New England Public Radio

For almost 20 years, the UniverSoul Circus has been pitching its tent in urban plazas across the country. The circus was founded by a Baltimore native as a showcase for black talent, one that he hoped would inspire black audiences.

In more recent times, the circus has evolved into an eclectic mix of acts from around the world. Now, it’s pushing to diversify its audience, with a show called “Us.”

Strength, Precision And Crowd-Pleasing Nerve

In the beginning, all of the talent was black. They came from Africa, the Caribbean and the U.S.

Today, UniverSoul still opens with black performers: a classically trained ballerina, followed by a trio of West African horsemen in shimmery blue spandex.

They gallop around the ring at top speeds, and then come the gymnastics. One flips himself completely around the horse’s torso while it’s still running. Another stands up on horseback and throws his hands in the air, all at full gallop.

Later there are stilt walkers from Trinidad and Tobago, Mongolian aerial acrobats and the Shaolin Kung Fu Warriors, from Shaolin Monastery in central China.

The warriors’ heads are shaved, their bodies draped in yellow robes.

They bow to the audience. Then they leap into battle, swords flying. They thrill the audience with their strength, precision and crowd-pleasing nerve. They break a wooden dowel over one guy’s head and a second dowel over another vulnerable spot. But don’t worry — he’s OK.

After their set, the warriors retire to the trailer they share with the acrobatic contortionists from Guinea.

Troupe leader Liu Xiaofeng says they had never performed with a circus before. They heard that UniverSoul was one of the best in America.

For most of the Shaolin Warriors, it’s their first time in the U.S., and their first time seeing so many African-Americans in person. Li Dongwei, 20, says before coming here, his impressions of black people were based on violent movies.

Before the first show, they weren’t sure whether black audiences would be into them. But crowds cheered them on at volumes they hadn’t heard back home.

There’s a big difference, says Liu Xiaofeng. A black audience doesn’t suppress its emotions. In China, he says, maybe because of Confucianism, people are more reserved.

‘Soul Is A Flavor’

“To me, soul is not a color. Soul is a flavor,” says UniverSoul’s co-host, Zanda “Zeke” Charles, who is 54 years old and 4 1/2 feet tall.

He has been with this circus since day one.

“Anybody from any country can come in and do what we do,” Charles says. “We put our music to it, their culture to it, and it’s like, voila, we give something to the community that they rarely or barely ever get a chance to see.”

Today, UniverSoul’s community remains predominantly black. But, as he roams the stands giving out hugs, Charles says he is seeing more and more families of other colors.

“When I walk around the audience and see their little kids, the Chinese little kids seeing someone in the ring of their culture, that puts pride to them,” he says.

Back in the ring, Charles is running the “Soul Train Line” — an audience-participation dance-off.

Five men and five women run down the aisles from all corners of the tent — all African-Americans, as usual, except one. She’s Yuling Han, a Chinese-American psychologist and mother of two young children, who watch from the stands.

“I kind of like to embarrass them,” she says.

The crowd approves of her dance moves, and on her way out, Charles gives her a high-five. He hopes she’ll be back.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

It’s hard to write a musical about capitalism. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill gave it a shot with The Threepenny Opera. The musical Urinetown took a crack at it. Now comes Mission Drift, a two-hour experimental work created by a group called the Theater of the Emerging American Moment. The musical attempts to probe the love and ambivalence Americans have for endless growth.

Mission Drift’s director, Rachel Chavkin, wondered what defines American capitalism compared to capitalism in the rest of the world. She went to composer Heather Christian.

“Rachel approached me and said, ‘I think we should write a musical about capitalism,’ to which I said, ‘That’s impossible,'” Christian remembers.

The members of the Theater of the Emerging American Moment, or “the TEAM,” as they call themselves, began reading about Wall Street and teaching themselves economics. They read Milton Friedman and listened to podcasts of NPR’s Planet Money. Chavkin says she got her best answer to the question of what defines American capitalism from an Australian.

“She said, ‘Well, everywhere has capitalism — it’s just you’re more religious about it here than anywhere else,'” Chavkin says. “Ultimately, what I think the show is getting at is that there is something both thrilling and unsustainable about capitalism as it is lived and practiced here in America.”

The idea for Mission Drift began in early 2008 before the economy imploded, with the real story of two teenagers the TEAM found in a history book by Russell Shorto. Joris and Catalina came to New Amsterdam — what is now called New York City — in the 17th century. In the musical, they mythically live through the entire history of American westward expansion.

The TEAM became obsessed with Las Vegas. The musical’s gospel song, Burning Down Las Vegas, functions as a symbol of the city’s constant creation and destruction.

Chavkin says the TEAM spent a long time in Las Vegas and it really opened them up to the themes they were exploring.

“Not actually so much because of the gambling metaphor, because that seemed sort of easy, but actually because it was the fastest growing city in America at the turn of the millennium and then had become an epicenter of the housing collapse,” Chavkin says. “And so there seemed to be something in there in terms of how we shape our expectations of growth, as Americans, and how our very landscape is altered, built and destroyed by this expectation of growth.”

Las Vegas also seemed an appropriate symbol because it was historically tied to atomic testing. The explosion of bombs coincides with the implosion of old casinos to make way for the new.

Joris, one of the main characters, is almost giddy when he contemplates the bomb. “There is so much we’re going to do out here,” he says. “The folks up at the proving grounds say that what they dropped on Hiroshima is just the beginning; they’re going to be doing tests like this almost every month, and I think we should celebrate each one here.”

Chavkin says the TEAM was influenced by images they saw at the National Atomic Testing Museum. “People having parties in casinos and drinking their atomic cocktails, and wearing sunglasses and looking through the windows as these mushrooms clouds shoot up in the desert,” Chavkin says, describing the photos. “It is the oasis in the desert that Las Vegas was, combined with the Mojave as wasteland, combined with these incredible celebrated displays of both American ingenuity and American violence.”

By the end of the two hours, other characters have lost their jobs, and their houses are foreclosed upon. A song with a haunting phrase, “This house is empty,” expresses sadness and longing.

The New York Times said the production could have used an editor, and accused it of suffering from “mission overkill,” but its creators say they are trying to deal with large themes. Americans are thinking: Should we tax the rich? Should we punish prosperity? Christian says ambivalence over these questions exists in many of us.

“[We are] born and descended of these people who came here for growth and for expansion, and it’s kind of a holy thing, it’s in our DNA,” she says.

“When we were in Las Vegas, actually, we talked with so many people who said ‘We love growth, we just grew too fast,'” Chavkin says.

By the end of the show, the two teenage immigrants are exhausted. You hear the strains of another song by Christian, with the chorus, “We walk, we walk, we tire.”

“I think we’re at this moment where there really is this sense of exhaustion and this question of how do we find a new narrative that is as satisfying as this narrative of continued growth,” Chavkin says.

Mission Drift has played in New York and in Europe. It is on tour until 2014 with stops in Australia, London and definite plans to go to Las Vegas.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Tony Gangi gave up a successful career in publishing in order to impale himself.

With his wife Suzanne’s permission, he went from having a secure 9 to 5 job to following his dream of wowing audiences by doing shock-worthy things to his own body.

“Ladies and gentlemen, what I’m about to do is a 4,000-year-old art and it’s known as sword swallowing,” Gangi, also known as The Amazing Human Head, tells a crowd at a Salem, Mass., performance. “Oh no!” a child in the audience exclaims.

From the outside, the Gangis’ home in Beverly, Ma., looks pretty typical. Inside, too — minus the array of deathly devices laid out on their dining room table. They’re the reason why the phrase “don’t try this at home” exists. Seriously, don’t try this at home.

Showing off his props, Gangi snaps a mousetrap on his tongue, with a slight “ah!” of discomfort. “Ow,” he squeals, as he crunches an animal trap onto his hand. “The tough part is always getting it off,” Gangi muses.

And then Gangi pulls out what looks like a tiny sword. In his stage show, he invites some unsuspecting audience member to insert this six-inch nail into his nose. In ‘the biz,’ this act is known as the “Human Blockhead.” To demonstrate, Gangi enlists his squeamish wife Suzanne. He tips back his head, gingerly slips the implement in, then she removes it. Suzanne gasps, and Gangi laughs. “And that is the Human Blockhead,” he says.

“I have never had the privilege of actually being the one to pull it out of his nose,” Suzanne says. “I usually avert my eyes and look somewhere else.”

She has been doing that since 2006. That’s when Tony said he wanted to give up a career in book publishing to attend the Coney Island Sideshow School. He was dying to learn how to slip sharp objects safely into his nasal passages, but Tony had to convince his wife to let him leave a stable job to do dangerous things to himself.

“There were a number of years where he was, you know, working in a career that really wore him down, and as a spouse you can see it, because he wasn’t able to do what he wanted, and you know, you don’t want them to be that miserable,” Suzanne says.

So Suzanne agreed to support Tony, and their son, while her sideshow husband fulfilled his dreams. She has even accepted Tony’s growing desire to swallow real swords, but made him promise one thing, and it’s a familiar mantra around the couple’s home.

“Well, at least I’m not going to be eating glass, and that seems to put her mind at ease,” Gangi says.

That said, Suzanne often stays home when Tony performs in his own show. He calls it “Lydia’s Carnival Sideshow,” inspired by the 1939 song, “Lydia the Tattooed Lady.”

There’s an escape artist, a spoon-bender, and Gangi’s own Human Blockhead routine — the kinds of acts audiences would have seen attached to traveling circuses during Victorian times. They have performed in small venues, at conventions, and wherever else Gangi can get a gig. He has also written a book about the sideshow arts. And while plenty of his peers strive to gross out their audiences, Gangi’s needs are tamer.

“I enjoy a good gasp,” he says.

Copyright 2012 WBUR. To see more, visit http://www.wbur.org.

Jim Brown, Dennis Rodman and O.J. Simpson are all former professional athletes who’ve tried their hand at acting. Showbiz might seem like a natural path for guys with big egos and million-watt personalities, but Eddie George is a former NFL player who’s taken a different path to the limelight.

He’s joining a fraternity of actors that includes Charlton Heston in playing William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

The scene where Marcus Brutus kills Caesar is probably the most famous death scene in all of theater. It’s where those famous words, “Et tu, Brute?” are uttered.

Despite his early demise, Caesar is a plum role for the former Tennessee Titans’ running back.

“I was not put on this earth strictly to be a football player and then that’s it, dwindle away,” he says. “I have aspirations of being an artist, entertainer and actor, and I’m working hard toward that.”

Rehearsing The Role Of An Actor

George worked hard for eight seasons with the Titans. He never missed a start, and he played in the Super Bowl. But when he left football, George wanted to try acting — so he set out for Hollywood.

George says it was a disaster. He didn’t know what he was doing, so he came back to Nashville and sought out an acting coach.

“He took me through a boot camp of improv work, of cold readings, of scene study, of character analysis — of all of that,” George says. “So I really have a gist of what I was doing, a landscape of the theater.”

Now, equipped with some performing tools, George has landed some bit parts in a few films and acted in some plays. But he’s still a hero to Titans fans, tens of thousands of whom watched him play.

Denice Hicks of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival knows some of those fans will come out to see Julius Caesar because of him, but, she says, “he’s a really strong actor — really, really strong.”

“And,” she says, he has “a charismatic stage presence. There is no other actor who could play Caesar the way he could.”

From The Field To The Stage

George’s Caesar sports a bald head and a toga. He looks confident without being cocky. While he’s relaxed and soft-spoken offstage, onstage, his voice booms.

Audience member Sherry Lawler isn’t a football fan, but she says George has a stage presence that’s reminiscent of a famous actor in an iconic role.

“He reminds me of Yul Brenner in The King and I,” she says.

George says acting isn’t just a hobby for a retired athlete.

He says he hopes this production of Julius Caesar will lead to more opportunities to hone his acting chops.

“This is not like, ‘Hey, this is cool. I’ll put this on my bucket list. I did a Shakespearean piece,’ ” George says. “This is something I’ve worked hard at, that I’m working hard at, and this is just the next thing that presented itself that I have an opportunity to do.”

Copyright 2012 Nashville Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.wpln.org/.

Magazines, documentaries and art are usually meant to be preserved to live on in time. But a group in San Francisco has decided that art, if ephemeral, may be appreciated in a different way.

The group created Pop-Up Magazine, a live magazine that happens once on stage, in one place — and it’s not recorded.

Editor Douglas McGray says the idea came from trying to get different kinds of artists in the same room.

“The reason we started it was we felt that filmmakers have their film openings. And artists will have gallery openings. And writers will have their readings. And we’re never at the same things together,” McGray tells NPR’s Robert Siegel. “We thought about the idea of a live magazine as way to bring these different communities together and bring their communities of fans together.”

So, for Pop-Up Magazine, documentary film makers, writers, radio producers, photographers and artists present their work to an audience live on stage — about 20 stories in 90 minutes. McGray says the stories are very short. The shortest they’ve ever done was 17 seconds — and they run up to 5 or 6 minutes.

“You find that that’s enough time to tell a rich story or profile a person or explain an idea,” he says.

Sometimes the artists will perform without any props, but there is a large screen at the back of the stage that can display film. They’ll also sometimes incorporate voices or sounds or musical accompaniment.

The magazine is edited and has a table of contents. McGray says the staff reaches out to “potential contributors we admire” to put on the show.

“Once we figure out what makes sense to do onstage, sometimes we’ll collaborate really closely and figure out how we can encourage someone to experiment with different forms,” he says. “We’ll have a radio producer who will decide that they’re going to try out using some Super 8 film or using some images. Or we’ll have an illustrator who will get paired with someone who works in sound.”

And, of course, there is no record that the performances ever happened. The staff, McGray says, doesn’t even have secret recordings or photographs.

“When I think back to old issues and think fondly of moments that were really terrific,” he says. “I’m just remembering them.”

So far, McGray says, Pop-Up Magazine has received great feedback about the concept.

“I find that people watch a thing differently when it really is going to happen once. You can’t share the link to your favorite story — you’re going to have to retell it yourself. You can’t go back and watch it later. I think you focus in a different way, I think you remember in a different way. I like the way it makes peoples’ brains work,” he says. “People, when they come and when the lights go down, they feel like they’re about to see something special precisely because it’s only going to happen once.”

McGray is careful to say that the performances are not a negative reaction to technology.

“All of us are online,” he says. “All of us are on social media and a lot of ways the huge audience for this show has been built on social media. These are great ways to connect and to share ideas and to meet people. It’s also just nice to unplug and come together for a night and do something that’s different.”

Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.