by Russell Boniface

Entertainment architect Mark Fisher, known for designing spectacular stages for rock concerts and Super Bowl shows, has created a theater at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas with no stage. Instead, for the Cirque du Soleil show KÀ, Fisher has created an environment in which acrobats perform on tilting and rotating platforms, leap off balconies into midair, and fly over a bottomless pit.

Verticality reigns
Two years in the making at an official cost of $165 million, KÀ opened last November at MGM Grand and currently does 10 shows per week. The production uses no dialogue; instead, it’s a lavish eye-feast of martial arts, acrobatics, and weightlessness in a 1,950-seat venue. The story focuses on twin brother and sister who find their separate destinies. (Kà is the Egyptian concept of spiritual duality.) But there are plenty of bad guys floating around (literally) to keep the adventure moving and the pyrotechnics firing.

Fisher wanted a sense of verticality for KÀ. He created two platforms that orient in any direction. They rise from what the audience perceives as a bottomless pit, 120 feet across, where a conventional stage would be. One is a 1,250-square-foot, 175-ton hydraulically powered platform about the size of a typical theater stage. It rises into view during the show, tilting from horizontal to vertical and revolving 360 degrees. At one point, it becomes completely vertical, changing the setting from a beach to a cliff. The smaller platform is a 900-square-foot, 40-ton deck that can simultaneously lift, rotate, and tilt while sliding open like three drawers.

The stages serve as the settings for a battlefield, beach, forest, cliff, and mountaintop. The actors must perform many of their maneuvers while the platforms they are on move in all directions right under their feet. If they fall off, there’s a 60-foot drop into the pit onto an out-of-site airbag.

In addition, four-story balconies with metal-beam bridges at each level sideline the theater, from which actors leap to “fly” over the audience. Lighting and special video effects play a big role, e.g., solid can change instantly to liquid, then to fire. A raised ceiling heightens the feeling of verticality.

Transformational environments
Fisher designs stages to let the environment transform during a performance. The challenge of KÀ is that it is a narrative, as opposed to, say, a rock concert, so the visuals must tell the story. Fisher describes the design as “industrial Baroque” in response to the vertical spaces of cathedrals. Fisher likens the experience of watching the show to a live version of digitally enhanced films such as The Matrix.

“By creating a stage surface that can be oriented in any direction to create performances that at some moments seem almost weightless, the show reproduces live some of the disorientating qualities of contemporary blockbusters,” Fisher says. “The fact that the action is presented live, with real flesh and blood performers, increases the adrenalin rush for the audience.”

Guy Caron, director of creation for KÀ, points out that the show is not a circus act. “It’s circus skill we use to introduce on the script,” he says. “We introduce all the performances on the storyline, like a silent movie. You are going to be surprised . . . but a good surprised.”

Copyright 2005 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved. Home Page