The Skywatcher makeup – two hours to apply – two minutes to remove!Now, by a show of hairy hands, how many other men out there face the daily challenge of trying to enjoy a good meal without smearing your lipstick or blotching your makeup?… Okay, okay, before you clobber me with your man-purse, let me explain where I’m coming from on this! “Oh, Sh*t!” For several years, I played the lead clown/character role of The Skywatcher in Cirque du Soleil’s touring show, ‘Varekai’. It took 2 hours for me to apply this detailed makeup … lipstick included! After the marathon makeup session I’d CLICK TO READ MORE

Posted on August 12, 2014 gordbob by Gordon White It’s the dead of winter and my view from this week’s hotel room looks bleak. A sub-zero morning that’s brightened, but by no means warmed, by the rising sun. Today’s high is optimistically forecast to be -20C, so I guess I won’t unpack the ‘Speedo’ just yet. This week our show is playing ‘somewhere in Ohio’… I hesitate to reveal the name of this city to protect the innocent, as this anonymous metropolis has also been dubbed ‘the armpit of Ohio’ by superior beings who obviously live elsewhere. The arena, our performance venue, CLICK TO READ MORE

Contrary to what some people might presume, being a clown in a Cirque du Soleil touring production is not a job for pansies. “Au contraire!”, one might say…(unless, of course, one doesn’t ‘parles francais’!) Performing slapstick and physical comedy can take its toll on one’s body, and occasionally in the heat of the action, injuries do happen. Once upon a time, while on tour, I had a medical checkup for an injury which I sustained while doing a show. The appointed doctor happened to also be the official team doctor for a couple of that city’s professional big-league sports teams. CLICK TO READ MORE

Not a long, long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away…actually, it was 45-ish years ago in downtown Vancouver, when I was a fledgling actor that was just cast as a uniformed Vancouver police officer in a TV cop show. The day’s filming location was inside a below street level restaurant, thus no windows. So, when filming broke for a lunchbreak, most of the cast & crew headed back up to street level to soak in the sunshine and fresh air. While I was roosting atop of a concrete planter overlooking the busy sidewalk and major downtown intersection, CLICK TO READ MORE

Disclaimer: The following story is true. Although some of it seems exaggerated, it’s the way I care to remember the events unfolding…okay!!??? This story takes place in my apartment in Sydney, Australia, while I was on tour with Cirque du Soleil, and it goes something like this… I suddenly don’t think I like Australia very much, having just been introduced to one of it’s natural phenomenons, the ‘Huntsman Spider’, which somehow managed to scale the outside of the building to my balcony, on the 17th floor. I first encountered this oversized ‘infant’ arachnid when I opened the drapes. There it was, CLICK TO READ MORE