ARTicles vol. 7 i.2b: Circus Dreams

Gideon Lester: Although Aurélia’s Oratorio is your first performance at the A.R.T., it’s not the first time you’ve worked at the theatre.

Aurélia Thierrée: When I was a child, my parents, Victoria Chaplin Thierrée and Jean Baptiste Thierrée, performed at the A.R.T. three times with their circuses, the Cirque Imaginaire and the Cirque Invisible. I worked backstage on one of them, and have such fond memories of my times in Cambridge. It was a really important place for my parents, and I can’t wait to perform at the A.R.T. myself.

GL: So your childhood was spent on the road?

AT: Yes. I first performed when I was three years old, though “performed” is perhaps too strong a word. I’d begged my parents to let me on stage, so they put me in a box and I just ran out. Later my brother James and I started performing more regularly.

GL: I remember seeing the Cirque Imaginaire performing in London when I was a child. At one point, you, James, and your parents were a family of walking suitcases.

AT: Yes. My mother created acts and magic tricks for us – James and I were two dueling insects, or my mother would get in a cage and disappear and we’d appear instead. They were not difficult things, but they taught us discipline because we had to be reliable every night. It was fun, and it was also a way to keep the family together at night.

GL: How long were you with the Cirque Imaginaire?

AT: We started with a book of medieval drawings that show the world upside down and everything inverted: a man carrying a horse; a woman going to war, which in those days was unthinkable; a master carrying a servant. When I was a teenager everything changed. My hormones kicked in, and I wanted to live an absolutely opposite life. I suddenly thought that living in a house and going to school were so adventurous and unknown, so I stopped touring for a while when I was fourteen.

GL: Your performance in Aurélia’s Oratorio requires tremendous physical skill. Did you go to circus school?

AT: No, though when we first started discussing the show, my mother asked that I take trapeze lessons to stay in shape. It may look virtuosic, but it��s really about timing and coordination. I’m not an acrobat, a trapeze artist, or a dancer, but I use whatever skills I have to serve the physical language that my mother has created for me.

GL: How long did it take you and your mother to develop Aurélia’s Oratorio?

AT: It’s difficult to say, because we play around with ideas whenever we meet as a family. It’s our way of communicating and staying together. The show started little by little; my mother and I were touring in separate shows, and whenever we had some time off we’d work on it together. At one point we were given a residency for two weeks when we developed about fifteen minutes of material, then later we rehearsed for about two months. But the basic idea has been on our minds for a long time. Even now, after five years of performing it, the show keeps mutating. We reshape it, adapt it to each theatre. It’s never quite completed.

GL: What was your initial idea for the show?

AT: We started with a book of medieval drawings that show the world upside down and everything inverted: a man carrying a horse; a woman going to war, which in those days was unthinkable; a master carrying a servant. My mother found these fantastical images very inspiring. She works instinctively, starting with an idea then building on it. She throws you in and you make sense of it. It’s only at the end that the whole show comes into focus; suddenly a structure emerges, and the sequence defines itself more or less on its own.

GL: How did you find working with your mother?

AT: I think if another director had told me, “In this show you’re going to be trapped in a chest of drawers, then later you’ll have a train coming through your body,” I don’t think I’d have trusted them as enthusiastically as I did her! It’s corny to say, because she’s my mother, but I love her work and I was ready to do anything for her. With your family you don’t have to be polite or try to seduce or discover how to communicate. You go straight to the point.

GL: Can you tell us about the other performers on stage with you?

AT: There are five of us on stage, though you’ll only see two of us, myself and a dancer. The third character is really the set, and in order for that to work we have three magical, invisible people operating it.

GL: Your performance style, and that of your parents, is sometimes described as “Cirque Nouveau” or “New Circus.” Do you agree with the term?

AT: Yes. When I was born my parents were working with a traditional family circus who were unwilling to change their costumes or their acts. My parents wanted to revolutionize circus, but they realized that to do so they’d have to create their own shows, which is how the Cirque Imaginaire was born. There are New Circuses all over the world – we were just in Brazil and found many of them there – and the term can mean many different things. Our work is more physical theatre than circus, and incorporates elements of music hall, vaudeville, clowning, entertainment. The Oratorio is based on a collaboration with the audience. Even though you can guess how many of the tricks work, hopefully there comes a point where you decide not to, and go along with the illusion and interpret the show personally. Our work is artisanal – the costumes are handmade, the tricks are not on a huge scale, we don’t use projections or special effects.

GL: What about the title? What is Aurélia’s Oratorio?

AT: There are two answers. The first is that the title was my father’s only contribution to the show, so we didn’t want to upset him! Second, my mother and I had the idea that everyone has an oratorio. It’s hard to define what this word means for us, it’s not religious, but it’s a kind of prayer, or a chimera, a mad fantasy, a mixture between a spirit and a dream. The show has the surreal logic of a dream; in your dreams something absurd happens and you simply adapt to it, and it’s only when you wake up that you question the reality of what happened.

GL: Your character in the show is called Aurélia. Is she you?

AT: I have no idea. I don’t know who I am! It’s something I have to figure out every night on stage.

Gideon Lester is A.R.T.’s Director, 08/09 Season

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