Interview: Meet the Acrobuffos of AIR PLAY at The New Victory Theatre

AIR PLAY, written, created by, and starring Seth Bloom and Christina Gelsone, the Acrobuffos, is set to run at the New Victory Theatre from February 11th until March 6th. It features air sculptures in collaboration with Daniel Wurtzel and direction by West Hyler. With knowing smiles and suitcases full of surprises, this comedic duo elicits gales of laughter as they transform ordinary objects into uncommon beauty. This delightful, flightful homage to the power of air will take your breath away as the Acrobuffos goad gravity and make really, really, really high art out of the very thing we breathe.

Seth Bloom and Christina Gelsone are the performers and not-so-typical clowns behind the award-winning theater company Acrobuffos. Partners on stage and off since 2005, Bloom and Gelsone use their signature mix of circus and street theater to create wordless comedic works around the world, performing for audiences of all ages in over 25 countries, including Afghanistan, China, and Scotland. Since developing Air Play as part of New Victory LabWorks in 2014, they've brought Air Play to over 75 theaters on 5 continents, and are now returning to the New Victory stage for the second time.

BroadwayWorld chatted with the pair of clowns about the creation of their show and their unique form of circus art.

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Considering the name of your duo, to what extent is your work inspired by the physical comedy of Commedia dell'Arte and Opera Buffa?

Ooh, a history buff! You're the first to ask that. The Acrobuffos was the name of our first show, which was indeed a modern commedia act with half-masks. Eventually the title morphed into our company name. We now jokingly define an acrobuffo as "a silent comic actor creating spectacular feats of laughter.

What brought you to marry science and circus together?

We were busy marrying kinetic sculpture with comedy, and the science came and bit us by surprise. Air flow, barometric pressure, elevation, theater house design, fan blade shapes, even audience body heat and open doors all matter. The craziest part is navigating a twisting 30 foot by 30 foot piece of white silk, and the air is invisible! Is it going to fall on top of us? Did the HVAC come on mid-act? Is the audience heat sucking it off the stage? All that is racing through our heads, and the audience is only seeing this beautiful fabric flying way up high, sometimes looking like a jellyfish or a whale.

What advice do you have for people who want to create their own work from scratch, just as you two have?

Don't be afraid of hard work! This show took 5 years for us to build with Daniel Wurtzel, the kinetic sculptor. It's about an hour, but we made over three hours of material, not including the time it took to learn how to climb into giant balloons with regular success. (A word to the wise when inside a balloon: don't fart.) When you make your own original show, you end up with amazing surprises you never dreamed of when you started. Like when we fly two 20 foot pieces of silk off the stage and over the audience's head, and we can manipulate the ends of the fabric to just barely touch their outstretched arms. Pure magic, and only fully enjoyed with a live audience.

Why did you choose to make the show nonverbal? What effect would you say the lack of speech has on the show?

The true answer is that a silent, comedic show with so much beauty engages a different part of an audience's imagination, a kind of pre-verbal awe and childlike wonder, with warm-hearted laughs. Each person writes their own story as they watch the show. The true-er answer is we wanted to eat food all over the world, and making non-speaking shows was the best way to do that. Air Play has been around the world three or four times, so our sneaky plan has worked out quite well.

What's your favorite scientific circus stunt from the performance?

It changes from day to day, depending on the air, the audience, and the theater. Sometimes after we throw sparkling confetti into the big air vortex, it will gently fall down from the ceiling for a whole minute afterwards. Sometimes our two long fabrics fly together perfectly high over our heads, entangling and then separating, like a pas de deux. Most of all we love when the giant white fabric falls just right, covering us together, and landing in time with the music ending. When that happens, the audience bursts into applause, without fail. Everyone has a different favorite part, but the snow flying up over the whole stage is the probably the most popular. One time, in Austria, we were onstage, and we heard this man's voice in the darkened audience sputter, "It's only physics!" and his date retorted, "It's so beautiful!" They were both right.

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See AIR PLAY at The New Victory Theatre from February 11th through March 6th! Purchase tickets here.

Photo Credit: Florence Montmare

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