Cirque at Disney Village is presenting Drawn to Life during a pandemic which has killed over one million 300.000 Americans. Pam has been wanting to see this show for several years but we have held off because of the pandemic. With her niece in town we finally relented and went down to Disney.
I packed my smallest sketchbook and minimal supplies. I knew Disney guards would be on the lookout for any sign of creativity to shut down. Our plan was to have Pam carry in my sketch bag. We ended up being pulled over and checked anyway. The bag was fully inspected but they didn’t confiscate any art supplies. I had to empty all my pockets and my mountain of snot wads filled the bin along with my phone and wallet. I then had to be metal checked by a wand and my crotch kept beeping. We did eventually did get into Disney Springs.
After we parked, I thought I would get away with just wearing my cloth mask while we were outdoors, but when I saw the insanely packed throngs crowded together, I had to layer in my KN95 as well. Literally no one in the crowd was masked. It was a dystopian nightmare. This was the perfect place to spread disease all around the world. It is a small world after all.
Pam did her homework and found seats that were at the back of a section on the aisle, so we didn’t have people breathing down out necks. No one sat in the caged off section next to me but Pam’s niece had to deal with a rude dude who was “man spreading” and leaning into her. With so many empty seats in the theater, I don’t know why he had to sit right next to her. That kind of detracted from her enjoyment of the show.
Oh yes, the show. The set was like a Disney animators desk, and since I sit at mine every day it felt familiar. The story involved a dead dad telling his daughter she should create. There is always a dead parent in any Disney tale. The villain was a wad of crumpled up animation paper and the Disney executives were represented as two foot high trolls who carried large garbage cans on their backs. Some actors wore masks which I appreciated.
The thing the production truly got right was a crew of guys who shot large rubber bands at each other. One of them shot a large rubber band out into the audience and mimed for the audience member to shoot it back. The audience member tried but shot it backwards into the row behind him. Scenes in the paper animation days were held together with large red rubber bands, There were many rubber band wars in the Disney studio and you could build a reputation not just by how you drew but how accurately you could fire off a rubber band. Animation desks were barricades in an endless ongoing rubber band war. Out of nowhere a rubber band might bounce off the ceiling and land hard on the drawing you were working on to remind you that there was no truce or cease fire.
The athletics in this show were rather tame compared to other Cirque shows Pam and I have seen. There was a lot of actors “acting” like they were drawing and plenty of projections from past animated scenes. The show actually made me a bit sad. Disney built it’s reputation on creating amazing hand drawn animation and then threw that tradition away. This felt like looking at a quaint bygone era of ancient vaudeville, and an ancient, lost, hand drawn art form.