Franco Dragone was one of the iconic creators of multidisciplinary non-verbal theater. His declare to fame was by the early works of Cirque du Soleil, and it was his artistic enter as director that gave Cirque its signature model of stage poetry that made the corporate stand out from the group. His creations — a few of the most well-known being “O”, Quidam, Alegria and in a while, The Home of Dancing Water in Macau created by his personal firm, Dragone — have been spectacles to behold, sparking the frequent remark, “I’ve by no means seen something prefer it” from viewers members. Dragone’s exhibits have been rife with uniquely private moments, breathtaking photos and, most of all, poignant, touching characters. The casts of his exhibits have been additionally like none that had ever been seen earlier than in mainstream leisure.

In 2022, Dragone handed away, and his presence can be enormously missed. His passing, although, reminds us, as professionals within the casting area, of his distinctive approach of casting and creating characters. Casting for somebody like Dragone was an antithesis to the standard casting course of, which usually begins with a personality breakdown as described in a script, adopted by auditioning performers who match these character descriptions.

However for Franco, the individuality and real facet of every performer’s persona was the cardinal side. He by no means created characters primarily based on a script that had already been written. So, in Dragone’s world, the standard approach of casting didn’t make a lot sense.

This yr, 2023, to fill the creative void left by Dragone’s dying, the Dragone firm appointed a brand new creative director, Filippo Ferraresi. A local Italian from a small village close to Rome known as Gallicano nel Lazio, Ferraresi labored with Dragone for a few years — years by which he received to know Dragone and his artistic course of on an intimate stage. In different phrases, he deeply understands the way in which Dragone thought, the way in which he labored and the way in which he selected his casts.

“Radically completely different from the Broadway strategy,” he says, “like, the other. Franco all the time used to say, ‘Present me who you might be. What pursuits me is your universe.’ Very first thing. He continuously saved repeating this to artists and designers.”

Rewind again to 1982. A younger man named Gilles Ste-Croix in Baie-St-Paul, Québec, Canada, had begun a small group of stilt walkers that did avenue performances and had succeeded in constructing a following. By the next yr, the group had begun placing collectively concepts about constructing a venture the place avenue gamers would carry out beneath a giant high. In 1984, the venture would lastly come collectively beneath the identify of Cirque du Soleil.

“Once we have been constructing a present in ‘84 and ‘85,” says Ste-Croix, “we have been utilizing the circus college in Montreal to do these exhibits. Man Caron was the director of the college, and he invited completely different individuals to show on the college. Franco Dragone was invited. [Franco] was working in, I’d say, politically-oriented theater in Belgium, in Brussels, the place he was doing workout routines and placing on some collective exhibits with individuals from factories or from social teams. Man Caron invited him to come back to work with acrobats that have been on the college, and that’s how he began to be related with the group that we have been a part of.”

That was the start of what would later mark performing arts historical past. Ste-Croix, as one of many authentic founders of Cirque du Soleil and the principal one who developed Cirque’s first exhibits with Dragone, additionally has deep perception into Dragone the creator, and the kind of performing artist that Dragone needed to work with.

“The strategy of casting — Franco didn’t have any concept how one can go about that,” he says, “so he left that to me. In ’89, there was no creative division. So I began to develop a approach of casting at festivals, discovering accomplished numbers. At circus colleges as properly. And in addition by performing some auditions.”

Ste-Croix continues, “Franco would say, ‘I don’t care what you carry me; what we’d like is top of the range artists. I don’t need stunning, fancy… I need some gueule [“gueule” is a slang word in Quebec French that refers to a striking or very unusual face or look]. I need characters. So these individuals needed to have greater than only a stunning stroll. No, they needed to have one thing inside that Franco would go and seize, and say, ‘Ah, we’re going to go together with that!’ As an alternative of simply the polished facet of any person.”

That is what made his forged match his characters so properly — by creating the roles across the distinctive options and talents of every particular person forged member, as an alternative of writing the position first after which discovering the performing artist with the closest match. The diametric reverse of the standard casting course of we’re all accustomed to.

However that is largely what made his creations so distinctive, so emotional and so participating — a narrative with completely harmonized characters, as a result of it was the persona of the performers who created the story.

Ferraresi explains, “Franco all the time used to say, ‘I don’t have concepts. I understand how to acknowledge good issues. I understand how to see.’ He used to say that his greatest high quality was to be an antenna and seize the vibrations and the traits, and see what might be new or ‘wow’ or humorous or tragic for an viewers. And so, for instance, in casting auditions — greater than casting, within the workshops that he used to do, like theatrical workshops — no roles have been assigned earlier than that interval. Unattainable! He used to see individuals, make them stroll on a stage and work with them, shaping their peculiarities.”

Ste-Croix provides how the persona of music coupled with the persona of the artists would drive the persona of each the ensuing characters and the ensuing present compositions.

“Each time Franco labored with staging, when he labored with workshops or he labored with dance, he all the time had some music ready as a result of he was a really musical particular person,” says Ste-Croix. “He would discover music that introduced photos in his head and he put them out and needed individuals to maneuver on it, to see how they’d react and the way it will make him react. To see them transfer on that music. That may affect the creation of the music.”

Ferraresi explains that the motion essence of a person would additionally affect different points of a Dragone present. “One other factor about casting, which is essential for Franco — he by no means assigned a fancy dress, by no means, earlier than seeing the physique. He used to say, ‘The costume designer proposed a sketch. Lovely. I settle for the sketch. However I don’t know who to present this costume to, as a result of if I don’t see how a physique strikes, I can not simply assign blindly beforehand. It’s the collision between a fancy dress and a physique that makes the character.’”

Ferraresi continues, “And so the casting was essential as a result of Franco… the one path he used to present (beforehand) was by self-discipline, by huge fields. Like, he used to say, ‘I need eccentrics,’ or ‘I need mimes,’ or ‘I need actors.’”

Ste-Croix explains that “it was actually a collaborative creation, but it surely was additionally actually a work-in-progress. We labored like, possibly six months find what the present is, and what the casting is, the music, the set. That is the way in which that every one this might behave right into a nucleus that might make it attainable to stage. Then, we might begin the staging — little moments, we put them on the facet. Little second numbers, then we added characters round it to make it not simply acrobatic, however make it a theatrical acrobatic second. So it was actually a strategy to construct a present out of nothing, out of simply curiosity to do one thing new, however one thing distinctive.”

For anybody who has seen Dragone’s creations, I believe it’s protected to say “mission completed.” His work has touched thousands and thousands of individuals throughout the globe in unforgettable methods. Though a lot of the work he did was spectacular due to its grand scale and due to the excessive ability stage of the performers, his success in remaining memorable is primarily linked to emotional poetry of character. Audiences are likely to neglect the main points of what they noticed, however they don’t neglect how they felt.

Simply as individuals I do know who’ve labored with Dragone all inform me that it’s an expertise that they, too, will always remember. And it’s implausible that this might not be associated to the actual approach he noticed the world, the way in which he noticed individuals, the way in which he noticed characters, and the way in which he selected his artists and constructed memorable characters on the singularities that make every particular person completely different from the following. Unforgettable characters from an unforgettable man.

“Franco was like a brother,” says Ste-Croix. “We went alongside for 10 years into creation. I used to be actually studying how to take a look at the world with him and browse the stage, in a way that with an open thoughts you let your self stream within the creation. So when Franco left, he left me with these reminiscences. He left me with this excellent interval of my life, which I can look again on and I can actually take pleasure in and say, ‘I lived that.’ I’ve finished eight exhibits with Franco Dragone.”

He recounts an analogy.

“I heard Paul McCartney say, once they requested him ‘What do you bear in mind of the Beatles?’ He mentioned, ‘Hey, I performed with John Lennon.’

“And I believed it was like, ‘I labored with Franco Dragone.’”

Ste-Croix continues with a smile of memory that makes us heat throughout.

“I can say that.”

By Rick Tjia of Dance Informa.