Man festival in 2004 - but it was identified then as a multimedia-oriented band called Skin (”our training wheels,” Bourque says). Unfortunately, the Burning Man performance was nearly obliterated by a dust storm. Back in LA, the band moved inside to small venues, including a loft in the Brewery not far from the current site. The group also performed as part of the bills at larger music venues including the Avalon, the Henry Fonda, even the Coliseum and the Rose Bowl.
The one-weekend tryout of Beneath at the State Historic Park in 2008 was the first big all-Berzerk show under the Berzerk moniker - which rhymes the now-frequently-Anglicized pronunciation of “cirque” with the name of the Berzerk video game that Bourque loved in the ’80s. The 2008 edition had a narrative that was inspired by the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. A modern remnant of Eurydice survives in the current narrative - in the character of the suicidal young woman - but Orpheus is nowhere to be found.
Bernel and Bourque were married two years ago, inside the tent that later would serve as their not-so-big top during last year’s performances (it has now been demoted to service as the tent for the adjacent beer garden). Their San Diego County wedding ceremony was a turning point in the group’s history - because it was there that Berrent, who had worked with Bourque on TV reality shows, first glimpsed the Berzerk company in action. Several circus acts performed at the ceremony. Bernel and Bourque now refer to their wedding as “the first run of this show.”
Berrent initially wanted to produce a reality series about the group but pitches to TV powers were fruitless. “They said there’s no fighting, no negative drama,” Bernel recalls. “We’re not Jerry Springer material.” So Berrent turned to the notion of raising enough money to turn Berzerk itself into a commercial enterprise. His wife Roberta Berrent used her market research expertise to demonstrate that Berzerk had a potential reach beyond the young alternative crowd - reaching into a more affluent, educated demographic.
The Berzerk "family" in action
The program for this year’s show lists 12 organizational sponsors, mostly corporations. Even so, most of the $500,000 that the company raised came from the time-honored source of “friends and family,” report the Berzerkers. It was enough to pay the performers a regular salary for the first time, along with the hope that this year’s show might also stimulate a limited tour. But no dates are yet booked.
The big question is whether Berzerk can compete in the “cirque” market that’s dominated by the giant non-elephant in the room, Cirque du Soleil. The competition already includes the Florida-based Cirque Productions, which has created a dozen shows since 1993-not to mention the more conventional Ringling Brothers non-”cirque” circuses.
The Berzerk creators acknowledge the Cirque du Soleil pre-eminence - “they’re the gold standard,” Bourque says. But they hope their own brand can create its own niche.
A few Soleil veterans are now in Berzerk, according to Bernel: “We can’t provide the same amenities but they say we are now what [Soleil] was then - a group of artists, not a corporate entity. We have a real family. Everyone here is essential.”
“We want to make money,” adds Berrent, “but we would never want a bigger tent,” with its resulting diminution of intimacy. Soleil has “diminished their brand,” he says. “They’ve become generic.”
Bourque, the composer, offers a musical difference - Soleil relies on world music, he says, while “we want to stick to a mix of old and new, American and European music” - from German cabaret to recent rock.
Bourque
Another big contrast between Beneath and most of the Soleil shows: Berzerk issues parental advisories and encourages adults to show up without children. This isn’t because of predictable concerns - Beneath has no nudity, profanity or graphic violence. But there is a moment of comic relief in which a clown drags a dismembered dummy across the stage - and it’s also possible that impressionable young minds might take the Berzerk vision of life after suicide too literally.
The show’s treatment of suicide is “metaphorical,” Bernel says. “We’re certainly not promoting it.”
“At least not until we get to Oregon,” quips Bourque. (Assisted suicide is legal there).
Leaving aside considerations of how the kids might react, the Berzerkers hope that adults will also enjoy showing up early for picnics in the park and leaving late - past children’s bedtimes. After the show (or the second show only on Saturdays), cast members and audience members mingle in the beer garden, with a live band providing the sounds. “It’s very sexy to see the LA skyline from the park on a warm summer night,” Bernel says. “We don’t want to feel disconnected from the audience. Our fourth wall is very thin.”
The smaller scale and hipster look of Berzerk are accompanied by gestures toward progressive social issues - mostly in ancillary matters instead of the show itself. The company offers a discount to ticket buyers who can demonstrate they arrived on public transportation. According to Bernel, Berzerk created jobs for 12 homeless people (”because we’re aware of where we are”). The company promotes a web link to a campaign to preserve the state parks.
An organization promoting marriage equality will receive a portion of merchandising proceeds - and this sentiment extends into the show, which includes a kiss between Everett’s character and his male partner. “When Kevin and I got married,” Bernel says, “we took a vow that we hoped to live in a country where everybody could do the same.”
So are audiences responding to Berzerk? In the seven performances on opening weekend, June 18-21, total attendance approached 6,000-not quite 50% of capacity and not quite up to the company’s projections. Early the next day, the schedule was altered - the number of performances fell from seven to five so only Saturdays now offer two performances. The double performances initially offered on Fridays and Sundays have been combined into one 8:30 performance on each of those nights. It isn’t realistic to expect Angelenos to attend an earlier show on a Friday, Berrent says, and scheduling two shows on Sundays also was “too ambitious.”
At the same time, Berzerk extended its run three more weeks, now playing through July 26. During the first weekend, walkup sales increased every day, Berrent reports. He’s confident word will spread. Besides advertising in LA Weekly, online and on two radio stations, Berzerk placed two clever videos on YouTube, about purported “accidents” during rehearsals. Their initial release apparently triggered a big jump in sales and they’re likely to continue to attract the video-oriented crowd.
The idea of circuses thriving in hard times shouldn’t be so surprising, says Bernel. The Depression era was a circus heyday, she notes, and German cabaret soared during the dangerous years of the Weimar Republic. After “eight years of Bush, with the economy in collapse,” she says, people want escapes - but perhaps they want escapes that acknowledge the darkness of the era. Cirque Berzerk is ready to answer that call.
The Cirque Berzerk Company
Feature Image of (left) Neal Everett, Suzanne Bernel and Kevin Bourque by Pixie Vision Productions
Article photos courtesy of Glen Lipton Photography
I so enjoyed reading Don Shirley’s interesting piece on Cirque Berzerk. Sounds very intriguing. I wish them well and hope they can secure a Westside venue to perform in ala Cirque de Soleil who was so successful when they started at the Santa Monica Pier where the audience is more affluent and their “word of mouth” can do wonders for this exciting company. Good luck! Harriette Smith