Superstar chef Rick Bayless and Lookingglass Theatre are restaging “Cascabel” (now officially known as “Rick Bayless in Cascabel”) this month at The Owen Theatre at Goodman.
Rather than review the show again—news flash: it’s still great—I had the opportunity to sit down with Rick himself at Frontera Grill to talk about the show, the creative process behind it, and why they (Rick, along with co-creators and Lookingglass Ensemble MembersTony Hernandez and Heidi Stillman) decided to restage it this summer. As a bonus, Make It Better’s very own videographer, Katy Nielsen, has put together a short video of the interview, marrying it with scenes from the show itself, to give you a sampling of what you can expect to experience.
Make It Better: I’m so excited that you are doing “Cascabel” again, because, I have to say, it was one of my favorite shows that I’ve seen in the last few years. It’s the confluence of everything: art, theater, dance and food altogether…to me it was just the happiest marriage possible.
Rick Bayless: That’s exactly what we were going for with “Cascabel.” It’s a different way of telling a story, and I said there’s many ways we can tell beautiful stories through dishes we make and serve to our guests in the restaurant. You can tell stories with circus performers as [Lookingglass] did when they did “Hephaestus,” the Greek myth, or their most famous piece, “Lookingglass Alice,” which they’ve done and brought back many times, told by many circus performers. And we wanted to take that—my love for telling stories with food, Lookingglass’ love for telling stories with circus performers—marry that with song, with dance, with very unexpected things, like we have our comic relief in the form of a couple of clowns that do some pretty amazing work as well…and offer what we hope is a very sensual way to understand the role of food in our lives.
You know, I have to say it was unexpectedly sensual when I saw it the first time (April 2012). Can you tell us the genesis of how “Cascabel” came to be?
When I went to see “Hephaestus,” I remember being blown away by their ability to tell the story of this amazing Greek tale with all these circus performers. And it was seamless as far as I was concerned. You’re talking about a tale that’s all about these Greek gods that have super-human powers. And when you watch circus performers, [you] feel like they have super-human powers, too. And I loved that way of telling the story. And I thought to myself, you know, we have focused a whole lot through the years on collaborations around food and telling stories through food. And I thought wow, what if we took that idea…sometimes I taste things and think, “Wow! This makes me want to fly.” And then translate that with the circus performers into flight. So I started talking with the two that created Hephaestus: Heidi Stillman and Tony Hernandez. We started having these conversations, thinking could we tell this story about a meal but tell it with circus performers. Then Heidi’s husband [Rick Sims] is a composer, and he wrote gorgeous music for us. Then we hooked up with Chiara Mangiamelli, who’s this incredible flamenco dancer and her accompanist, Carlo Basile, and all of a sudden we had these ways to tell this story about food through so many different avenues.
So it kind of just came about by starting a conversation and keeping it going over a two-year period, and finally the board of Lookingglass said yes, we should do it.
Having worked in catering, I know how difficult it is to put out a meal in a strange setting; you never know what you’re going to get. Obviously you have the luxury here of setting up a kitchen of sorts, but how does that work? How do you make 194 meals and keep it so consistent?
We do all the prep work here at Frontera Grill. At 3 p.m., we cart it all over to the theater and we start the final assembly and preparations of things. So I had to put together a menu that was actually going to be doable. To start off, we wanted to serve the first course pre-plated, which I usually hate, like when you sit down at the banquet and it’s already there. So we decided instead to make it part of the story, and we wrapped it in tea leaves and then covered it in popcorn, so it almost looks sculptural when you sit down, but you can’t see the food. And then as the story progresses, part of it is the audience uncovering it, and then smelling it, then tasting it…all of that is done in unison, which is what I want to do.
Part of my goal with “Cascabel” is to get people to pay attention to what they’re eating and to say, how does this affect you? And we try to lead you down that path in many ways. Because how frequently do we eat things and we don’t pay attention to what they smell like, what they taste like, what the texture is? So we invite you to think, what does it do to me? What is my reaction to it?
The main course is the hard part, because it’s a complex plate. It’s a beautiful tenderloin of beef that’s cooked over the wood fire, with the smokiness on it, finished at an oven at the theater; it’s got mole on it, with all of it’s 30 ingredients, it take two days to make, very labor intensive and very complex. We have tamales that are handmade here at the restaurant and then steamed on site, and then we have kale that’s braised and put on the plate. So if you watch backstage, they take cues from the actors. They do this crazy assembly line.
But the one thing that everyone has to keep in mind is that this is a super-expensive show to do because of the number of staff required. For every four people in the theater, there is one service person or staff member. I’m cooking constantly on stage, so I’ve got a support staff that’s working with me. And then we have to get all the food to the guests really fast, so we have a huge number of servers. Theater and meal service don’t go hand in hand, so we had to do the Hogwarts thing. When service is called by the [onstage] maître d, your food almost appears magically in front of you. Last time, we got it down to where we could serve 160 people in four minutes. And it was only because of the crazy ballet that’s going on backstage that you can’t see.
Why do “Cascabel” again? How has it changed?
I’m a chef and I love to go back to the same thing to see if I can make it better. So when we started thinking about “Cascabel,” and did it need to be revived, the answer in my mind was, yeah. And not because it sold out really quickly, or the fact that it was really successful, but for me, [for] my own personal satisfaction. I just wanted to go back and mine it more. And because we have almost the exact same cast doing the major roles, we were actually able to start where we stopped last time. We have developed the story more; there are new scenes added; there’s a lot more depth of character; the integration of all of the circus performances, I think it’s even better. We’ve really all had so much fun exploring the characters and their motivation, and how it’s working. It’s been glorious and I am so thankful I’ve had the chance to come back to it.
So much of food is about love. And that’s really captured in “Cascabel.”
I really wanted it to be about a story around food, and when you eat the first course, there are two things that people react to about food. One is memory, that’s very common. People will eat something and say, “That reminds me of the time…” or “This is like my grandmother’s,” or “This isn’t like my grandmother’s,” but either way, it’s a memory. And the second is just a reaction to the physical experience of having that flavor or that texture. So we’ve set “Cascabel” up so that the first experience you have is a new experience.
The first course that you taste is probably not like anything you’ve had before, so we’re just asking you as an audience member to give us your reaction. It goes to a new place, but it’s an invigorating flavor. And what is your reaction to that? And the main course is a memory. Because in the story, the cook is trying to wake this woman up by getting her to taste or smell this thing that she used to love but has [since] rejected. It’s all about memory, so we’ve tried to combine both things. And then we end with this beautiful cake that’s just about celebration. Because when you see a cake, you just get happy. And that’s what we wanted to give people: that happy moment at the end.
Look for Part II of our Rick Bayless interview next month, when we talk about his favorite food memories, his family, his newest restaurant and his new book.
“Rick Bayless in Cascabel” plays through August 31 in The Owen Theatre at Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St., Chicago. For ticket information, click here.
Top right photo by Liz Lauren.
