How far is it from Montreal to Las Vegas? Some would say they're worlds apart, others would give you a figure in the neighborhood of 3,000 miles. But if you're talking about the distance between the Canadian-based Cirque du Soleil's longtime status as the premier touring circus and its newfound role as a mainstay of the Vegas showroom circuit via the show Mystère at Treasure Island, three years, well over $20 million, and lots and lots of frequent-flier miles might begin to provide an accurate measurement. Still, there's another distance between these two locales that may be farther and harder to measure: the gap between French-Canadian artists and designers and Las Vegas businessmen and technicians.

There are two aspects to this story; one has great David and Goliath potential. In this corner: Steve Wynn, chairman of the board of Mirage Resorts Inc., the company which owns both the Mirage and Treasure Island; one of the most powerful men in Las Vegas, Wynn has the final say in almost every aspect of the Mirage empire, from the placement of the slot machines in the casinos to the pigment of the rocks on the Mirage volcano. He is a man used to making deals--and used to getting what he wants. And in this corner: Cirque du Soleil, a traveling troupe of acrobats, clowns, and other circus types, more at home under a big top than on the Vegas strip. A passionate, temperamental bunch, Cirque du Soleil has succeeded by sticking to its own artistic impulses. Needless to say, it's a pairing that would seem ripe for fireworks.

The other is the age-old tale of designers and technicians from different worlds simply trying to figure each other out. The players in this one are the Cirque designers, long used to big tops and a creative process in which myriad last-minute changes are the norm; and the Vegas tech crews, veterans of showrooms and theatres along the Strip with their own lingo, methods, and choices of equipment.

That such disparate groups had to make adjustments during the course of this endeavor is hardly surprising. That such disparate groups made it through relatively unscathed may be somewhat noteworthy. That such disparate groups got together at all may be the most unusual news of all.

Originally, Cirque du Soleil was going to be housed in Caesar's Palace. In January of 1991, Cirque founder Guy Laliberté traveled to Vegas with Patrick Berge, general manager of Scéno Plus Inc., a Montreal-based company specializing in the design, restoration, and renovation of theatres which Laliberte had chosen to design the space. In town to pitch their plans to the Caesar's Palace board of directors for a theatre (complete with Roman-style columns) that would house the Cirque du Soleil vision in Vegas, things were not going well. After a lengthy presentation to these "12 guys in grey suits," as Berge refers to them, the Cirque contingent was met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. "No one really wanted to say, 'Oh, it's a good concept,' or 'Oh, it's a bad concept,'" Berge says. Matters were complicated when the board expressed concern over such matters as show schedules and costumes. "It came to a point with Caesar's Palace where they were telling the circus that the girls are going to be dressed like this and the show had to look like that...So we all got up and walked out and slammed the door."

Whether or not the meeting ended so abruptly is open to debate, but news of the failed venture did reach the ears of Wynn, who, never one to miss an opportunity, flew to Toronto to see Cirque's Nouvelle Expérience. According to Berge, Wynn was so impressed with what he saw that he approached Laliberte at intermission and said, "I'll give you your building." Wynn saw in Cirque a perfect complement to Treasure Island, a show that would appeal to its international guests, but more importantly, one that would appeal to Vegas' newest target audience: the family.

Laliberté and Berge flew back to Vegas, this time to meet with Wynn and go over their proposed plan for the project (now known as Vegas 2), which was similar to the Caesar's proposal but without the columns and other trappings of ancient Rome. "The first morning at 9:00," Berge recalls, "we're sitting in the conference room and Steve Wynn walks in with a plan in his mouth and two others in his hand and said, 'Okay, guys, you can go back home, I've designed your whole theatre.' That was the beginning of a three-year adventure."

Cirque and Scéno Plus explained to Wynn their vision of the space: a 1,525-seat theatre that would retain the feel of a big top and feature a 80 [feet] by 120 [feet] stage, a 36 [feet] by 36 [feet] thrust with a revolving turntable that can rotate up to 10rpm, a computer-controlled hydraulic rigging system, four onstage elevators, and no proscenium arch. After several rounds of debate and discussion, the Canadians were able to convince the Nevadan of the merits of their plan and were given a 10-year lease. The project was to be managed by Wynn's in-house design firm, Atlandia Design, while Marnell Corrao Associates would act as architects and building contractors. Vegas 2 was one step closer to reality; now all Cirque and Scéno Plus had to do was convince everyone else of the merits of their plan, a task that would not always be easy.

The lack of a proscenium proved to be an early hurdle. The fire marshall obviously took an interest in the fact that there was no fire curtain in the space; Berge had to haul a model of the theatre to the fire marshall's office to explain to them that a major portion of Cirque's show was a trapeze act. "Half the show is on top of the audience and you can't put a fire curtain in the middle of a set," Berge told them. The proscenium-less space also met with some resistance from Wynn and architect Joel Bergman of Atlandia; Bergman pointed out that if Mystère were to flop in six months, Mirage Resorts would have to shut the space down and transform it into a "normal" theatre. The solution was to design the theatre and its catwalk system so it could be easily modified to add a full proscenium arch should the space be converted.

For the stage lifts, the design team faced another obstacle: Mother Nature. Underneath all that sand in Las Vegas is a crust of calcium carbonate called caliche, a substance said to be harder than concrete; in addition, the Treasure Island property is directly over an aquifer. Talk of digging through the caliche for the lifts left the Mirage accountants seeing red. "Every time we talked about elevators or a pit, people were freaking out," Berge says. "We never really understood, before we saw the construction site, what caliche was." Luckily for both sides, Scéno Plus came up with a solution: Spirolifts by Gala, a division of the Montreal-based Paco Corp. Affectionately termed Slinky-lifts, the units support four stage lifts (three are 10 [feet] by 36 [feet], and one on the thrust is 36 [feet] by 36 [feet]) and require no caissons--an ideal choice under the circumstances.

"You know that old magic trick where you can make a cane appear from nowhere, with spring steel coiled around?" explains Jules Lauve, director of entertainment operations at Treasure Island. "Imagine one of those that's about 2 [feet] in diameter, and to feed that out you've got a slinky that's attached to a platform on top of this cane; you compress it, and there's a mechanism that runs around a cartridge that feeds the slinky out and allows the cane to grow, or brings it back in. The result is you can get a 10 [feet] elevator packed into an 18 [inches]-tall area."

In each instance of compromise or change, Berge says Scéno Plus found itself caught somewhat in the middle: though they were being paid by Treasure Island, their hearts were with Cirque du Soleil. It was a situation that led to a few disagreements. "We fought so strongly, standing up on top of tables with conference rooms with 20 people around us trying to get our guts," Berge explains, perhaps exaggerating just a bit. "In our office here in Montreal, everybody increased their insurance policies. We were very scared. I'm 35 years old, and here I am telling all these 60-year-olds who've done at least 100 theatres how to work."

There were no such emotionally charged battles between Scéno Plus and the Cirque artisans; Berge, project manager Claude-Andre Roy and the rest of their team were attentive to the needs of lighting designer Luc Lafortune, sound designer Jonathan Deans, set designer Michel Crete, and the entire Cirque creative staff.

"They were so impressive as far as asking for input, some things that I have never seen a consultant company do before," says Jeannette Farmer, lighting director for Mystère. "They came in and worked with us, asking us, 'What kinds of needs have we overlooked?' 'Is there something specific that you know you're going to need or require?' "

For example, Farmer notes, the original designs of the theatre did not include box booms, a cove-one position or a rail-cove (balcony) position. "The cove-one position was already available, but for rigging purposes only," she explains. "So we talked them into putting in dimming and things like that. Then the two tough ones, the two hard sells were the box booms and the rail cove, which are just crucial to the show. That enabled us, especially on the thrust, which is our main playing area, to get some really wonderful sidelight angles happening."

Deans notes that he stressed with the architects the importance of keeping the room live acoustically. "I felt very strongly that for Cirque, when you sit in the tent, you actually are so aware of the people sitting within 30 [feet] of you, how they laugh, how they respond; and the performers are very aware of how the audience is responding to each act," he says. "And I thought that if the showroom were to be designed as a standard Las Vegas showroom, it would probably kill a lot of the feeling that Cirque has of the audience concept. So I pressed the point that we didn't want a showroom that you would walk into and it would feel fairly empty." Deans tapped Acromedia in San Leandro, CA to install the BSS and AKG components he eventually chose for the site; a total of 78 speakers fill the theatre.

Once final plans for the theatre were set, the Cirque design team began the preparations for setting up Mystère in the space. Because the construction crew working on Treasure Island was also working on the theatre, progress was fairly rapid, and the Cirque crew got their first opportunity to work in the space late summer of last year.

The first order of business, obviously, was to purchase and install the equipment they would need for the show. The problem with that was that at that time nobody knew what the show was going to be. Cirque du Soleil creates all its shows as it goes along; each begins life as a basic general concept, which is usually generated by the creative staff of artistic director Gilles Ste.-Croix, director Franco Dragone, composer René Dupéré, choreographer Debra Brown, costume designer Dominique Lemieux, and the other aforementioned designers. Mystère, for instance, has something to do with man's quest to reach a higher plane of existence; it is worth noting that most of the people interviewed for this story had a different take on what exactly the show is about. But then again, it is called Mystère.

At any rate, aside from the show's general concept, the creators make it up as they go along, adding and dropping acts for months at a time, coming up with last-minute creative inspirations at four in the morning. The final cast of characters may not be known until a month or so before opening, and until the designers know exactly who the players are, there are certain limitations as to the extent of their preparations. "We were hanging a wash, a basic wash, and we were hanging specials everywhere we could," says Lafortune. "But not all of them had a purpose, because we didn't have all the information." In the end, Lafortune opted for an assortment of fixtures, ranging from 39 Clay Paky Superscans, four Wildfire S/F 400W UV lights, a truckload of Altman luminaires, and five Pani projectors, all run on a Colortran Medallion. Cinema Services in Las Vegas and TMB Associates in Burbank, CA were the suppliers.

The addition of bungee cords in the ceiling area for an aerial ballet forced Deans to alter his original layout for the overhead speakers. "I had to rethink how the system would work," Deans explains. "You have to be quite open and be able to change your whole system setup in order to accommodate the changes, or run out and go shopping very quickly if needed. When those new ideas and commands come in, it takes time to set them up, and therefore it takes time for the show to take its shape. Because until everyone in every department has done this, it's forever changing. In a conventional show, it's like sitting down and working with a picture; this is like working with a moving picture, and that image that you just saw that you were working with might come back or it might not."

The Cirque crew was relatively comfortable with this scenario; some of the Vegas technicians, however, were a little less accustomed to such tenuousness. "The biggest adjustment was dealing with the new facility and the fact that a lot of the light crew and other people on the production weren't used to our process," Lafortune says. "I kept on reminding Jeannettee that the process was going to be unusual. And I tried to bring it up not in an alarming way, but in a way that could be interesting. I wanted to tell her not to be insecure with the fact that a month before the show we hadn't run it once, and we were working on pieces that weren't in chronological order but that would be set in the show.

"But sometimes," he adds, "even I wondered how we were going to make it."

Needless to say, they did make it. Despite all the disagreements, changes, and headaches that are part and parcel of such a process, Mystère, featuring an international cast of 78 artists and acts ranging from a bungee-jumping aerial ballet to a Korean plank-jumping act to an airborne Taiko drum act, opened in January of this year to an enthusiastic opening-night crowd of VIPs from the Strip. The trip from Montreal to Las Vegas was complete. After the premiere, Steve Wynn ran into Berge and congratulated him. "He told me, 'It's a good thing you let your French blood go to your head.'"

Johnson, David, Cirque du Soleil. (Las Vegas, Nevada) (Architecture 94)., Vol. 28, TCI (Theatre Crafts International), 05-01-1994, pp 40(4).