The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air): Season One, Episode 2 (The Cricket)

34m
Hear Mandy Patinkin perform an extraordinary musicological demonstration and a cricket (Tim Robbins) spin the spellbinding tale of Ladislas Koskovsky. Plus, learn the remarkable history of Julian the janitor's famous great-grandfather.

(NOTE: To continue listening to The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air), subscribe now via iTunes, Libsyn, Stitcher, or via RSS on your favorite podcatcher.)

Thanks to Audible and Atom Tickets for supporting the show! Get a free audiobook with a 30 day free trial at audible.com/OHC. Download the free Atom Tickets app from Google Play or the Apple App Store and use code OHC for $5 off.

In November 2016, the janitor will be cleaning a venue near you! Upcoming tour dates: www.orbitinghumancircus.com

Featuring John Cameron Mitchell as Mr. Cameron, Julian Koster as the Janitor, and Drew Callander as the Narrator, with Tim Robbins as the Cricket and Mandy Patinkin as Cantor Moishe Lebowitz.

Written and created by Julian Koster. Co-directed by and developed with Ellie Heyman. Produced by Christy Gressman. Featuring musical composition and arrangement by Thomas Hughes and music by The Music Tapes.

Full credits: www.orbitinghumancircus.com

Part of the Night Vale Presents network: www.nightvalepresents.com

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Transcript

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Hi, Jeffrey Grainer here.

This is episode two of the eight-episode debut season of the Orbiting Human Circus of the Air.

You're receiving this recording on the Welcome to Nightvale feed because Orbiting Human Circus is the latest podcast from Nightville presents, but after episode 3, that's it.

If you want to hear the entire first season of Orbiting Human Circus, go subscribe to them on iTunes or wherever it is you get your podcasts.

And hey, enjoy the show.

As night begins to fall on Paris.

Backstage at the broadcast ballroom, busy preparations for this evening's broadcast of the Orbiting Human Circus of the Air begin.

But before we listen, there's one thing I think you ought ought to know.

You'll remember, last week, seeking forgiveness, the janitor snuck backstage to clean host John Cameron's dressing room as the last song of the evening played.

And that music, and this is what I really wanted to tell you, was performed by the Orbiting Human Circus Orchestral, a rare African bird that can mimic all 47 instruments of the orchestra at once.

The orchestral is something of a Parisian Bigfoot, believed only to land where orchestras are rehearsing.

Many people claim to have seen them, but one has never been filmed or recorded.

Yet, there one was, perched in its cage, on the stage, in full view of the entire studio audience, beautifully mimicking a waltz.

With no visible strings or wires.

Even the stagehands don't know how it's done.

And it's that way with all the acts.

With that thought, we take you back to last week in host John Cameron's dressing room, where the janitor cleans with greater and greater enthusiasm until...

Look out!

In his exuberance, the janitor accidentally knocks a small crate marked, For Mr.

Cameron's eyes only, exclamation point,

off the table.

Out of it spills several tiny tomes of sheet music and some bird seed.

Suddenly the door opens, and in sneaks stagehand Jacques, guiltily starting to light a cigarette.

Kid, I'm supposed to throw you out on your ass.

I won't tell the tissue you were smoking.

You wouldn't.

I won't if you let me finish cleaning.

Cleaning?

This place is a wreck.

Look at that on the floor.

Whoa, whoa.

Look at that crate.

Is that what the bird came in?

Yeah.

Hey, let me see that.

Whoa, look at this.

I just gotta know how this bird works.

I was thinking it's gotta be a robot.

It's not a robot.

What's this white stuff?

Oh,

it's not a robot.

It's not a robot.

Ugh.

Here's paper towel.

Alright, so what do I got here?

Suddenly, a commotion out of the hall.

Oh shit, I'm supposed to be out there helping her.

And if she catches me in here, and I'm talking to you, please, you've got to let me finish cleaning.

Okay.

But you get me in trouble.

I'm going to break your legs.

Meanwhile, at home, the listeners sat back and listened to

this.

hi this is Drew Callender and on behalf of the whole orbiting human circus gang we'd like to welcome you to our second episode good to see you again and thank our sponsors Atom Tickets and Audible use the Atom Tickets app to buy movie tickets and concessions invite friends and skip box office lines when you use the code OHC at checkout you'll get five dollars off your order download the free app that's ATOM tickets from the Google Play or Apple App Store.

If you enjoy the Orbiting Human Circus, we're sure you'll enjoy Shirley Jackson, A Rather Haunted Life, available now on Audible to our audience members for free, along with a free 30-day trial membership.

Just go to audible.com/slash OHC and enter Shirley Jackson in the search bar.

You can also find her other books, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Haunting of Hill House, and The Lottery and Other Stories.

After you're done browsing Shirley Jackson titles, you can check out Audible's gigantic library of audiobooks, short stories, and even radio plays from the 30s, just like the ones Julian listens to.

Go check out Audible today.

Go get your free audiobook with a 30-day trial at audible.com/slash OHC.

That's audible.com slash OHC for Orbiting Human Circus.

If you live in the northeastern United States, this November the janitor will be cleaning a venue near you, giving you the chance to walk into the world of the orbiting human circus.

And you too can be there by going to orbitinghuman circus.com slash shows and finding a tour date near you.

And now please sit back and enjoy episode two.

Eldred the Tap Dancing Mouse.

Broadcasting from the top of the Eiffel Tower, the orbiting human circus of the air.

To start us off, as part of our continuing series on the formative influence of Judaism on rock and roll, we give you this 1921 recording by Cantor Moisha Leibowitz, clearly an influence on the song Surrender by popular singing group Cheap Trick decades later.

Breya Ma Mission Nain

My Mission Ain

Ma

Kommital

Maja

Ali

Ali

Meanwhile, as the broadcast continues, high in the shadowy outer walls of the Eiffel Tower, far from the microphone's hearing, the sound of a single mop

and a lonely silhouetted figure holding it.

This of Julian, janitor of the Eiffel Tower, banned from the broadcast ballroom for his on-air interruptions.

Follow him as he mops the tower's outer walls and climbs higher, dangerously high, without scaling gear, ropes, or scaffolding to hold him.

I don't need that stuff.

I've been climbing my whole life.

With one free hand, he scales the tower.

Spilling soapy water from the bucket he holds and nearly dropping the mop, still he goes higher and higher and higher, like a small animal climbing a tall tree to escape its pursuers.

Much too high!

My God, what's he doing?

Has he no fear of heights at all?

It's for the last thing I'm afraid of.

Up high, you're safe.

But still, he climbs higher and higher, and the higher he climbs, the calmer he becomes.

Everything looks so beautiful from up here.

There's not a thing that can touch you.

The janitor leans back on one of the tower's utmost girders and gazes off as if lost in memory.

When I was a kid, my stepfather used to be afraid of heights.

I used to climb this water tower.

We had this water tower.

It was the tallest structure in our town, and I'd like climb up it and I'd stay up there for hours.

But

the first time I came to Paris, I never saw anything like this.

Yes, Eiffel really knew what he was doing.

I mean, it was the tallest thing I'd ever seen in my life.

All the buildings were I mean

I was ten

I ran away to Paris at ten?

Well I I knew I had this great grandpa and he was a stage hypnotist

so I snuck on a train.

I went to the train station, I went under the turnstile, I I went down and nobody saw me and I I I got in onto one of the trains when no one was looking and I got under the bench seats

and I was down there

by everyone's feet.

I could see everybody's shoes, and

the train started moving like nobody caught me.

And

I didn't even know, I hadn't thought about where I was going or how I was gonna eat or survive.

And the next thing I knew, we got in Paris.

And when we got in Paris,

there were posters from my great-grandfather's show

everywhere.

So I

I found the theater where he was playing and I I snuck backstage well what happened

he took me home with him

and

he lived in these wonderful apartments

there was red velvet everywhere and and

there was all these famous people like actors and actresses like people I knew I mean from from posters and and and

and there were always parties

and my great-grandpa was just handsome and and elegant and and oh my god and I remember I remember some nights he even forgot to feed me like he didn't know he didn't know how to take care of kids but

I didn't care.

I I mean he forgot that I had to go to school.

He never thought about that

which was amazing.

I just wanted to be near him.

Sounds like he was very special.

There was this one time

I was in his office and I was hiding.

He didn't know I was watching him.

And he was sitting at his desk and he was writing.

And he started, he had the cigar in his mouth.

And he started blowing these smoke rings.

But he wasn't looking at them.

And they started getting bigger and bigger

and bigger, and he still wasn't looking.

And then they slowly, slowly started getting smaller and smaller and smaller

and then without looking he just lifted up his left hand and he extended his finger and he snuck it right through the center of the ring

and he put both of his hands in front of his face and he started puffing

And when he took his hands away, there was a perfect smoke polar bear

just floating

in the middle of the room and it was even there was even a polar bear shaped shadow on the carpet

and it drifted up and up until it reached the ceiling.

I wanted to know how to do that.

I just wanted to stay with him.

I wanted him to show me how to be a show person.

I wanted to live like those people.

Did you get to

No

The Janitor takes his bucket, looks down at the glowing lights of the city far below, and begins to mop.

Meanwhile, below, in Paris, People gather round their radios.

You see there's a rumor that something unusual, something quite unprecedented, is going to happen on the orbiting human circus.

It's going to happen during the feature presentation.

You know the strange story that ends each episode, which all Paris waits for?

What's going to happen?

Well, all Paris is going to have to wait to find out.

But I can show you.

We zoom in on a small enclosed space that looks a lot like the janitor's pocket.

A dark, womb-like space where a small figure lies curled in a fetal position.

Well, I don't know if they have fetal positions.

You see, it's an insect.

And what does an insect have to do with the feature presentation?

Well, it must be something.

Because backstage at the broadcast ballroom, the large tape machine which usually plays the feature presentation is still tucked away, and stagehand Jacques pays little attention to it.

Hey, hey, somebody help me lift these pies onto the stage for the next act.

Meanwhile, above at the tip of the Eiffel Tower, the janitor leans perilously off the side, mysteriously pauses mopping, and puts his ear to the metal girders to listen.

If you put your ear up against the metal, you can hear things.

The tower picks up radio signals from all over the world, depending on which girder.

Here, listen.

The janitor presses his ear against the girder.

Or listen over here.

And if you put your ear up to this girder here, listen to what you can hear.

That was Yermak, the pie-eating Cossack!

Yermak, ladies and gentlemen!

You know how I live in the janitor's closet?

There's no electricity, so I can't have a radio.

I come up here for hours and listen.

Yer Mack!

And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's nearly time for our feature presentation.

I gotta go.

Where are you going?

Down to the show.

It's almost time.

And so the janitor begins a frenzied climb down to the ballroom.

But they won't let you in.

Look, look at this.

I got it here in my pocket.

It's a cricket.

Come on, we gotta go.

I'll explain about the cricket.

Late at night, after everybody goes, I'm allowed to clean the axe cages.

An important job.

I was just finishing up, and I went to the new orchestra bird's cage, and it wasn't in there.

You mean the orchestral, the rare African bird that can mimic all 47 instruments in the orchestra at once?

The Orbiting Human Circus's one bird band?

I looked everywhere for it, and it wasn't anywhere.

It was all my fault.

And sometimes the lock doesn't lock.

I was scared it ran away.

Everyone was gonna know I did it.

But then I heard something in Mr.

Cameron's office.

You mean John Cameron, host of the Orbiting human circus, whose dressing room you've invaded on multiple occasions?

You didn't.

I had to.

It was dark.

I turned on the light, and there it was.

The orchestral was standing right over this cricket like it was gonna eat it.

But it didn't.

It was listening.

Listening?

I swear to God, it looked like the cricket was telling the orchestral a story.

Oh, it's through here.

It's time.

Listen, it's talking about me on the air.

Last week, ladies and gentlemen, we demonstrated the Cricket Song Transmigrator, a machine that allows us to hear the cricket song as the cricket hears it.

After the show, I discovered Julian toying with that machine, violating a great many rules.

But for once, we're glad he did.

The machine caught a cricket backstage in mid- anecdote.

And for the first time, a cricket story was translated into the human tongue.

I realized we simply had to share it with you.

We discovered not only that crickets are the greatest storytellers in the world, but why they are.

When a cricket is caught by a bird, he is always given a chance to tell a story.

And if it's a good one, that bird will spare that cricket's life.

So, let's bring out the cricket.

Our janitor, ladies and gentlemen.

Put him in my hand, Julie.

Roll out the machine, Jacques.

Little cricket, up on the platform you go.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we make radio history, a cricket's own story, our feature presentation, the extraordinary tale of Ladislaw Koskovsky.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

It is we crickets who see what no one else does.

But there is no mystery more beloved amongst us than that of Ladislaw Kolbskovsky.

Ladislaw Kolbskovsky was a promising young clockmaker who believed due to certain incontrovertible laws of physics, clocks would run more accurately counterclockwise.

And he was correct.

His clocks were too accurate, in fact.

Who wants to own a clock that runs runs a different time than all others?

Nobody.

He cannot afford to eat.

His whole life is his shop and his shop is failing.

He had to find some way to make people want his clocks.

But he finds it impossible to work.

Through the ceiling of his workshop come piercing the voices of the two children who live upstairs, as if in the room with him.

The children constantly beg for dolls he knows the parents cannot afford.

Christmas will come.

Bring disappointment.

Hysterics.

Ladislaw finds himself gathering small bits of fabric from his wardrobe, materials from his workshop, and beginning to fashion the children two dolls, one for the boy and one for the girl.

They will be good dolls.

He will ask only for peace and quiet in return.

When the family open the door to reveal Ladislaw holding presents, they are stunned.

Ladislaw had never been the least bit friendly to them.

And yet here he is.

Merry Christmas, is all he says.

Ask them to keep quiet for me.

And avoiding all eye contact, he dumps the packages in their hands and runs away.

The baffled curiosity of even the parents cannot be contained.

The packages unwrapped immediately.

How much the children loved their dolls cannot be measured in words.

Then, a miracle happens.

Customers begin coming into Ladislav's shop.

As the cricket's voice rings out, the cast and crew listen, and Chief Stagehand Letitia is so touched that later that night, she tells the story to her downstairs neighbor.

They are like, coming into his shop.

All of a sudden, where are they coming from?

You know, he's not like the people who used to come.

No, these people are...

They are wearing stylish clothes.

And more importantly, they begin buying his clock.

And

they smile at him and they come in and they are like, Oh, Ladislaw, you know, you are you are a genius and all this.

Oh, and he is like,

Some of them they are very beautiful women, you know, and say, See, Ladislaw, you know, he is like, Whoa,

you know what it is like when you have not been with someone for a long time, and then this beautiful person comes in and is like looking at you.

You know, he is like, Oh my, like his uh his face is on fire, you know.

But he's like, I'm gonna buy myself a new suit and I'm gonna buy myself like a new hat and he's gonna make a difference.

And I'm gonna go talk to those people.

I'm gonna go to the party because this one girl, she had invited him to this party, so he's gonna go.

He arrives at the party, so he comes to Marie's door, he knocks on the door, and

the butler opens the door.

And I'm Lalisla Koskovsky, I've come to the party, and he looks inside, and there is Marie, and she's like, like oh you know like uh kind of a little bit like shocked or something but then oh you know she is very happy and she's inviting him in and he walks into this uh amazing party with the champagne you know on the trays and everything is like sparkly there like it is all so beautiful you know the people but also the way they laugh it is like crystal or something so this blush on his cheeks is just deeper and deeper you know like a beat beat or something, but it's okay.

He's like going from room to room, you know, with Marie and she is like, this is this room and this room and the terrace and you know the terrace it smells like

like a whole garden is out there blooming, you know, in the midnight with the stars and the light and it is all so fragrant, you know, he comes back inside and in every room he go into with Marie there is a clock of his.

The people are all smiling at him and you see his clock is in every room.

Like

I did not know this was my home.

I did not know this was always where I was going.

And then suddenly there is something in him.

It is like coming up, like tingling.

What is this feeling?

It is like rising and rising and rising, rising.

What is this?

It is in his throat and out of his mouth.

And

it's a sob.

There is something in him like coming up like a like a like a boulder, gaining speed, you know, rushing toward him, and he feels it coming up through his body.

And just as he comes into the big grand ballroom and he sees his clock on the other side of the wall, it is like

they are laughing at me.

They don't like the clock, they think it is a joke.

They brought me here to make fun of me.

And he he

cannot control the

pain and the rage.

It is like uh pours out over him and through him and it is rushing over like the whole ballroom, like uh like the snow just

you know, like like he is like a like a doorway through which uh winter comes rushing.

And uh

he is crying on the carpet and uh making a scene and just like cannot move, like

frozen to the floor.

They ask the butler, the butler, you know, he comes, everyone's a little bit nervous, you know, because there is this crying

clockmaker on the floor, and they pick him up and they kick him out because,

you know, they're going to clean up this mess on the carpet now.

And stagehand Jacques tells it to his elderly aunt.

So listen, that night, he smashes all the clocks.

He smashes his own prized possession.

He takes, you know, his little squeaker clock, the one that goes off in the morning, and he fucking hurls it across the room.

Smash.

He takes his grandfather clock, he pushes it down the stairs.

It tumbles, it tumbles, it tumbles, and crack at the bottom.

All right, he's just chucking them everywhere.

It's hitting the ceiling, you know.

One of them, you know, crashes out the fucking window.

It's unbelievable.

Like, like, this guy is so pissed off.

Everybody's waking up in town, you know, the neighbors, the people upstairs.

He hurls one, it smacks against his fucking plumbing.

You hear water coming out.

It's crazy.

This guy's going crazy.

So then, they hear like a shuttering of the doors.

Here's the thing.

After all that, he never came out.

And even later that night, Janitor Julian tells it to Coco, elderly night watchman at the Eiffel Tower, who counts on the janitor's nightly telling telling of the radio show to help pass his lonely watchman's hours.

They thought he was dead.

Okay.

And after a few weeks, kids started, you know, saying that it was haunted, and they'd dare each other to go up and tap on the window or to try and get as close to the window as they could.

And then, of course, they'd all run off.

And then, suddenly, there started to be these sounds.

Late at night, there'd be these crazy sounds like knocking,

banging, really scary sounds.

I mean, it would terrify the people that were living upstairs.

And all the noise would happen all night, and then in daylight, it would stop, and we get quiet again.

And this went on for weeks.

Wow.

And then one morning, the sun was rising, and the shades on the shop window just went up.

There was a doll shop.

No.

Nobody could believe their eyes.

And the window displays were amazing.

And the dolls, the dolls had this thing that just

makes you feel safe and happy and warm.

Kids loved them.

It became a sensation.

I mean kids just wanted to even be in the shop and they'd press their faces up against the window and their breath would fog it up.

There were people lining up for blocks.

No.

Vladislas was there right in the middle of it.

He went out and he found all the people

that were at that party and he gave them dolls for free just as gifts for their kids and

he found the people that used to come into his shop just to keep warm, that he used to kick out and yell at.

And he gave them dolls for their kids and

their friends' kids.

It got to where Ladislaus was like the most famous person in Bucharest.

But Ladislaw's story does not end there.

In fact, it doesn't end at all.

But I'll get to that in a moment.

As we all heard, live on the air.

One morning,

Ladislaw Koskovsky disappeared.

Both he and his doll shop gone.

Without a trace.

What happened?

All Romania wanted to know

what happened to Ladislaw Koskovsky.

But it is not what had happened to Ladislaw Koskovsky.

It is what he had done.

On every doll he had created, there was hidden a tiny catch.

This catch was protected by a thin layer of varnish which, lovingly handled, would wear off in no less than a year.

The exact same amount of time it would take for a child to bond with their doll completely.

Then, the first time the child would drop the doll or place it down roughly, the catch would trigger and set into motion a mechanism that, faster than the eye can see, would replace the original face with another that lay hidden inside.

The same face, but with a new expression.

A horrific expression of hatred, such pain, such monstrous, mortal accusation.

It would traumatize the child who loved it for the rest of their life.

For their dolly turned to them now hideous with pain, Ladislaw's pain, with bitterness, Larislaw's bitterness.

With hatred, Ladislaw's hatred, to fill the dreams of the children of Bucharest with nightmares to last a lifetime.

And once the faces had changed, the mechanism would lock forever.

No one would know how it happened.

Only the horror it produced.

And so...

But

the story went no further, because though Stagehand Jacques, Chief Stagehan Letitia, and our janitor Julian all thought it was a a good story, there was one key member of our cast who did not.

Which will become increasingly apparent in just a moment.

As look out!

The orchestra escapes its cage and lunges at the cricket, who, abandoning the story, skitters off with the bird in hot pursuit and the janitor dashing madly close behind.

The orchestra's gotten out of its cage.

Oh my god, I didn't look.

I didn't look it.

Oh my god, who's the house?

Save that cricket!

Good boy, he'll eat him alive!

I've grown very fond of that cricket.

Make the orchestral play the end music.

And the orchestral does begin to play the music while chasing the cricket, while being chased by the janitor round and round in dizzying circles.

And that's it for this week.

Tune in next week when our safely returned cricket will continue his story.

Broadcasting from the top of the Eiffel Tower, the orbiting human circus wishes you a good night.

This is Robbie Cucciar of the Orbiting Human Circus, and we'd like to thank Atom Tickets App for supporting the Orbiting Human Circus of the Air podcast.

Atom Tickets app is the free mobile movie ticketing app that makes going to the movie super convenient.

So, today, I'm very excited to bring you guys along on my first adventure with the Atom Tickets app.

Okay so I'm on the Atom Tickets app.

There are a few movies I'm interested in.

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Now I've selected my movie and it's prompting me to invite some friends.

I'm gonna invite my sister Daria and my buddy Julian.

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And now I'm at the concession window and I'm ordering some popcorn and soda.

Ooh, they have kettle corn seasoning.

Okay, now I'm at the payment window and I've put in my info and used the orbiting human circus code OHC and I got $5 off.

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Wow.

Alright, I'm at the movie theater and of course I'm running totally late but I've got my QR code and my electronic ticket and thank God because there is a long, long line here right now.

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Hey there, I have an Atom tickets app.

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Theater 5 on the left.

Alright, thanks a lot, man.

Alright, that was super, super easy.

Awesome.

Download Adam, that's A-T-O-M, tickets for free from the Google Play or Apple App Store for the ultimate movie experience.

Hello again, this is Drew Callender.

Remember, go to audible.com/slash OHC to get a free audiobook with a 30-day free trial.

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i'm amy nicholson the film critic for the la times and i'm paul shear an actor writer and director you might know me from the league veep or my non-eligible for academy award role in twisters we love movies and we come at them from different perspectives yeah like amy thinks that you know joe pesci was miscast in good fellas and i don't he's too old let's not forget forget that Paul thinks that Dune 2 is overrated.

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Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

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Hey, Jeffrey Kraner here to tell you about another show from me and my Night Vale co-creator, Joseph Fink.

It's called Unlicensed, and it's an LA Noir-style mystery set in the outskirts of present-day Los Angeles.

Unlicensed follows two unlicensed private investigators whose small jobs looking into insurance claims and missing property are only the tip of a conspiracy iceberg.

There are already two seasons of Unlicensed for you to listen to now, with season three dropping on May 15th.

Unlicensed is available exclusively through Audible, free if you already have that subscription.

And if you don't, Audible has a trial membership.

And if I know you, and I do, you can binge all that mystery goodness in a short window.

And if you like it, if you liked Unlicensed, please, please rate and review each season.

Our ability to keep making this show is predicated on audience engagement.

So go check out Unlicensed, available now only at Audible.com.