Graduate Karl Jenkins makes the Big Top in New YorkView GalleryHide Gallery

Karl Jenkins, a graduate of Toi Whakaari’s Bachelor of Performing Arts and Management degree, has landed his dream job with Cirque du Soleil’s latest show in New York.

Karl specialised in Lighting and Production Management and has already been with Cirque du Soleil for three years, having first worked with them in Adelaide on a Toi Whakaari secondment and moving into a lighting position with them immediately upon graduation. He went on to tour their last show, Varekai, right around Europe and Asia, and is now off to Brazil to install the show there before moving to New York City to oversee the creation of their new show, Zarkana.

Zarkana is about a magician who brings an old run-down theatre back to life, and Karl is Assistant Head of Lighting for the installation in Radio City in New York.

Cirque du Soleil is a really nice company to work for, he says, not only for the challenge of the shows, but for the huge variety of people working within it – there are over 6,500 people in the whole company and 52 countries represented in any one show alone. His greatest challenge so far? Turning London’s  Royal Albert Hall into a Big Top, with three lighting rigs and an audience of 5,500.

He credits the management component to his degree at Toi Whakaari for being the reason why he has risen so fast, as well as the technology side of things – for Varekai he was very quickly promoted to Head of Lighting, with five people under his command.

“I can’t say enough good things about the time that I spent at Toi Whakaari. Not only what I learnt class-wise, but from the people that I met – the personal skills that I learnt from being here for three years is something you can’t get anywhere else.”

Cirque du Soleil, Zarkana

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