I’ve never been a big fan of circuses. I always have visions of the tightrope walker slipping and falling head first into the path of an elephant who’d been whipped into obedience a wee too many times. Or the clown on meth who flips out and decides to randomly fire into the audience. Only with real bullets and not water balloons. And then there’s the evil ringmaster with his Snidley Whiplash mustache!

Luckily my parents much preferred torturing us on the ski slopes or on rocky, dusty trails into the back country. Bears versus demented clowns, hum, I don’t know. Which one would you prefer?

However, many years ago I visited a friend in Las Vegas who was the “queen of props” for Cirque du Soleil’s Mystere and she was able to wrangle us “very special seats” for the midnight show. Despite my fear of clowns, we just couldn’t pass up very special seats to a Vegas show even if it was a circus. I hadn’t seen Jo for many years and was surprised that my brilliant friend, a person so well read and so knowledgeable in so many fields, would find joy and fulfillment dealing with, as she called them, “childish Russian acrobats with garlic tinged breath.” But she did.

Just before midnight, we slipped through a guarded back door and then rode the freight elevator up, up, up to a room which was basically a glass bird cage suspended from the ceiling. There, a team of technicians monitoring the sound and light equipment greeted us with a list of instructions:

• No talking!!!
• no sneezing!!!
• no coughing!!!
• no photos!!!
• no eating!!!
• no drinking!!!
• no recordings!!!
• and, don’t dare move from your seats until the break!!!

Our “seats” were actually a bench that faced a wall of windows sloping dangerously forward. Far, far below we could see the stage and the audience as they trickled in to find their seats. To be in that box as the theater went dark and all you could see were the muted lights on the various instrumental panels was … well I couldn’t breathe. It became even more surreal when several acrobats on swings dropped down from the ceiling, their faces so close to the glass we could see them chewing gum!

Then the beating of the giant taiko drums announced the start of the show. The acrobats flipped over backwards and dropped headfirst down towards the audience as search lights highlighted the startled faces in the audience. The acrobats flew over the audience like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz until this creature appeared.

The story line is impossible to follow as act after act explodes upon the stage, each one more daring and mind-blogging than the one before. If you’ve never seen a Cirque du Soleil performance, it’s hard to believe the acrobats, dancers, contortionists and magicians are really human beings. We were bedazzled, shocked and almost dizzy with excitement as we left the magic lightbox and exited into the now quiet casinos of the Treasure Island Resort.

Jo was dying. I think she lasted another year and it was a rough year. But the cast of Cirque du Soleil all signed a giant Get Well card for their “Queen of Props” which she cherished until the end.

And that’s where I got the idea for Flipka, the psychiatrist who ran away and joined the circus.