The Fame Reporter interviewed Director, Producer and Musician, Gene Peterson, in the highly anticipated return of urban circus, 360 Allstars! The show is playing at Brisbane’s Concert Hall, QPAC until 19 January 2025.
Gene Peterson has fast established himself as one of Australia’s leading musicians. He is a phenomenal percussionist, a prolific composer, and an exceptional pianist. As a drummer he has toured extensively across Australia, Europe, Asia, America and The Middle East, and has won numerous awards and competitions including “The Billy Hyde’s National Drum Play Offs”. Aside from his successes as a touring artist, Gene is also a renowned producer and composer, having been commissioned to create the scores for symphony orchestras right through to productions on Broadway, and is the creator and director of the 360 ALLSTARS show.
We talked to Gene about the return of 360 Allstars hometown, the special sauce that keeps people returning to the show, his hand-picked worldwide acts and more.
What inspired you to create 360 ALLSTARS, and how did you envision blending street culture with elite performance?
The reinventing of a traditional circus to create this supercharged urban circus. The goal was to take all these stereotyped traditional circus artforms and replace them with street culture urban style. Instead of acrobats we have breakdancers, instead of a juggler there is a basketball freestyler, instead of a unicyclist there’s a BMX flatlander.
Everything has been given that urban twist and reinvented the circus with that street culture infusion of urban and hip-hop.
The show was born out of a kid in a candy store vibe and how many types of awesome can we fit on that stage. Trying to not think about the parameters but think about the inspiration of what could be.
Similarly, when picking the artists it’s not who do I know that practices these disciplines, it’s who is the best in the world, what country did they come from, do they speak English, who’s the world champion, who’s the world record holder and let’s find them.
It did organically become this all-star cast of award-winning artists from anywhere and everywhere around the globe.
There were no auditions they were all head hunted for being the best of the best. Allstars in the title for being the best and 360 is from all the artists featuring rotation.
With such a diverse cast of world champions, record holders, and musicians, how do you ensure their unique skills come together cohesively on stage?
That was the challenge, we’ve got each of the artists having a solo in the show. there is an opportunity for the audience to both get introduced to the artist and to the discipline and to see that performer feature their skills and their act and their artform.
Beyond that, it is bringing the show together and having all the marriages between the different disciplines and making sure that it becomes one cohesive production.
I am not a breakdancer and wouldn’t teach them choreography or I wouldn’t tell a BMX flatlander how to ride a bike, but as a director to look at the repertoire and the skillset of each of the individuals and start to pick moves that align and find the relationships between the different disciplines to piece it together.
That’s where this show really lifts when everyone is bouncing off each other and working together as a team.
Outside of the skills, movements and different collaborations that we can pull together, it is also where the energy of the show is derived from. Instead of the soloists driving each scene by themselves they are suddenly bouncing off each other.
We have the best time together on stage and it is just contagious energy and by default the audience is having the best time with us. It is a party and celebration of street culture.
360 ALLSTARS has been described as a revolutionary take on the circus. What do you think sets it apart from traditional circus performances?
We have flipped the script there and each of these disciplines are a reimagination of a traditional circus act.
Instead of acrobats we have breakdancers, instead of juggler we have a basketball freestyler and instead of a unicyclist there is a BMX rider.
Each single discipline from a traditional circus has a contemporary counterpart.
You’ve performed and directed on some of the world’s biggest stages. What does it mean to bring this show back to Brisbane and QPAC?
It is really special, it is something that’s been wonderful to be back in Brisbane. The show premiered in 2013 and has since delivered around 3000 performances to 2 million people worldwide. It sold out seasons on Broadway, Edinburgh, the Sydney Opera House.
There are a lot of accolades and achievements that we are very proud of what the show has accomplished but to bring it home off the back of a giant world tour and have the show play in your own community at such a prestigious venue, the Concert Hall at QPAC is something to be proud of.
Especially to put the show on the big stage in your home city, have local audiences and have your friends and family attend and share in the success of this production is something we are excited to have happen.
The first time we played in Brisbane was the Judith Wright Centre, 200 seat black box theatre and then we played Brisbane Powerhouse, 500 seats, then the Playhouse, QPAC at around 800 seats and so now we have 10 shows at the 1500 seat Concert Hall, QPAC. It is wonderful to see the show continue to level up in its success.
We have another incredible Brisbane artist stepping in for this season, Roman MC, he is a phenomenal freestyle rapper. There is local talent that the community can get behind with a couple of Brisbane based artists, however we also have artists from Italy, Argentina, New Zealand and more.
The worldwide element is there, the spectacle of these Allstars, best of the best. It is a nice dichotomy with the global and local talent.
What role does the live soundtrack and video projection play in enhancing the audience’s experience of 360 ALLSTARS?
We have these street artforms and urban disciplines, but they are presented inside what is a full-scale theatre production.
Having extra production value allows us to enhance the performance. Rather than it being a BMX rider at a skate park we have put them on stage amongst the lights, projections and all the elements that bring it to life and make it the spectacle that it is.
The extra elements also allow us to tell a story and have that narrative within the performance. It is not a storyline from start to end like a theatre play.
Within each artform we can tell a story. The BMX rider for example, the lyrics tell the tale of a BMX rider that rides from dawn until dusk. He is at the skate park all day long practicing his tricks and the video projections are a time lapse from sunrise to sunset at the skate park.
Another example is the B-Boy Breakdancer battle we put inside a video game, player 1 and player 2, select your b-boy.
The red versus blue mortal combat street fighter. It allows to set the stage and add a bit of narrative into each of these scenes and bring the artforms to life as part of a full-scale theatre show.
The workshops you’re offering seem like a fantastic addition. How do these sessions connect audiences, especially younger fans, with the art forms in the show?
The workshops are something that we are passionate about that we try to do in all the cities that we tour to. It is a wonderful way to engage with the local communities and especially to be able to inspire and share with young kids the artforms we are most proud of.
Each of these artists are at that elite level that put in thousands of hours, and you only have that level of dedication if you absolutely love it.
It’s an opportunity for us that we relish to be able to share the skills and disciplines of the art that is most important to each of us. To be able to foster that next generation of artists and share that with kids that are trying it for the first time or people that are practicing these disciplines that are really excited to level up or learn from a world champion it is something that is a gift that we get to give.
We take a lot of pride in them and we make sure we do the workshops in most of the places we go. Whether kids are into music or into sport there is something on offer for everyone.
You’ve achieved so much in your career, from winning prestigious drumming competitions to performing at international festivals. How have these accomplishments shaped your approach to creating and directing 360 ALLSTARS?
It is honestly quite separate. As a drummer, that is down that path for me and something I took very seriously and was proud to excel at but as a showman, director and producer it is totally different hats.
I certainly drew from my experience as a touring artist, learning how all these different companies put together a production and was absorbing quite unintentionally as a didn’t know what a producer was when I was younger. The more shows I toured with, the more I learned the ropes and understood.
It seemed like an easy and logical step when you see so many different companies build a show and being involved in that world for the previous 5-10 years.
However, the showmanship, the theatricalization and producing, creating and directing is totally different hats to picking up drumsticks.
That has been a wonderful progression in my career to jump in the deep end and 15 years of producing shows later it is something I love. To clarify this show wasn’t my first show, I didn’t jump that far in the deep end, doing 3-4 smaller scale shows before 360 Allstars.
After sold-out seasons globally, how do you keep the show fresh and exciting for new audiences and returning fans?
There is a healthy mix of both I believe. There is the aspect of that familiarity that people are happy to visit but we are all artists that are happy about our practice, and we are continually looking to improve the show.
You make 100 small changes, and it suddenly feels like a whole new show even though we haven’t intentionally given it a full creative development.
We are constantly upskilling and upscaling. There are whole new scenes that are in the show that weren’t in the show 2 years ago. It is certainly a work in progress and will always be. Being in the show, after every show we do notes and come up with new ideas and keep it evolving.
Regularly working with new artists, the show has levelled up with 3 teams of allstars touring simultaneously. There is a cast in the U.S, UK, Australia.
With new artists come fresh new ideas and bounce off each other. The basketballer in the U.S will come up with something and I will share that with the other two and they will piggyback off that idea.
I have this dream job of guiding these incredible people with phenomenal ideas.
It is largely a family audience, and this is our 12th year touring now, who were 14-year-olds, 12 years ago are now 26 year olds and we have a whole new generation of teenagers and kids that are coming through and takes away the pressure of the show needing to be different.
What do you hope audiences will take away from 360 ALLSTARS after experiencing the spectacle?
To be honest the special sauce is the joyousness of deliberation of each of these artforms and street culture, we are up there having the best time and audience can not help but have the best time with us.
There is something to be said about everyone having an inner child. These are the disciplines that the parents of these children grew up with. Breakdancing in the 80’s, basketball freestyling you think the Harlem Globetrotters and BMX Bandits movie in the 80’s.
The parents grew up with these disciplines, it is a nostalgia for them and revisiting their childhood and sharing that with their kids is special. We have Dads who have brought their daughters and come up to us and say, ‘I thought I was here for my daughter, and actually I’m coming back with all my Dad mates.’
We had a 100-year-old lady celebrate her birthday with us and she was 50 when hip-hop was invented. So wild. People walk out with a smile from ear to ear having had a wonderful time and feeling uplifted.
TICKETS:
Concert Hall, QPAC
Until 19 January
The Fame Reporter Social Media
YouTube
Instagram
Twitter
Facebook
All photos – Supplied
The Fame Reporter 