Director unfazed by scale of shows

When you spot the same dancers in more than one show, you realize Las Vegas can be an insular entertainment world. But PBS airing the Metropolitan Opera's "Ring" cycle this week is a grateful reminder that we do fit into the larger universe, too.

Hard times and tight budgets on the Strip make it hard to remember 2004, when Cirque du Soleil lavished up to $200 million on its operatic "Ka."

Director Robert Lepage later did actual opera, the controversial take on Wagner's "Ring" epics, which air Tuesday through Friday on KLVX-TV, Channel 10, after a Monday documentary.

The Met moves on to Wagner's "Parsifal" in February, with Francois Girard, director of Cirque's upcoming "Zarkana" at the helm. "It's almost a coincidence, two Quebec directors at the Met," Girard says with a chuckle.

But is it really? A director who proves his ability to control an expensive, unwieldy project becomes a go-to guy. "Batman Live," which plays the Thomas & Mack Center next month, is under the helm of Anthony Van Laast , who helped launch the Strip's modern era of spectacle with his work on "Siegfried & Roy at The Mirage" and "EFX."

Perhaps it's more surprising that the director of Cirque's back-to-circus-basics "Zarkana" - opening at Aria Nov. 1 - first made a splash with the avant-garde movie bio "Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould."

"For five years I was offered any music film and any biographical film there was in Hollywood," Girard says. "They will trust what you've already done, not what you have in mind for the future.

"But it's all right," he adds, noting financiers prefer a proven winner.

But Girard resisted offers to repeat himself. "I guess because I started doing big work when I was pretty young, I became scale insensitive," he says. "I'm not excited by scale, I'm excited by putting the stage on fire. That could happen so many different ways.

"From the outside it might look like the step between Radio City (where 'Zarkana' played during the summer) and the Metropolitan is a big one, but that's an outside view," he says. "I swear to God, I talk to a clown like I talk to a soprano.

"You go to the artist and you feel what they need. They need to be loved, they need to be kicked in the ass, they need to be screamed at, they need to be intellectually challenged. You have to feel what they need, and it's all the same.

"They are a bunch of exhibitionists. And I have to make them meet the voyeurs," he says, adding with a laugh, "does that make me a pimp?"

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.