The performers in the new circus, Cuisine and Confessions, literally cook for their audience in the midst of navigating mesmerizing acrobatics. They bake bread, whisk omelettes, and cook pasta, all while flipping and juggling across the stage.
You can watch and eat the food from Cuisine and Confessions, a production of The 7 Finger circus company, when the show comes to the Cutler Majestic Theater. It runs from July 12th through August 7th.
“We are doing acrobatics, and dance, and storytelling, and song, and cooking on stage, and even sharing that food with the audience. So, it is a bit unique in that sense,” said Shana Carroll, the creator of Cuisine and Confessions and the founding artistic director for The 7 Fingers.
Carroll was in the kitchen with her husband when she cooked up the idea for the show. She was inspired by the thought that life happens in the kitchen, and she decided that she wanted to portray that notion on stage through a circus performance. While ruminating on this idea, Carroll remembered a book her grandmother wrote called, “Young and Hungry.” The book was a combination of a cookbook and memoir, featuring recipes and anecdotes. “We decided that that would be an interesting format. That we can have these recipes that are recipes from the actual performers childhood and ancestors, and combining that with some sort of anecdote of their life,” said Carroll.
The resulting show truly is an unlikely amalgam of cooking and circus. The performers flip around real ovens and juggle real cooking utensils. Flour flies up from every corner of the stage, accentuating the beautiful concentric movements of the acrobatics. “We cook an omelette, we juggle the whisks and we are cooking the omelette live on stage while we are flipping around and juggling the whisks,” says Carroll.
When the food is done, the performers feed a few lucky audience members the spoils of their labor. “It’s interesting, you can tell the people who have either seen the show before or have heard through word of mouth who really know to come to the edge of the stage for the food and get their portion right away. Others say, ‘Oh shoot I missed the pasta,” you’ll have to come back,” said Carroll.
