‘One Drop’ goes all out for water issues

So this is the restrained affair that Friday’s “One Night for One Drop” turned out to be: More than 230 performers on the “O” stage for a one-night performance with unique content, including a piece of original music by film composer Danny Elfman and an appearance from 12-year-old vocal wunderkind Jackie Evancho.

It also will be the only Cirque show in town Friday, closing down six of Cirque’s seven Las Vegas titles that would typically be in business that night.

And yes, there is a big party. “On the pool. We’re going to be on the Bellagio pool,” says Jerry Nadal, who heads Cirque’s resident shows division for all the Las Vegas-based titles. “I’ll leave it at that.”

Walking on water fits the theme of One Drop, the foundation for water-related micro-loans, advocacy and education that Laliberte founded in 2007.

Friday’s show and related activity such as a live auction hope to raise between $2 million and $3 million, with $1 million of that earmarked for the Springs Preserve and its youth education programs.

But it is also the gala that is pretty much expected of Cirque if the city’s biggest entertainment employer wants to make a fundraising splash in Las Vegas, where mega-benefits have an image to fulfill: Andre Agassi phoning up the likes of Elton John to play his Grand Slam for Children, or Keep Memory Alive’s 80th birthday party on April 13 not just for Michael Caine or Quincy Jones, but both of them at once.

Now it’s Cirque’s turn to put together a guest list that includes Michael Phelps and (probably) Britney Spears. Now it’s the company’s time to offer $250,000 sponsorships, ask for donations and discounts, and hit up vendors and suppliers they have used for years without asking for favors in return.

“I think there is a bit of a quid pro quo there,” Nadal says. “People are more than willing to assist you with whatever your goals are, but they know that you’ve been there to help them as well.”

Cirque’s community contributions include an auditorium at Agassi’s charter school and a founding donation to The Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

But One Drop has a global reach — Prince Albert II of Monaco is the event’s honorary chairman — and about half the audience filling the 1,890-seat theater at $1,500 or more per ticket will be from out of town.

Last year, Laliberte pledged a week’s worth of revenue from most of its Las Vegas shows, about $1.3 million, to the water advocacy organization. That donation will be repeated this year.

But Laliberte also said last year, “We reinvent(ed) circus, and in Vegas we would like to reinvent fundraising night.”

Las Vegas has the company’s biggest concentration of resources outside its Montreal headquarters, with about 1,700 employees here. But Nadal remembers the brainstorming session where Laliberte “didn’t want to do a standard dinner with entertainment afterwards. He said, ‘What else can you guys come up with?’ ”

The answer: “What’s the one thing we do that we’re known for? It’s performing,” Nadal says. “Whatever we do, performance has to be the central element of it.”

The company recruited former casting director Krista Monson to oversee the production, tapping her institutional memory of performers she hired over the years and their skills.

But here’s where the “don’t overreach” comes in. Monson is only one of three full-time employees who worked five months to assemble a show with volunteer labor from both the performers and another 120 stagehands and craftsmen.

“For the first month or two talking about crew and cost, I had this number of 60 in my mind,” Monson says. “That’s a big cast. But as we continued to let ourselves develop, it grew to more than 200. It’s fair to say we all didn’t realize how far it would go.”

Beyond the symbolic statement, logistics more than economics drove the decision to close down Friday’s other Cirque shows; the missed performance will be made up elsewhere in the calendar year. Still, Nadal says, “To go dark on a Friday night, in the middle of spring break, that’s big.”

Cirque also worked to communicate the production is not a “greatest hits” cut-and-paste job but an original story drawn from themes of water-related concerns.

“It’s linked with three words: Tell the story,” Monson says. “What I don’t want to do is just make it about cool acts.”

One Drop has more of a pop and rock soundtrack than most Cirque titles. And it reached out to new collaborators such as Sonya Tayeh, the choreographer best known for her work on TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance.”

So much went into the one-off — “the premiere and closing night all in one, within an hour and a half,” Monson says with a laugh — that it’s now being filmed. For the next week, the show can be viewed on onedrop.org for a $5 donation.

Some performers are more allied to the cause, while others may be lured simply by the chance to break up the usual routine, much in the way song-and-dance performers display their versatility in Golden Rainbow’s annual benefits to fight AIDS.

Whatever got them there, it got them to the Bellagio in the afternoons — and some nights, from midnight to 3 a.m. The show came together in pieces, with something approaching a finished product only visible to its creators in the past week.

“In one way it’s a very centralized creation, but it’s very displaced,” Monson says. Each of the seven resident Cirque shows is “like their own little city.”

But in the end? “Everybody’s owning it,” she says. “It’s less and less about me and more about everyone participating.”

Nadal likens the production to the Academy Awards or Grammys: “That’s it. That’s your opportunity. You’ve got one shot at it.”

Understandable then, when Monson says “I’m choosing to remain vulnerable to the end.”

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.