In the Cirque du Soleil production Kooza, an extremely naive, melancholy character known as the Innocent finds himself unable to launch a kite. Instead of giving up, he initiates a Fight Club-esque mental illusion in which a trickster appears in a box and begins to command the world using a wand. He shows the Innocent that the universe can be both playful and scary when one holds the power to control it. Such philosophical truths are communicated by way of incredible feats such as bodies contorted into impossible human sculptures, characters balancing on a 23-foot tower of chairs, bicycles that turn and spin atop a high wire, and two crazy artists leaping off a rotating wheel of death, which nearly grazes the audience. Witness the human kites this Friday when the show opens at 8 p.m. inside the Grand Chapiteau at Bicentennial Park
Mondays-Sundays. Starts: Nov. 12. Continues through Dec. 19, 2010