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Houston’s own Wayne Wilson stars in and helped create Cirque du Soleil’s new ’Songblazers’ show.
Wayne Wilson, who’s been performing in Cirque presentations for more than 20 years — and sometimes also helping create the shows behind the scenes — will be front and center, performing for a hometown crowd for the very first time. “I don’t think I have the words to express how excited I am,” says the longtime performing artist, who grew up in Houston’s North Shore area, graduated from HSPVA with high honors and was soon tapped for his first Cirque role as a college student in Minneapolis.
He says his friends and family have traveled the world to see him work — going even as far away as China. “But the first time to be a home? It feels full circle,” he says. “Something just feels really right about where I am with my career.”
Per his usual role, the now Las Vegas-based Wilson, 41, plays a clown in the new show. He’s been fascinated with physical comedy since he was a kid watching I Love Lucy and The Little Rascals reruns. Of course, at Cirque, it’s a special kind of clowning. “I don’t even wear a nose. It’s a state of being. It’s a state of reflecting the audience back to them, so they recognize and empathize with the clown onstage.
“I love doing theater, and I love doing plays,” he adds. “But with these shows, you really get to put a piece of yourself within the work unlike any other medium.”
Wilson also works in the wings, helping to develop shows like Songblazers as associate show director and comedic concept designer. “I just love the creation of these shows,” he says. “Cirque du Soleil is a beacon for creativity. If you can dream it, they have the tools and resources to help you build it.
“In one show, I wanted to have a pogo stick — 15 feet in the air,” he recalls, still a bit amazed. “And before I knew it, they built a harness and I’m on a winch jumping up and down.”
Songblazers may have the audience jumping around, too. Especially country fans. “It’s a love letter to country music,” says Wilson.
The 24th Cirque du Soleil presentation in Houston will go up at Sugar Land’s Smart Financial Centre for 16 performances, from Aug. 1 to Aug. 11. It boasts a live soundtrack with new music as well as dozens of classic songs from the genre going back generations. “As the crowd grooves to beloved country tunes, they will be entranced by the breathtaking skills of Cirque du Soleil artists, honoring the rich tradition of country music while embracing its evolving spirit,” gushes a Cirque rep. Universal Music Group Nashville presents the show, along with Cirque.
“I’m proud of the work we’ve done,” says Wilson, “and I'm proud of the family I’ve built throughout the years. And I really can’t wait to bring all of them to my mother’s house.”
Indeed, he says his mom, now in Humble, will host a large barbecue for family, neighbors and her son’s Cirque pals. “I think I’m going to rent a van and bring whoever wants to come down to ol’ Sheila’s!”
Houston’s own Wayne Wilson
Besides lots of new and classic music, ’Songblazers’ will feature 'breathtaking acrobatics, awe-inspiring aerial acts and displays of extraordinary strength,’ says a show rep.
Cirque du Soleil’s new country-themed show will be presented at Smart Financial Center in Sugar Land.
’Songblazers’ will open Aug. 1 and run through Aug. 11.
Cirque’s ’Songblazers’ is described as ‘a love letter to country music.’
A next-gen artificial heart from BiVACOR has successfully been implanted in a patient at Texas Heart Institute. The patient survived more than a week, until a donor heart was found for a transplant.
On July 9, THI successfully implanted a new kind of artificial heart — created in partnership with the institute’s famed surgeon, O.H. “Bud” Frazier — that can prolong the life of patients waiting for transplants. The Institute says the patient in this case was “bridged to transplant” with the implantation of the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart, surviving eight days with the device, until a suitable donor heart could be found and successfully transplanted.
The mechanical heart “is a titanium-constructed biventricular rotary blood pump with a single moving part that utilizes a magnetically levitated rotor that pumps the blood and replaces both ventricles of a failing heart,” according to a rep for the Institute. The procedure was conducted as part of an FDA feasibility study. Four other patients are to be enrolled in the study.
“The Texas Heart Institute is enthused about the groundbreaking first implantation of BiVACOR’s [device],” says Joseph Rogers, physician, president and CEO of the Institute and principal in the research. “With heart failure remaining a leading cause of mortality globally, the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart offers a beacon of hope for countless patients awaiting a heart transplant.” Rogers shared credit for the groundbreaking development with teams at Baylor College of Medicine and Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center.
Houston CityBook has covered advances in cardiovascular medicine with special interest in recent times, publishing an essay last fall on Frazier’s storied history in the field, and that of other Houston docs like his mentors Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley. The city has been on the forefront of such developments for many decades.
“A lot of the advances in cardiac surgery occurred here, in this Medical Center,” said Frazier in the essay. He’s been in working on artificial hearts since med school in the 1960s, and also has performed some 1,300 heart transplants — more than any other surgeon on earth. “Not at Harvard or Princeton or Yale. They didn’t do it. I think it was done here because you could do things, and if it failed, you could try again. I don’t think it could have been done anywhere but Texas — and in Texas I don’t think it could have been done anywhere but Houston.”
O.H. “Bud” Frazier, a pioneering surgeon and inventor at Texas Heart Institute, has worked on perfecting the artificial heart since the 1960s. (photo by Jhane Hoang)