|
By:
Mary Young It’s
early evening and you’re walking down a crowded sidewalk, trying not to
bump into anyone. Suddenly, you feel a pair of arms surrounding you in a
bear hug. It’s a stranger dressed in white, with feathered wings, a pink
tutu and a little bow and arrow. It’s … Cupid. Are you in love? No,
you’re in Waikiki. Cupid
is the alter ego of street mime Chris Liger, who showers affection on
unsuspecting pedestrians as part of his improv act in the heart of
Waikiki. Like other entertainers who work for tips along Kalakaua Avenue,
he’s trying to attract an audience. But Liger is also looking for
someone who’s willing to play along with his antics. Cupid is a happy
character, and he wants to “share the love.” Liger
(rhymes with “tiger”) is French – he grew up in Paris – but he
doesn’t do classic mime in the Marcel Marceau tradition. His style
developed from studying characters such as Laurel and Hardy, Mr. Bean,
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Liger calls it “burlesque mime.” “Why
mime, because I don’t speak,” he says. “I could speak, I could say
something, but I found out that if you don’t speak, you reach more
people.” The
sexually ambiguous costume is part of his message. With white makeup, big,
clunky shoes and Liger’s slight physique, it’s not obvious whether
Cupid is male or female. The look puts some people off and he tolerates
the occasional unwelcome remark – especially performing in the United
States. “What
I’m doing is, I’m pushing the edge as a man dressed up like a
woman,” he says. “When you think about it, Cupid has no sex … but
the fancy, the conception of people is that of a feminine character. So
why would a man put up with a feminine character? I want to push the
limit; I want to push the button that says to people, ‘Look, you’ve
got a problem with sexual gender. And you’re facing some issues here.’
With humor, I can kind of help them to open their minds.” A
routine might begin with Cupid picking a tourist out of the passing crowd
and blowing a loud police whistle in his direction. He motions for the
startled tourist to come and stand next to him and wait for further
instructions. If
the “volunteer” is male, he might reach under the guy’s shirt for a
feel. If female, he might reach down with a baton to stretch the neckline
of her blouse for a peek. Seeing an elderly lady pushing an empty
wheelchair, he jumps in it for a short ride. He takes a soft drink from
one person and gives it to another. Someone asks him to pose for a picture
with them and he agrees, but insists on setting up the shot. Then it’s
hugs and kisses all around. It’s ridiculous, it’s edgy, and the
audience loves it. On the nights that Cupid is working, he’s drawing the
biggest crowd. A
couple of 30-something tourists from Tennessee, Jeanie Bittner and Denise
Stafford, enthused about Cupid after a recent show. “We’re having so
much fun with him. He’s fabulous,” said Bittner. “He
made us laugh hysterically,” said Stafford. “As long as the crowd
keeps
responding to him, that’s the best part.” Noelle
DeLuca, a college-age visitor from Maine, found herself in the middle of a
comedy bit. Asked later if she was
embarrassed, DeLuca said, “No, not at all, it’s a lot of fun. I
would have definitely given him money if I had it.” Liger
won’t discuss how much money he takes in as Cupid and says not all of
the offerings are cash. One evening, a pineapple was placed on the
sidewalk near his feet. The fruit wasn’t a prop; it was a donation. He
says, “I get beer, I get a pineapple, I get candy, I get discount
tickets for McDonald’s. There’s a lot of that.” Sometimes, people
just give a few coins. “And sometimes you have the happy hundred
bucks,” he says. “It happens.” Entertaining
for tips, also known as “busking,” is a sideline for Liger, one that
brings him to Honolulu three or four months a year. The rest of the time
he’s in Las Vegas, doing regular gigs with various comedy and theatrical
troupes. Depending on what’s called for, he works as a comic actor or
mime. Occasionally,
he also performs as a “living statue” – a familiar breed of
entertainer in Waikiki. Liger says his living statue differs from others
in one important way: “No shades. No mask. The real stuff.” Anybody
can do this if their eyes are covered so they can blink, he says. “You
can do it. I give you the proper costume, I give you a bench, I give you a
mask, I give you some shades, and you sit like this … you’re doing
nothing!” he says, adding that he has no hard feelings toward his
monochromatic colleagues on Kalakaua. “They do their thing, they make
money, good for them. As long as they make people happy, that’s fine.
But for me, there’s nothing special in what they do.” Liger’s
career has taken him to southern California and to Asia and Australia,
where he had a speaking part in a soap opera “Flotsam and Jetsam.” He
met his wife, a Northwest Airlines flight attendant, when he was doing a
show at an airport in New Caledonia. He
started out in sales and sales management
in France, selling “Anything. Everything.” He began performing before
he had any theatrical training. “The
first time I did a show was in Japan,” he says. “I was dating a
Japanese girl at that time and then we broke up and I was by myself in
Japan, didn’t speak Japanese, out of money, miserable, so I had to do
something for my living. I just went into the street, put on the Chaplin
character, did a little dancing gig and miming with a (boom box), and it
worked fine. I made a hundred bucks.” For
American audiences, he tones down his mime act to stay within cultural –
and legal – boundaries. As
the androgynous Cupid, he says, “The second button that I push is the
kissing thing, the sexual jokes, the sexual slapstick. This is a different
act than I do in Europe. Completely different. I don’t do one-third of
what I can do in Europe; I do something else or I’d be in jail.” For
instance, he says, “A woman wouldn’t be offended in France if I
grabbed her breast, touched her breast. It’s not perverted there, it’s
not kinky there, it’s just … when I carry on, I carry on very far. I
play with the cops in France. I stop the cars. I police the cars. I take
the cars away. I come back with the cars. I open the trunk of the cars. I
take off the luggage. I go wild. And no way can I do this in America.
There’s no way.” Liger,
who’s 39, has an easy smile and a polite manner. He showed up He
acknowledges that his interaction with the audience is risky. In choosing
someone to pick on, he says, “you have to read the manner of people. In
an instant, I have to be able to see if the person is open-minded or
not.” Occasionally,
he makes the wrong call. Once was during a sidewalk performance in Los
Angeles, when he first came to the
United States. “I was doing a show in front of this restaurant,
and this guy came around and I wanted to pick a belly fight, to be
funny,” he says. Liger
realized too late that he had picked out a member of a street gang. “I
was dressed like a ninja at that time, and he didn’t like this little
skinny ninja, you know.” The situation almost escalated to a real fight,
and Liger took off. “I simply ran faster, that’s all.” Another
time he had to improvise a fast getaway when a traffic gag went wrong.
“I was dressed up like a cop and I was doing a traffic jam,” he says.
“That was in France. I was a fake cop, doing a show in front of this
restaurant. There was this one car going to get out of this parking
garage, so I tried to (direct) the traffic with this car, and then a car
came, and then another car came, we were just playing a game, and I ended
up with a huge mess. There was traffic for miles. And then the real cops
came around, and I just hid. I hid in a trash bin, actually. “For
me, it’s important to make people laugh. Especially these days, where
the only thing we hear is war, terrorism, and actually I have a lot of
people who come to me and say, ‘Oh, you make me laugh, thanks,’ and
that’s very, very encouraging – and that’s everywhere in the world. “I
know I may upset some people too. I don’t think I make everybody happy.
I know that. You cannot be doing a show that is going to click for
everybody, make 100 percent of the people happy. But most of the time, you
know, I get a good response.” Chris Liger performs as Cupid several nights a week in Waikiki. Look for him on Kalakaua Avenue near the International Marketplace. |
