TALK TIME: EOIN BUTLERtalks to Dream Rockwell, artistic director of LA burlesque troupe The Lucent Dossier Experience
Looking at your resumé, you’ve had a very varied career to date
I've been a professional dancer, done comedy skits on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, starred on a soap opera called Another World, toured with the rock band Mötley Crüe . . . That's a lot of stuff, I guess. Touring with Mötley was the most fun. I directed their show and performed burlesque onstage with them.
What direction does a metal band require? Is it like: ‘Vince, Nikki – sing into the same mic! Mick – fall to your knees for the solo?’
Not exactly. The band wanted to do something very theatrical. So, as well as the four band members, there were three additional performers. We did choreographed numbers, aerial numbers, fire-eating – the works.
How did Lucent Dossier happen?
Well, I’d loved doing all of those different things. But I’d never felt that any one job satisfied all of my creative desires. I wanted to find a project on which I could use all of my various skills. I figured that, if I was in a circus, I could do everything.
You work with sword swallowers, stilt walkers, tarot readers, burlesque dancers – misfits of every stripe. Are they a hard group to assemble and marshal?
Honestly, they’re all beautiful people. But they’re also very independent. I mean, a guy who swallows swords is obviously going to be a pretty unique personality. So it’s tricky, because everybody is so all over the place. Don’t get me wrong, that’s what I love about them. But getting them all on the bus by 10am can be a challenge.
Do the different performers have different personality types? Are the belly dancers all extroverts? Are the jesters secretly morose?
Each of us has our own unique personality, I hope. But, as a group, I suppose the aerialists are generally the most hard-working. That’s only because their discipline requires them to be. If a stunt goes wrong, they die. So they tend to be a bit more serious than, say . . .
. . . the bearded lady?
Exactly. But every show we do is developed collaboratively as a team. I’ll generally have the original vision. I’ll take that vision to the group and they’ll say: ‘Well, if we’re doing that, we could also do this and this and this.’ So we build the idea up as a group.
A lot of your shows seem to be set at, or around, the apocalypse. Would that be fair to say?
That’s true. We’re definitely inspired by apocalyptic notions. It feels to me that the world has got a bit too squeaky clean. I’m bored by the straight boxes and clean lines and the cleanliness. I’m more interested in what it would be like if we got our hands a little dirty once in a while.
The other thing I’ve gathered from your shows is that, when the apocalypse comes, it’ll be greeted by lots of women in bikinis . . .
Well, you know, there’s not going to be a lot of fabric around.
What do you pack when you go on tour, and have you ever had any strange reactions from airport security?
Do we get a reaction from airport security? Oh, of course! The goal is not to get searched. But when we do – we have fire tools, we have torches, we all have items of clothing that would not be strictly functional, let’s say. So when we do get searched, those sorts of things can require some explaining! The other thing we always pack when we come to Ireland is wellies. That’s unique to Ireland. The first year we came to Electric Picnic we didn’t know that, and that was bad news.
How many times have you been in Ireland?
Four or five times, I think. I want to say one thing here. We travel all over the world, and Electric Picnic is above and beyond anything we’ve seen anywhere else. There’s a festival in the US called Burning Man and we miss it every year to be at Electric Picnic. That’s how much we love it.
Finally, do people still run away with the circus, or is that phenomenon a thing of the past?
Oh, all the time. In fact, we took a girl with us when we left Ireland last year. She said ‘I’m with you guys now’, and that was it. She came back to LA with us and ended up staying for a couple of months. Another girl called Chloe we met in Ireland three years ago is still in touch with us, and has even performed with us a couple of times. She’s part of the family now.
Lucent Dossier is at Electric Picnic, September 4th-6th. www.lucentdossier.com