Cruise Ships?

[thayr]

Anyone ever do, or have anything to say, about performing on Cruise Liners?

It's something I think I may like to try. The acts I would want to take aboard would be an Aerial act as well as a Rolla Bolla act.

I've heard that some ships aren't set up to allow aerial acts and also that performing a balancing act such as rolla rolla is hard because of movement or the ship being un-even.

[bilbo]

I don't think that you will be able to perform on cruise ships with this kind of acts.

Except for some of the newest ships, the theatre you are performing in are low ceiling. I believe that would be a problem for aerial.

The ships generally start to travel to the next destination while you are performing. yes the rocking of the ship might be a problem for rola bola. I saw once a pianist run after his piano because he forgot to put the brake on.

Cruise ship companies (at least the ones I worked for) would rather book full shows than just acts. normally I was asked to perform 5 minutes during the opening night, two one hour shows back to back (= the same show perform twice in the evening to accomodate with the 2 services in the restaurant) and five minutes during the farewell show of the cruise. Can you perform that much?

Besides that working for a cruise ship is fun, you see beautiful places, meet interesting people. but beware if you stay too long on board. You live in a close space with the same people for a certain amount of time. Little things can become quite big emotionally. I suggest you watch some Big Brother's tapes to see if you can handle it. For this reason I know that I don't work on a cruise ship for more than a month.

I hope that help a little.

Cordially,

Alex

[thayr]

I have a friend currently performing an aerial act along with a small group of other performers. I suppose being a part of a group means the combined acts make up the hour or so of performing time. I myself am able to fill an hour or two with a small tassle and an empty can of pepsi, but that may not be appropriate for the cruise line audiences.

Finding a ship to accommodate an aerial act may not be as challenging as finding a ship that doesn't sway. I wonder if it is even possible for Rolla Bolla to be performed on a ship? Hearing the run-away piano story makes me think it would be challenging.

[Evan Young]

Rola Bola

I read an interview with some juggler kid who did it. But I don't think he did a multiple stack.

[fettucinibrother]

Rocking Stages

Many, many, moons ago, on one of our first ship contracts, we worked with an act, "Robert The Great Excelsior", an Aussie that did some amazing acrobatics and incredible balancing feats. Used to blow me away that he could pull off some of the tricks that he did, on a rocking stage. One of his big finishes was a "one finger" handstand in a champagne bottle on a platform resting on top of 4 champagne bottles. Of course, the guy was nothing but muscle. However, he did mention to me one time that although he could do most of his stuff on the ship, it did put a lot of added stress and strain on his muscles and joints when the ship was rocking. He didn't even juggle in his act, but once backstage he gabbed our clubs and just ripped into an amazing 5 club run, like it was nothing. I wonder what he is up to these days. Anyone out there know him or heard of him. We worked with him back in the early 90's on Carnival, or Kmart of the Seas, as we called them. Remember, it was one of our first ship contracts. We didn't know any better at the time.
Alfredo

[Mr.Taxi Trix]

I used to do an unstacked rolla bolla on board, and the night I performed it was always a "following sea", which made for fairly decent rocking. I always found that it was harder, but that you got so much more credit for doing it at all, that it was a fair trade. At least on the base level, totally doable. Just have a "backup" act for really stormy nights... they'll understand. Cool video on your site.

[fettucinibrother]

Karl is right always have a backup...
I just dug this story up from one of my old postings to another forum from a little while back on this subject. Kind of sums up what performing on a moving stage can lead to...

Living the, "laugh in the face of death, walk the razors edge", life of a Fettucini Brother has presented me with plenty of life or death situations, both onstage and off. In fact we've even died a figurative death on stage a few times (I know, hard to believe, huh?) Although I've managed to avoid any serious injuries onstage, one instance of injury comes to mind...
We were peforming on our first cruise ship contract for Carnival Cruise Lines (Kmart of the Seas is what we ended up dubbing them). We were very excited to have finally realized one of our goals of performing on cruise ships. Ahhh, the pirates life for us... On our first night of performing we happened to be passing thru the Gulf Stream on a particularly stormy night. On top of being excited and nervous, I was quickly becoming seasick. it was after dinner, a few hours before showtime, that I was in my cabin bathroom hugging the toilet with the technicolor yawns, swearing that I would never work another ship again in my entire life, that I realized that I really was not chewing my food very well. I was seeing whole mushrooms from the Chicken Picatta that I had for dinner, coming back up. Between thinking to myself "why the hell would anyone want to perform on a moving stage?", I was also thinking "I gotta chew my food better". I finally gather myself together for our first of 2 sets. I postion stagehands on either side of the stage with puke bags in hand, in case I have to step off stage to yak real quick. The sets going well, relatively smooth seas, till we get the end of our set where we both mount 6 foot unicyles and pass knives. The seas pick up and all the sudden it's like we are performing on a see-saw. My job is to get up first on mine and idle while my partner gets someone from the audience up for him to climb on and maul while helping him get on his. Another words, I gotta idle for a good while. On solid ground, no problem. On a rocking see-saw, big problem. I'm hanging on for dear life, trying to get into the movement, trying to time my idle with the rocking of the stage. When all the sudden, the ship takes a big wave and lurches in a different direction than the normal rocking motion and the next thing I know, I'm going down, "Mayday, Mayday". I happen to get lucky and fall onto the largest member of the band, the 250 lb. piano player. He cusioned my fall quite nicely, but I did manage to bang my hip on a music stand on my way down. A little bruising (of my hip and my ego) but nothing that kept me from getting back up and finishing the act and going to work way too many more ship contracts. Whew! Sorry, that story got a little bit long...
Later,
Alfredo Fettucini