The Big Tent Goes Up

David Millman is the technical operations director for the traveling show and circus that just left New York City and will soon open in Hartford, alongside Interstate 91.  For now, it’s a patch of asphalt loaded with a bunch of equipment and giant cooling machines.  In a week, it will be teaming with acrobats, insects, and audience members.

 

“The tent came in yesterday, we raised the mast, we put the cupola, which is basically the top part with the canvas, put it in place by the end of the day yesterday at about six o’clock, we started at about eight o’clock this morning, raising up the cupola, and then unfolding out all the canvas, lacing it all together, and then, lifting it up to here, it finished at about 12 o’clock to get to this point today.”

 

Alan Broadnax is 25.  He’s a temp worker from Blue Hills Avenue in Hartford here for the day.  He needs a job.  Cirque du Soleil needs his hands.

 

“I mean one day I want to own my own company one day, open up my own business, either a bank or you know a restaurant.  Just something like that. I got in through Labor Ready, which is the temp agency. We’re helping build, put up the tents, stuff like that."

 

To get the tent up takes a lot of hands like his.  Dozens of people in hardhats and orange vests make their way under the tent to lift dozens of metal poles, the pole bottoms scraping along the asphalt as they go.  One by one the poles are raised and ratcheted down.  In just a few minutes, the sides of the big tent have been raised, and it’s on to the next task.

 

“For the rest of the day, we continue with the tension, we level the cupola, and then we start putting the side walls up. And now that the tent is up, the show technical moves in, we start hanging things on the mast and start building the stage.”

 

“It’s Wednesday and we have a show on Wednesday, basically we have a rehearsal on Wednesday, so it takes seven days.”

 

Cirque du Soleil opens in Hartford June 17.