Cross & Crescent

Only about 200 people in the world can do what Bill Auld (Bowling Green State 1994) does for a living.

He travels the world flying people on wires about the size of a pencil lead.

“I don’t think I have a healthy enough respect for most heights,” he says. “I never did as a kid and my hobby was jumping off of things.”

Before Auld became a flying director for Hall Associates Flying Effects based in Chicago, Illinois, he also jumped out of airplanes for three years with the Airborne Corps as a member of the U.S. Army.

Auld says his work doing performance rigging doesn’t seem like work. “I basically travel the world and play with fun stuff.”

Broadway Debut

In February 2007, Auld made his professional Broadway debut as the technical director and the one in charge of rigging the circus gear for the production of “Lookingglass Alice” at the New Victory Theater.

“Truthfully, it was very fun to do,” he says. “Sort of the odd reality of it is that it’s very much similar to every other show you’ve ever done. You’re just doing it in a different location.”

There are only three national companies in the United States that do performer rigging. Hall Associates Flying Effects does aerial and wire work effects, primarily for live entertainment, some film work, industrial work, and the circus.

About half the work Auld does is for classic shows like “The Wizard of Oz,” “Peter Pan,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Angels in America,” and various religious shows.

Most of the work Auld does is domestic with much of it in the Midwest. For shows like “Beauty and the Beast,” his company has standard, stock rigging that doesn’t require any new design work.

Customized Rigging

The other half of Auld’s time is spent rigging newly designed and customized performances.

For example, he recently did the rigging for a circus show called “Rites and Rituals” by Circus Nexus. The parameters involved rigging four aerial acts, having to change venues frequently, and being able to set up and take down in a matter of hours.

The producer of the show is a choreographer so the show involves classic ballet combined with circus acts, similiar to “Cirque du Soleil.”

“That’s one of the things that they worried about,” he says regarding being compared to Cirque du Soleil. “Are we too close? Are we doing something that somebody else is doing? How are we going to establish our own identity? So when we pitched ideas and we talked about it with them, about what they needed, that was part of the guidelines they set down for us.”

Not surprisingly, Auld says Cirque du Soleil is at the pinnacle of his business. Currently, Cirque produces about 11 different shows around the world.

“One of the things they do very, very well is they manage their brand identity, their artistic identity,” he says. “So when you go it’s different…but all of them are the same. It’s that same prism you reflect the view through. And when you go in you expect a certain level of spectacle, certain level of quality.”

In addition to working with Circus Nexus, Auld also has worked in the National Theater of Paris, which is the French equivalent of the Kennedy Center. He has toured England and traveled throughout Korea with the Korean-language version of “Peter Pan.”

Auld’s most notable performers he has worked with include musical groups Incubus and Rascal Flatts, other circus acts like The Flying Wallendas, and actor/entertainers Bill Cosby and David Schwimmer.

“What I’m in the business of is the science of making art,” he says. “Some people are very right brain (artistic)…and some are left brain (concrete absolute). I actually play pretty fast and loose right down the middle.”

With the market saturation of video games and movies loaded with special effects, Auld says audiences today expect to see a lot of movement and action in live productions.

“People today are a little more savvy,” Auld says. “After the ‘Matrix’ came out, everybody is more savvy as to what special affects can be. Their tolerance for forgiving is not as high in audiences today. They are a little more media aware.”

He says we are living in the modern age of flying and performance rigging that began in the 1980s, when it started to mirror what was being done in the movies.

Attention to Detail

Auld says there are some unique comparisons between performance rigging and jumping out of airplanes.

“One of the things that being in the Airborne Corps did that is very similar… is the reason I like to do rigging in entertainment is…you have to get everything right, every time,” he says. “There is no room for error. There’s no room for anything other than perfection. And that’s what I like about it.”

A lot of times in his industry, Auld says people get into arguments and he has seen them argue for days over what color blue to use or which shoes an actor needs to wear.

With his particular discipline, there’s no arguing. The laws of physic dictate what will happen.

“I have to be perfect,” he says. “That actually stems from the Airborne and the military. There was an adage in the Airborne that you ‘tie your shoes correctly or somebody dies.’”

The adage conveys that when you pull your rip cord you don’t actually have the chance to wonder if you packed your parachute properly.

“You can get into these horrible disagreements over a matter of opinions,” he says. “The job I do is really straight forward. I have to be perfect every time or somebody’s life is in danger. So those stakes are what I like to play for.”

Every week somewhere in the world someone is coming up with new performance rigging ideas, and Auld and his coworkers are eager to build it and try it out themselves in their shop.

When they design performance rigging, there is an industry standard for protocols that says a cable will generally break at 1,000 pounds. So they use a five to one ratio for load bearing, and when they are flying people they increase it to eight to one for minimum breakage.

“Most first-time flyers are very nervous about it,” he says. “That’s part of the safety we design into the system” he says about the extra support.

Lambda Chi Brotherhood

In addition to obtaining his undergraduate degree from Bowling Green State University, Auld also earned a master’s degree there. He later received a second master’s degree in technical theater from Northern Illinois University, one of the few schools in the country to offer a performance rigging program.

Auld says that in addition to the Airborne Corps, Lambda Chi was the experience that shaped him to become who he is today.

His friends recruited him to join Lambda Chi and he says the individual interactions he had with his brothers were his most memorable events.

“What I knew at the time, and what I appreciate now, was that I wasn’t joining the Fraternity for quantitative benefits,” he says. “I wasn’t joining it for anything empirical. I was joining it for something a little more spiritual than that, a little more ethereal.”