National Geographic Today
In her Cirque du Soleil costume—a tutu of bright yellow feathers, a yellow-, red-, and purple-striped Lycra bodysuit, and an explosive headdress—Elena Day could have been plucked straight from the pages of a Dr. Seuss story and its colorful characters.
Day landed the role of the flightless Green Bird in Cirque du Soleil's La Nouba after a decade of improvisational theater and dance. The work took her from the Midwestern United States to Spain and France, where she auditioned for the present role.
Before attending college, Day, who has a background in dance, had no thoughts of joining a circus. But at Oberlin College in Ohio, she began experimenting with masked theater and improvisation in college theater productions.
"It's the humor together with the physicality of improv performances and the huge audience response that really got me hooked," says Day.
Day had no desire to follow the more traditional theatrical route "like Yale drama school." She applied to the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris to learn a more physical style of acting that emphasizes the use of masks, mime, movement, and tragedy, and the art of clowning and buffoonery.
"Buffoon, or a fool, is a mischievous character that incorporates the grotesque, the surreal and fantastic, and interacts with the audience—by winking, for example," says Day. The bird character Day plays in La Nouba combines elements of the clown and the buffoon.
The first year at Lecoq was filled with basic training that involved activities such as being an animal, or a color, or a food, or anything in nature with an energetic vibration, says Day. It was pretty abstract.
The second year, after two thirds of the class had been cut, the remaining students were introduced to the traditional art of clowning and masks, in which performers must learn to use their body energetically and expressively.
Street Performers
From Lecoq, Day and some fellow students took their clowning to the streets of Europe.
"Clowning was hard to do on the street. We were trying to pack red-nosed clowning, some mask theater, and fire juggling all into 20 minutes," says Day. "But we couldn't get the audience to stick around. It was too much material and we were too inexperienced."
Reverting to the more crowd-pleasing feats, Day's troupe whittled its act down to the basics. In France and Spain, the troupe members walked into local restaurants with their fiery torches and began performing for their captive audiences.
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