Natalie Robin | livedesignonline
Michael Jackson ONE is the second collaboration between Canadian set designer Francois Séguin and Cirque du Soleil. At the outset of the project, Séguin began working with theatre consultants Auerbach Pollack Friedlander as they approached the renovation of the theatre, following the closing of Disney’s The Lion King. Unfortunately, not long after the conversations began, the project was halted for budgetary reasons for approximately six months.
“When I came back, it was more like a road show,” Séguin says. Unlike other Cirque du Soleil shows housed in their own custom-built theatres, ONE harkens back to touring Cirque projects like Alegria, Totem, or Varekai, and the theatre at the Mandalay Bay is smaller than most Cirque venues.
The biggest difference between ONE and Séguin’s other Cirque collaboration (Zed in Tokyo) was beginning with the subject matter. Usually, Séguin explains, “a circus is about a boy and girl who meet, get separated, travel on a journey, and find a happy ending. But ONE follows the journey of four misfits who discover and are transformed by Michael Jackson’s music.”
Séguin’s first collaboration with King was a fruitful one. The entire team listened to a lot of Michael Jackson to really delve into the material and “find the spirit of the show.” King came with a list of songs he wanted to include and from which the team created a musical structure. Each song had a theme, goal, or reference to famous video, and sometimes that meant that the scenic setup might determine the song order. According to Séguin, this created a kind of in-one structure to the puzzle of figuring out the show. “One of the defining principles of the design is to support fast changes without being literal. The proposed solutions were more like a Broadway show with traditional scene changes than some other Cirque projects,” he says.
The largest evolution of the piece came in the increasing introduction of Michael Jackson’s image. Originally, the show was meant to evoke Michael’s spirit, but as the show evolved, his physical image became more and more central to the design. This drastically shifted the video design, which, of course, had ramifications on the scenery, but the essential set design was already complete by the time these changes occurred.
Source: livedesignonline / MJ-Upbeat.com
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