December 15th Cabaret

Dec 272017
 

Wow! It sure was a lot of fun doing my latest cabaret on December 15th at the beautiful Triad Theatre. It was called “P-P-P-Paul and K-K-K-Katie” because I was showcasing the first New York appearance of the talented Katie Galuska. A great debut! We started our collaboration with a duet from the film “Annie” (which I actually appeared in!). Katie sang several wonderful solos as well, notably “Funny,” “Lady Is a Tramp,” “Never Fall in Love with an Elf,” and “Screw Loose.” The guest performers were Dana Mierlak, who sang “The Trolley Song” from “Meet Me in St. Louis,” and the surprise of the evening, Petie Subin, who sang a sequence of duets with me, including one of my all-time favorites, “Do You Love Me?” from “Fiddler on the Roof.” Once again we were graced by the musical direction and piano accompaniment of Dennis Buck. A group of my fellow Dartmouth classmates and some of my chums from the Lotos Club made the audience a very friendly one. We all had a great time! I’m already contemplating what to do next.

Here I am singing “I’m Still Here” from Sondheim’s “Follies”

Katie and me singing duet “I Don’t Need Anything But You” from “Annie.” “Together at last!”

Katie solo. She knocked ’em out!

Here’s Dana!

Petie and me singing a duet of “Do You Love Me?” from “Fiddler on the Roof,” one of my all-time favorite numbers.

Ray Charles and the Raylettes. Or is it Diana Ross and the Supremes? Or is it Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters? Gladys Knight and the Pips?

P-P-P-Paul and K-K-K-Katie Cabaret

Nov 282017
 
Ladies and gentlemen, tickets to my newest cabaret are on sale and going fast!
The great adventure of starting the Big Apple Circus and being its artistic director and ringmaster for 38 years continues as I find a new life — as a cabaret performer (I even surprised myself)!
This is your once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the NYC stage debut of Katie Galuska, who is 8 years younger than half my age (yikes!). She’s a real find.
Here’s the official promo announcement: 
Paul Binder, Big Apple Circus founder and 38 year ringmaster, returns after successful benefit performances of his previous cabarets “Paul Binder Risks His Life Singing” and “The Tall and Short of It” at the Metropolitan Room and various other venues. “P-P-P-Paul & K-K-K-Katie” will introduce a dazzling young performer, Katie Galuska, to New York City. Once again, the Music Director will be the brilliant Dennis Buck.
ALSO: Special Added attractions Dana Mierlak and Petra “Petie” Subin
 
Tickets can be ordered online at triadnyc.com. Triad is located above the Turkish Grill (no kidding!) at 158 West 72nd Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus. There is a two drink minimum.

Laughter, the Best Medicine

Sep 012017
 

I recently wrote to alert you all about the very funny musical parody, Me the People. It’s a four person all singin’, all dancin’ off-off-Broadway show. The critics raved and I’m raving as well! It’s being performed at the Triad Theater which is a beautiful facility located above a Turkish restaurant on west 72nd. You’re sure to laugh and applaud as the cast is excellent at skewering our current political scene.

Click here to get tickets.

The following will give you an idea of the some of the ridiculously funny stuff of the show:

Beethoven, Wharton, Rockwell, Shelley, and Me

Sep 012017
 

Last week, we returned to the Berkshire Hills for one more short vacation trip. It was three event-filled days. We arrived on August 27 in time to run to Tanglewood for the final day of the Boston Symphony season featuring a short Charles Ives number and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The eighty person chorus joined for a rousing fourth movement, Ode to Joy. Tanglewood is simply incredible as the estimated crowd was nearly ten thousand people, including five thousand in the Koussevitzky Shed, and nearly as many on the lawn.

Visitors on the lawn outside the Koussevitzky Shed. Last week’s crowd was even far more dense than photographed here.

After a quick wine and cheese at our favorite bed and breakfast, Stonover Farm, we immediately went to Shakespeare and Company (no Shakespeare that night) to see two Edith Wharton “comedies.” Well, at least that’s what the management called them. I didn’t find them funny at all, indeed I thought they were poorly acted and directed.

Stonover Farm

The next morning, after a delicious breakfast at Stonover, we headed to the Clark Museum in Williamstown, MA. The place is an absolute gem with a wonderful collection of impressionist paintings including many Renoirs. There is a current exhibit of Helen Frankenthaler. We ate lunch at the museum in a courtyard with a view of the extraordinarily beautiful property that surrounds the museum.

Clark Art Institute

Following more wine and cheese in Stonover, we ran over to Cranwell Resort to catch a performance of Capitol Steps,* Washington D.C.’s political parody singing group. There were several pieces that were howlingly funny [Cranwell has a beautiful golf course that I had played many times with my colleague and friend, Rob Libbon, thirty-plus years ago in the days when the Big Apple Circus performed in both Pittsfield and Great Barrington].

Cranwell Resort.

The following day we made a visit to the Norman Rockwell museum in Stockbridge, MA to see the current exhibition which matches Rockwell with Andy Warhol as representatives of American culture of their time. I was surprised that the comparison actually was stunning. Rockwell’s work stands out as probably the greatest example of artistic cultural leadership, it is simply extraordinary. I say that, growing up as a child, seeing the many Saturday Evening Post covers that Rockwell created. His rendition of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms was a profoundly affecting education. Warhol’s vision was far less idealistic, almost grim by comparison and I found myself wondering, at this time in our history, which artist could be the next cultural leader on par with Rockwell?

(Clockwise L to R) Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, Freedom from Fear, Freedom from Want.

Then we made a nostalgic trip to Great Barrington where the Big Apple Circus had performed in both Jennifer House and the fairgrounds, had a delicious hamburger, and headed off for dinner with old friends at Zinc in Lenox, MA, followed by a three hour drive back to New York City.

What a wonderfully exciting three day visit!

 

*Have a look at my next blog post about Me the People, New York’s very funny political parody show. It is a must see!!

A Week in the Berkshires, Pt. 2

Aug 072017
 

During our annual visit in the Berkshires, Shelly and I have always looked for excellent theatre choices. We’ve attended Shakespeare and Company in Lenox and Barrington Stage in Pittsfield. This year, Barrington Stage featured a clever farce by Alan Ayckbourn, Taking Steps. The play is a classic exaggerated British physical comedy. Here’s some photos of Taking Steps:

Some of the cast on the unique set of “Taking Steps”.

Cast members (L to R) Matthew Greer, Richard Hollis & Carson Elrod.

Cast members (L to R) Richard Hollis, Claire Brownell & Matthew Greer.

 

I also had the opportunity to visit with my old friend and colleague, Gypsy Snider, who is an original company member of San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus and founder and Artistic Director of Montreal’s famed Seven Fingers of the Hand (Sept Doigts de la Main). We discussed her latest work and future projects, perhaps even with the new Big Apple Circus. Many of you might remember that Gypsy created all of the circus work for the brilliant Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Pippin.

 

Gypsy Snider.

Here you can see a flavor of Gypsy’s circus creation in the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of “Pippin”.

 

This year we didn’t have time to go to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, which is featuring iconic American images of Andy Warhol alongside Rockwell’s iconic images. We also didn’t have the chance to go to a wonderful dance concert at Jacob’s Pillow. If we can, we’ll return later this year for some of the wonderful events that the Berkshires offer.

A Week in the Berkshires, Pt. 1

Aug 072017
 

Shelly and I spent a wonderful week in western Massachusetts in the Berkshire Hills, which is a vital center for the performing and visual arts. The Summer months bring out the best of both. We schedule our annual visit so that we can have a mini-reunion with my Dartmouth classmates (1963) and attend Tanglewood on Parade, a day long celebration highlighted by performances by three extraordinary orchestras: the Boston Symphony (BSO), the Boston Pops, and the Tanglewood Symphony Orchestra, each with its own distinct and unique flavor.

The crowd on the lawn outside the Koussevitzky Music Shed.

The youthful performers in the Tanglewood Symphony generally lead off the program. This year they performed several pieces, the most familiar of which is Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man (believe it or not our eight piece Big Apple Circus Band actually performed this orchestral number as an entrance piece for our aerialist Sacha Pavlatta’s Cloud Swing Act in 1981). Pictured below is Charles Dutoit conducting the Tanglewood Symphony inside the 5000 seat Music Shed.

The Boston Pops performed several numbers with Keith Lockheart conducting two songs, Love is Here to Stay by George and Ira Gershwin and I Won’t Dance by Jerome Kern. The revered 85 year-old John Williams, the Musical Director Emeritus of the Boston Pops, conducting three of his own wonderful motion picture compositions, including the stirring and thrilling finale from Star Wars.

Keith Lockhart (L) and John Williams (R).

The grand finale of the evening is the combined orchestras performing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Opus 49 with Keith Lockhart conducting. Those of you who are familiar with the piece know that Tchaikovsky wrote into the score the sound of live cannons firing blanks accompanying the final movement. Sure enough Tanglewood on Parade had those cannons in a nearby field firing on cue.

And then, the evening ended with a spectacular display of fireworks.

Smithsonian Folk Life Festival 2017 – part 2

Jul 182017
 

This is “Grandma” and Keith Nelson. As you can see they are proud to be on the National Mall.

Here are several more wonderful events that took place at the festival.

Circus Harmony, from St. Louis, who I wrote a little bit about in my recent post on Circus Flora. They are a very successful inner-city youth troupe.

Eliana Grace is the daughter of Jessica Hentoff, founder of Circus Harmony and has a wonderful one-woman show. Here’s the only photograph that I have from the festival. Unfortunately, she is moving into a trick so she doesn’t look nearly as graceful as she, in fact, is.

Eliana Grace

Here are a couple of photographs from Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, one of my favorites.

Left: Adam Kuchler
Right: Stephanie Monseu, ringmaster extraordinaire

And a new favorite: Happenstance Theater. They are very clever, fresh and simply lovely.

Here’s one grouping of the show they did at the festival. They have several more shows.

 

[ Below: Continued from last post ]

3. My long-time performance partner Michael Christensen, founder of Big Apple Circus Clown Care, which became a worldwide movement of clowns visiting the bedsides of acutely and chronically ill children, sat on several presentations at the festival about medical clowning.

Big Apple Circus Clown Care logo created by Dominique Jando.
That’s Michael as “Dr. Stubs” creating a bubble through a stethoscope.

Here’s a wonderful group of New York Clown Care “Doctors of Delight.” They are some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever known.

4. Finally, I sat on one of seven panels and three presentations at a day-long “Circus Town Hall” at the National Endowment for the Arts concerning circus as art. It was an extraordinary day.

On the left is Tisha Tinsman and on the right is Dolly Jacobs. The photograph that they are standing alongside is of Dolly in performance.

Tisha Tinsman with Sacha Pavlatta, our first tent master, virtuoso performer, and original company member.

Here’s a wonderful group at the NEA. Left to right: Dominique Jando, Murray Horwitz, Peggy Williams, Dolly Jacobs, myself, Pedro Reis, Jimmy Tinsman, Tisha Tinsman, and Vanessa Thomas.

 

Peggy Williams is in the preceding photograph. She was the first woman clown at Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, forty-plus years ago. She also headed up the extraordinarily lively roundtable discussion at the NEA “Physical Comedy as Performing Art.”

This wonderful convocation or “Town Hall” at the NEA was a highlight of this festival and was a great demonstration of the passion of the various people who are engaged in circus arts in America. I’m hoping that we can continue this amazing event going into the future.

 

Smithsonian Folk Life Festival 2017 – part 1

Jul 172017
 

From June 28th till July 6th I had the honor and pleasure of attending the 50th anniversary of the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival on the National Mall in Washington D.C.

[ What follows is the first of two blogs that I’m posting about my visit to the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival. ]

This year’s festival theme was Circus Arts.

The Festival estimated that there were over a million visitors.

Michael Christensen, my fellow Big Apple Circus founder, and myself were invited to the festival for several reasons:

1. Tell the story of the Big Apple Circus, which we did daily on the Circus Stories stage. And then we presented the “keys” of the Big Apple Circus to the new management. The “keys” were a beat-up old top hat and a rubber chicken named “Leonard,” who had been our juggling “partner” over the many years of the Big Apple Circus and its predecessor, our street juggling act. That great adventure was a journey from San Francisco all the way to Istanbul.

That’s Michael and me presenting the “keys” to the Big Apple Circus to the new management. It looks like “Leonard” was sleeping.

2. Present “Circus of the Senses,” a program that serves sight and hearing-impaired kids and adults. I am proud to say that I originally created “Circus of the Senses” for the Big Apple Circus. Our role at the festival was to narrate and describe, over headsets, to blind kids and adults, a performance of Wonderland by Circus Juventas, a wonderful youth circus from St. Paul, Minnesota. (For the hearing-impaired audience members, there were American Sign Language interpreters.)

That’s me in the top hat with the legendary sportscaster Marty Glickman, at the very first “Circus of the Senses.” Note the kids wearing headsets. The other person with a hand mic is Dave Jennings. The clown is Mr. Gordoon, Jeff Gordon.

Here’s some photos from Wonderland.

Here’s the poster for Wonderland and two photos of the young lady who performed the role of Alice.

The Red Queen and her court, with Alice in the foreground.

Here’s a quadruple trapeze group. Also an aerial cube with four performers. Finally, a Russian barre trio.

We described a one-hour version of what had been a two-hour show. Following the performance, there was a “touch session” in the ring where blind kids and adults could touch costumes and props of the various performers as well as talk to the performers and myself.

Here are three photos from the post-show “touch session”: the lady in the top left told me that she had been blind since birth and was “thrilled to hear a circus described.” I was thrilled that she wanted to tell me that. The top right is with the Red Queen and the bottom is the Caterpillar and the White Rabbit.

Here’s one with the Cheshire Cat…

.. and finally the director of Circus Juventas, Betty Butler who along with her husband Dan Butler are co-founders of this wonderful, youthful and energetic organization. I’m grateful to all of them.

[ To be continued in the next post. ]

Circus Flora

Jun 302017
 

I spent this past weekend at Circus Flora in St. Louis. A simply lovely show, filled with special highlights, and outstanding performers. It was well worth the trip!

Here is the show statement from the Circus Flora program:

Imagine that you could travel through time. Would you go back to relive historic events? Would you try to change history?  What if you could alter the course of your own life?  Now imagine you had the grace, power, and beauty of an acrobat or an aerialist.  Circus Flora’s all new production will use the timeless art of circus to explore the fabric of time.

On the High Wire (sitting in the chair) is Tino Wallenda, patriarch of The Flying Wallendas. Walking on the High Wire with Tomas Wallenda Cortes on his shoulders is Alex Wallenda. The juggler with hoops and umbrellas is Kyle Driggs, who I first saw at the Paris circus festival, Festival du Cirque de Demain.  The juggler with the cigar boxes balanced on his chin is Adam Kuchler. The lady with the “Big and Little” horse act is Cassidy Herriot…she is a team with veteran horse trainer Heidi Herriot (her mom).

Featured annually in Circus Flora is the acrobatic team from Circus Harmony. The kids were remarkable as the dove into each others arms and even performed a “passing leap.”

My thanks to Artistic Director, Jack Marsh, Show director (and old friend) Cecil Mckinnon, Equestrian Advisor, Laura Carpenter Balding, Circus Harmony Director (and original Big Apple Circus performer) Jessica Hentoff. Musical Director and Composer Janine Del’Arte and old friend Hovey Burgess. And a salute to new Executive Director Larry Mabrey and the Circus Flora Board of Directors.

Theatre – Dear Evan Hansen

Jun 022017
 

This past Wednesday night, I had the great pleasure of attending the Tony nominated musical, Dear Evan Hansen. It was an outstanding evening of theatre.

How can I convey how unusual this show is? Let’s start with the simplest element, the costumes. They are contemporary. The characters you see on stage, could just as easily be seen walking down the street. The set and lighting are clearly married as one element. We see moving projections on screens (which are, sometimes, also moving) completely evoking the internet and social media. But, I’m not doing justice to how these visual elements effect our view as an audience. A good deal of the time, what we see on stage is very cold and alienating. BUT then, the characters on stage are emotionally rich, in contrast to their “stage” environment. Perhaps you can understand that from the photo (below).

The music is contemporary, played by a small orchestra creating songs sung by actors on stage with excellent voices. Particularly, the title character, Evan Hansen, is brilliantly portrayed by 24-year-old Tony award-nominated, Ben Platt. He is Evan Hansen, totally inhabiting the character. He actually sweeps us up into the emotional rollercoaster that Evan Hansen is going through. Whew!

The cast of “Dear Evan Hansen” with Ben Platt center.

This is an extraordinarily difficult ticket to get on Broadway, but if you can find a way, it’s absolutely worth seeing!

 Older Entries