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“WHAT WE’VE FOUND is that people love to celebrate special occasions here—their birthdays, their anniversaries, where they bring long-lost relatives when they want to show them a special thing to do in San Francisco or Seattle,” says Norm Langill. “We’ve become a destination.”
We’re in Seattle, sitting at a table in an ornately decorated spiegeltent, a century-old “mirror-tent” meant for traveling shows, imported from Belgium. The subject is Teatro ZinZanni, a bold dinner-caba-ret show that Langill’s nonprofit arts organization, One Reel, created a decade ago. It’s an hour before the extravaganza begins, and I’m wondering how this offbeat, spendy show not only survived 2009, but actually has plans to expand. Langill suggests that even in a recession people are willing to pay for something very special for very special occasions.
The company, a Costco member, found a niche and is making it work, in good times and bad. “It’s become a place where people celebrate or have a special moment in their lives,” says Langill, the show’s artistic director. Case in point: About 60 percent of Teatro’s customers are repeat visitors.
Surprises come in droves when the topic is Teatro ZinZanni. The show, currently offered in Seattle and San Francisco, defies definition. It’s a blend of vaudeville, modern dance, comedy, improv, gymnastics, opera, live music and more, all loosely linked through a plot that plays out on the spiegeltent floor over three peripatetic hours and a five-course gourmet meal.
The setting is a big part of the draw. Nearly three stories high and 72 feet across, the spiegeltent’s interior
is adorned with rich velvet drapery and gold brocade. Its walls are covered with mirrors and stained glass that complement hand-carved interior columns.
Langill created Teatro ZinZanni (the name is nonsensical, but the Italian zanni is the origin of “zany”) as an event for One Reel to produce during the winter, when they weren’t busy with summer shows. In the early 1990s, he stumbled across a spiegeltent in Barcelona and immediately began dreaming of the possibilities of a dinner theater in it. He was able to persuade the tent’s owners— descendants of renowned craftsman Willem Klessens, the tent’s builder—to allow the tent to come to America, and the show debuted in Seattle in 1998.
The best-laid plans
The original plan, Langill relates, was for Teatro ZinZanni to run for six weeks. But it opened to rave reviews and ran for 14 sold-out months. “It was a huge hit from about the first week onward,” he says. “And in show business, when you get a hit, it’s a rare occurrence, so we thought, ‘Well, we’d better learn how to do this long term.’ ”
That meant finding a second spiegeltent and adding a show in San Francisco; building a solid company of 150 employees; and, most important, maintaining the show’s trademark spontaneity and appeal. For the last point, completely new shows are introduced about three times a year.
The version playing on a Thursday night in September in the spiegeltent in Seattle was “Bottega ZinZanni.” Its hero is Caesar, a once famous figure in the European fashion world whose purple hair
KEITH BROFSKY
36 The Costco Connection NOVEMBER 2009
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