Towards the end of October Teatro ZinZanni hosted concierge and other hospitality industry professionals for the Where Magazine Masquerade Party! Masked guests enjoyed cocktails, browsed the Teatro ZinZanni boutique and mixed and mingled with the stars of Beaumount & Caswell, Christine Deaver and Kevin Kent! Check out these fun pictures from the event!
A few weeks ago, Teatro ZinZanni was overrun with ghouls and goblins of all shapes and sizes. Here is a selection of photos from our spooky evening at Teatro ZinZombie!
Mr. and Mrs. Lucifer
A clumsy knife thrower and his assistant.
Mulder and Scully helped keep an eye on things around the tent.
The grand prize winners of the costume contest: Sherrif McCheese and the Hamburglar!
The Queen of Hearts and Cheshire Cat kept Alice company before the show.
Another group of crazy characters getting ready for the show.
Kevin and Christine show off 2 of their victims for the evening!
Imagine our surprise when the famous show business couple Vivian Beaumount and Clifton Caswell dropped by the KTZZ studio last week for a spot of coffee and conversation! While they are not currently married, they are excellent friends, bosom buddies, really, and performing together in Beaumount & Caswell at Teatro ZinZanni now through January 17, 2010.
In this 20 minute podcast we learn how this glamorous couple first met, where they were first married, (and where they were married for the fourth time, giving Liz and Dick a real run for their money), and how coffee and kisses are the best way to start each day.
We also learn that Vivian is missing her middle name!
Cliff and Vivie invite you to submit your best (publishable) suggestions for Vivian (fill in the blank) Beaumount – please enter your suggestion here by December 31st and we’ll award the winner with a pair of tickets to the closing night, Sunday, January 17th performance of Beaumount & Caswell, Together Forever… Again! Who knows, Viv and Cliff may even sit down at your table!
Recently Teatro ZinZanni’s aerialists Andrew Adams and Erika Gilfether-Adams sat down with Jenny Watkins, marketing associate, to talk about their career in the circus, their new little bundle of joy, Seamus, and their love of candy bars.
Jenny Watkins (JW): How did both of you get started in the circus arts, and what inspired you to pursue this career?
Erika (E): We’d like to note that we’re eating candy bars during this interview, Kit-Kats and, Butterfingers to be exact. I have an ear for candy wrappers.
Andrew (A): Well, I grew up in Rochester, New York, and I started juggling when I was twelve. A friend taught me to juggle three balls, and that’s what got this whole circus thing started. I got really into it, so my parents found this one-week circus camp in Vermont for me to go to the summer after 7th grade called Circus Smirkus. The camp also had this touring group that you could audition for, so the next summer, I auditioned for the touring group and I ended up doing that for the next seven summers. The touring group trained for two or three weeks in Greensboro, Vermont, a small town north of Montpelier, and we traveled around the New England states for six weeks every summer. The coaches were from the Moscow Circus School, so it was a fortunate opportunity to be involved with them, and receive all that training. This is where I started learning aerial acrobatics like the straps and the Chinese Pole. I conditioned and practiced by myself all throughout high school and college and then would get some training from the Russians during the summer. I ended up going to Bates College in Maine where I was a Theatre major, and then when I graduated I moved to Chicago where some of the clown coaches from Circus Smirkus were putting together a company called the Midnight Circus.
E: Unlike Andrew, I grew up in Chicago and I was a dancer from a really young age. I did a lot of ballet and went to the Performing Arts High School in Chicago, so from about the age of 12 on, I was dancing most of the day all of the time. Then I went to NYU and lived in New York for five years where I was a Dance major. After school I danced for some companies in New York, but eventually I moved back to Chicago to dance for a modern company where we ended up having summers off. One of the lighting technicians that worked for the Chicago company also did tech work for this place called the Midnight Circus, so he asked what I was doing over the summer and suggested I audition for it. I’d never done any sort of circus stuff at all, but he said I should try out anyway and that they’d teach me everything I needed to know. So I decided to try out, but the day of the audition it was pouring down rain so hard I almost didn’t go. I had to take two buses and it was so wet outside… and I remember thinking, if I only had to take one bus this wouldn’t be such a hassle. Yet I went and auditioned. I think because it was really raining not a lot of people showed up, which was good for me. But they were looking for someone to do the Spanish Web, which I’d never done. I couldn’t climb at all because I had no upper body strength, but once they put me up there, I just kind of got it. A few days later they called me and said they wanted me to come back! They also said there was this guy coming who did a solo straps act and that they wanted us to work together, and that was Andrew.
A: I was doing a solo straps act at the time, but they said they had this dancer girl that they wanted to pair me up with to see if we could do a duo straps act. The solo act I was doing at the time didn’t have very good transition, and they thought the act would be stronger with two of us. And luckily, it just worked out…
E: I had no idea what a straps act even was, so I learned a lot. After we developed the act, we did the show in the summer and into the fall of 1999, but then I went back to the dance company in the fall. I did one more season with the dance company in Chicago, but Andrew and I were still training at night, so when the dance company folded, it was just this natural transition that him and I continue. It was either start auditioning for other dance companies, or keep going with Andrew and this act, so that’s what we did. We ended up working for the company that paired us together for six years, and then we freelanced for a while.
A: Agencies will place you at these corporate and private events to entertain and animate at receptions and parties. We would stroll around and animate and do ground balance work, but we weren’t on the straps.
E: It paid the bills, but artistically it kind of sucked the life out of us. So at the same time, we were also working with a lot of modern dance companies. It was great working with choreographers who had nothing to do with circus arts because they brought a different angle to our act that no one else had. It was great having a fresh perspective, and I believe that’s when our act really made a jump to the next level.
JW: How did you hear about Teatro ZinZanni and decide to audition?
E: We first auditioned in Portland because our agency set us up with a woman down there who reviews audition tapes for Teatro ZinZanni’s Artistic Director. I guess they liked what they saw… we also auditioned several times in Seattle before we were hired. That was in 2005, and we started that very summer in San Francisco with Hearts on Fire. Beaumount & Caswell is our sixth show with Teatro ZinZanni.
TZ Costume Production Manager Giuseppe Grazioli discusses details with Erika and Andrew about their new costumes during a rehearsal.
JW: What’s been your favorite Teatro ZinZanni character?
A: I love being the water boy. I love being awkward and nerdy. It’s exactly how I feel in real life, so it’s a perfect part for me.
E: I’ve been all over the board. I’ve been a cocktail girl, a cat, an Egyptian servant, a little beat poet. I don’t know, I think each show has certain things that become special to you, so it’s more of a combination for me. For this current show, my favorite part is the story. I really enjoy the relationship between the characters.
JW: Andrew, you have a theatre background, but you, Erika, are mainly trained in dance, so what’s it like for you to go out into the audience and animate?
E: At first I was terrified of animation, and still each show takes a while to get into the character and feel comfortable. It’s great having the costumes though, because you can take the costume and work with it, and become that character… so it becomes a little less scary, kind of like you have a mask on. In this show I’m a cocktail server, an ACTUAL cocktail server. At the beginning of the show I’ll go to the bar and take drinks to people’s tables, it makes it easier to talk to them and get into character, and it’s fun because they don’t know that you’re playing a part! They just think I work there. The last show I did in San Francisco, we just finished this big dance number before the salad came out, and I finished with this flamboyant pose and was up on a ladder in the huge costume, and as I was coming down this woman goes “excuse me, can we get some more bread?”… Just another thing about this place that I love.
JW: You just had a baby in July. What was it like to train and get back into shape for the October 15th opening of this show?
E: Seamus came at the perfect time, literally. We did two contracts in San Francisco last year, back to back. I was pregnant the last three months of our contract there. So all through the first trimester I could do our act as normal, but we were scheduled to start here in Seattle in October, so for six months I couldn’t train. Seamus was due July 21, and he was born July 22, so from that date we had exactly two and a half months to get back in shape. So a couple weeks after he was born, we got back in the straps and started training. It was rough…
A: We were expecting tears everyday.
E: We weren’t even sure we could do it, not just that we wouldn’t be ready in time. When we started training again, I couldn’t remember the most basic parts of the routine and everything felt really far away for me. It was eight months since we’d physically run through the whole act. We would talk through it, and not be able to remember what came next, but once we actually got up there, it’s like our bodies remembered and it just started coming back. I don’t feel the same… I feel just strong enough, normally before the baby I felt like I had extra strength and I could do the act no problem, now I feel like I have just enough strength, but that’ll come back. I’m getting stronger each day. Doing the act was easy, but it’s more challenging now because I don’t have that reserve. So much of what we do requires lower abdominal strength, and since I was pregnant, all of that kind of went away. When we first started back, my arms, shoulders, back and legs all felt the same, like I could make those strong again, but my abdomen area, there was nothing, so it was like starting from scratch.
A: We lined up two gigs before Beaumount & Caswell just so we could have a few practice runs before our contract started. I was paranoid about being ready. We were training a few hours a day six days a week. We’d be up in the straps for a few hours a day and then additionally take a lot of walks and runs and try to build up the cardio. We were really trying to be active all day, and that served us well because we felt ready then. Eight weeks after Seamus was born was when we had our first gig and performed for an audience.
Seamus and Erika snuggling backstage. Photo: Michael Doucett
Seamus charms Kevin Kent as daddy Andrew looks on.
JW: How is it being on the road with him since you’re based in Chicago?
E: Well, my mom was here in Seattle for two weeks to help out during the changeover, but he’s really just a sweet, mellow, easygoing baby. We take him everywhere. Just last night we took him with us to see Joey Arias at The Triple Door! We feel really lucky. We’re enjoying the mellow days while they last!
A: We also have a girl that we met at SANCA come to the tent and watch him at night during the show. It’s nice to have him there because Erika can feed him during breaks. We also bring him out into the tent sometimes to be silly.
E: He has a baby outfit that says “Food Critic,” so one night we took him out into the audience and told everyone if they had any complaints about the food, that they should talk to Seamus!
JW: What are your plans after “Beaumount & Caswell” closes in January?
A: We’re going to San Francisco after this show wraps. We’ll drive down there and leave our car, fly back to Chicago to change our clothes, and get all new clothes for Seamus since he’ll be one size up by then. We’ll be in San Francisco until May, and after that we’ll just see where the road takes us!
As the twilight gathered on Sunday evening, November 1, the exterior of Teatro ZinZanni was aglow in the spangled, twinkling glitter ball light while the sounds of the Hans Teuber combo filled the air. Patrons stepped off the red carpet and inside to our lavishly appointed lobby/boutique to be greeted with warmth, music and laughter and a glass of wine care of our generous wine sponsor, Vinum Wine Importing and Distributing.
Our first ever ZinZanniversary benefit gala celebration was well underway. Over 250 of our closest friends, board members, staffers and performers were on hand to help us raise money for the ZinZanni Institute for Circus Arts. Throughout the night different opportunities were presented as ways to support our education program. We held a silent auction in the lobby and during the entree our emcee extraordinaire, El Vez conducted a raise-the-paddle moment – but not before he did a little fun-raising of his own (those of you who were there know exactly what we mean by that!).
Original cast members Ann Wilson and Dolorèze Léonard joined the cast of Beaumount & Caswell (co-starring original cast member Kevin Kent and comedienne Christine Deaver as well as the awesome Francine Reed) to give the evening an extra special sizzle. Watching Ann Wilson sing in the tent was simply amazing – the girl has some pipes!
All told we raised $75,000 – not bad for our first ever fund raiser event. Heartfelt thanks to everyone who joined us that evening. Thanks too to photographers Michael Doucett, Jonathan Manning and Abara Ijiomafor the lovely photographs.
Listen to the ZinZanni “gifted” radio spot:
We really had a blast making this radio commercial for Teatro ZinZanni Gift Cards. The spot airs throughout November on Star 101.5, KING FM and KVI AM. As we move into the Holiday season soon, we wanted to make sure people remember what a great experience the gift of Teatro ZinZanni can be. So we thought radio would give us a little extra visibility boost – well, in this case, an audio boost.
At our brainstorming session, our good friend writer Palmer Pettersen wondered out loud if we could recreate the whole show in 60 seconds. That lead to digging out some music that Maestro Norman Durkee wrote when we first created Teatro ZinZanni in 1998. The music we selected is a piece entitled “Clown Inspection.” The character of Dr. Vivian Beaumount is inspired by a comedy sketch by Christine Deaver called “Voluptuous Panic,” where Christine plays a German spy – in this case she’s sort of an Austrian female Freudian analyst clown announcer type. Durkee’s music was already liberally punctuated with penny whistles and whoopee cushion sounds, but that didn’t stop Palmer and sound designer/audio engineer Paul Goldberg from going to town with the sound effects.
As the good doctor says, Teatro ZinZanni’s gifted gift cards are verrry available. Good anytime of year for tickets, beverages and/or shopping in our fabulous boutique, Gift Cards are available in any amount.
Special thanks to the fabulous Christine Deaver, Palmer Petersen, Maestro Norman Durkee, Paul Goldberg of Pure Audio, Jason Jones at Fisher Radio, and to the littlest diva, Rachel DeShon for suggesting the idea in the first place!
Ian Jamison, Teatro ZinZanni's Technical Director since 1998.
Teatro ZinZanni’s Technical Director Ian Jamison may be one of the oldest Teatro ZinZanni employees – well, not in age and certainly not in spirit, but in actual length of time working on this project. As Technical Director, Ian’s job is to solve problems for artists and to assure their safety all the while racing the clock towards curtain. Here, Ian shares some of his first memories of early mud to magic:
“My first TZ memories are of surveying this very site in the early Fall of 1998 when it was geese migration time. The geese were still hanging out in the “pond” which covered most of this block though …we had to scare them off so not to be attacked! Steve Quinn (Site Construction Manager) and I were measuring the depth of the pond with a stick, laughing pretty hard about starting our new jobs wading in a goose pond.
“I have many fond but muddy memories of loading in the site, getting tractors stuck …repeatedly! Dolo (Doloreze Leonard) was the first performer I met and she was not too pleased to walk in just after the diesel heater failed and had smoked out the entire tent. The place was cold and stunk of diesel smoke. It’s funny now, but in the moment… well, we actually we thought it was pretty hilarious then as well!
“There was a very good atmosphere in the creation of a new project, learning about the performers, the crew, the neighborhood, the site, the equipment and the mud! I was new to the Circus world and it was real challenge to understand Voronin’s lighting needs, all the performers’ rigging needs, and the timing with the kitchen service. I remember walking into the site one day after the painters had done the interior painting – they had painted everything as it lay in its place including ladders, building materials, tools, doors, the floor … paint was everywhere and we were all tracking it everywhere… at total nightmare for Steve Quinn….and again at 7:00 a.m. it was all pretty hilarious. And we laughed about that one for months!”
Reviews of Teatro ZinZanni’s current show, Beaumount & Caswell, are starting to roll in. Here’s a rave review by food critic Jacqueline Pruner who blogs for Heed the Hedonist.com. While we’re not known as a destination restaurant ( first and foremost people associate Teatro ZinZanni with the show), it’s great to have such high marks on our cuisine. Our menu is designed by celebrated Northwest chef Tom Douglas and is delivered nightly by Chef David VanGelder. Over time we’ve developed a great wine list, with wine flights curated by Christene Larsen.
Sources (Group Sales Goddess Kat Uzzelle’s mom who was at the concert) tell us that at Lyle Lovett’s concert last night at the Saenger Theatre in Mobile, Alabama, Lyle took a break between numbers to chat with the audience and said that several people have asked him where is Francine? Teatro ZinZanni’s current chanteuse Francine Reed is a regular back-up singer with Lyle’s Large Band.
Well, he said, she is in Seattle in Teatro ZinZanni until the end of January and I’m sure she’ll be back with us. And if you think her costumes for our show are great, you should see what she’s wearing in Teatro ZinZanni.
Francine Reed in "Beaumount & Caswell" playing through January 17, 2010.
Kaycee Bernier has been our effervescent bar manager since we first popped up the spiegeltent and created Teatro ZinZanni back in 1998. Here Kaycee remembers the early days …
“The first wine room we ever had was a closet, the size of a normal coat closet with ten different wines, four different beers and no hard alcohol. The overstock we needed, as we were selling out every few days, was stored in a shed that was built right up against the lobby wall, where the tiny little bar was located in our very narrow lobby (which was really a trailer).
“In order to get wine and beer bottles into the bar without walking outside and through the lobby, we had a dog-door sized hole put in the wall. Someone would go outside in the rain, get what we needed and then pulled it through the hatch. There were a few times where I had to climb in and out of that little hole when I was working all by myself…
“That’s when I realize how long ago all that was. To do that today, they would have to put me in the show as a contortion act!!! 
“
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