While some kids dream of running away to join the circus, Alana Feld and her sisters, Nicole and Juliette, didn’t have very far to go. They are the third generation of the Feld family to be running Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
It all started when their grandfather Irvin Feld acquired Ringling Bros. in 1967. Their father, Kenneth, joined The Greatest Show on Earth in 1970, taking over as sole producer in 1985 after Irvin passed away in 1984. Now Feld Entertainment, under the leadership of Kenneth and his three daughters by his side, operates up to 18 tours around the world, including two touring shows of Ringling Bros., nine touring show of Disney On Ice, three touring shows of Disney Live!, Monster Jam, Supercross, Arenacross and Marvel Universe Live!
As executive vice president and producer for Feld Entertainment, Alana is responsible for overseeing every aspect of the Ringling Bros. and Disney Live! brands as well as overseeing the business development for the company. “When I started producing shows for the company, I started working on the stage shows,” Alana explains. “We had to basically create a new business model. I was instrumental in changing the way that we tour our Disney Live! brands.”
One of the milestones of her career was in 2008, when she spearheaded the first-ever live Disney production to tour throughout China. Then the following year she made history with her sister Nicole, as it was the first time ever that two women produced The Greatest Show on Earth.
The family behind the brand is obviously the key to its success, as Alana explains, “I love working with my family – my two sisters and my father, who is still very involved in the business. I think it’s great. We all have our own areas of expertise that we focus on, but we do work together quite a bit, and certainly as the family behind this company, we are making decisions together on the vision and direction that we want to take this company.”
And when asked who her role models for business are, Alana doesn’t hesitate when she responds, “My father. I learned so much from him (on top of how smart and creative I think he is as a person). I talk to a lot of people who work in their family businesses, and they all have different kinds of struggles. One of the hardest things for the younger generation in the family business to overcome is working for a family member who started the business, or grew the business, and has a way of doing things and doesn’t want to change and isn’t open to change. My father is not only open to change, but he is also a huge driver of change in this organization and how we do things in business and in life. It’s so important and really amazing.”
Alana further explains the importance of change, “We view it as – if we’re not changing, we’re not growing and we’re not keeping up with what families of today want in their entertainment. Those are the challenges that we live for everyday. I think it’s what makes us different and what sets our entertainment apart from the rest.”
Let’s put on a show!
Ever wonder what’s involved in taking a new Ringling Bros. show from conception to completion? For a show like Circus XTREME its starts about a year to a year-and-a-half out. It all begins with seeking out the talent. Alana explains, “Talent scouts are constantly traveling all over the world, searching for the most incredible talent. We are trying to find the most incredible performers and bring them to Ringling Bros.” Once they have a sense of who will be performing, they start working on a concept. “We work with the director and the writer, and we build up the rest of the creative team: hiring the other designers, the scenic designer, the costume designer, lighting designer, music composer and so forth.
“We work on putting together the whole show. Once we have the design and music and staging for the show somewhat assembled we do the ‘white model’ meeting,” says Alana. The white model meeting is crucial to the production process. “We basically build the entire show in a 1-inch scale model. We’ll have the director go through and perform and summarize the entire show; we’ll be moving the performers around, the animals, all the scenic pieces. We will play video clips of the acts that will be in the show and the music clips so that everyone has a sense of what the show is going to be.”
This is crucial not only for the operations and productions side, but also for marketing, consumer products and all the other departments involved. “Everyone gets a chance, almost like a preview, to really understand and see what the show is all about, so that they can go back and work on their piece of it,” says Alana. From there they make decisions about what is needed to build, anything that needs to be modified. A few months later the show goes into rehearsal for about five weeks and then it opens.
Gathering all these components together to rehearse is no easy task either. In 2013 Feld Entertainment Studios opened its doors on Florida’s Gulf Coast. This facility is 600,000 square feet, under cover. From front door to back door, it is the length of three football fields. “We have two arena-size rehearsal halls, all the business operations for the company and all the production facilities are there too, from the scene shop to building the giant trucks for our Monster Jam events. We also have a costume department with more than 10,000 costumes. Oh, and all the railroad refurbishment is done there for the trains. It’s pretty unbelievable what we accomplish there,” says Alana.
Circus XTREME has roughly 100 performers, but there are 200 additional people that travel with the show. These 300 people mostly travel in the traditional circus fashion – by train. Ringling Bros. owns two of the largest privately-owned trains in North America for its touring circus shows. Each one is a mile long, about 60 train cars.
Alana has never traveled by train with the circus, but she did get to spend the night once in the personal train car of the famed animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams and his family. That is just one of the many cherished memories that Alana has from her childhood. One of her fondest memories is of the Easter egg hunts that the members of the show would put on for all the children traveling with the circus, “I grew up in Washington, DC, and the circus was always in town around April. So, on Easter Sunday, we would always go to the circus. The Easter eggs would be all over the arena floor, hidden everywhere, and it was just so fun,” Alana remembers. She and her sisters also had some interesting babysitters. “At circus rehearsals, the clowns used to babysit us. Our parents would drop us off with the clowns, and they would always have a project for us. They would look after us. We would make clothes for our stuffed animals – all sorts of things,” Alana explains.
It’s obvious that Alana loves what she does and when asked if she would like her own young daughter to follow in the footsteps of her family, she is reflective, “She’s not even two yet, so she hasn’t told me what she wants to do when she grows up, but I think that, hopefully, the company will be here for her if she is interested in joining it at some point in time. But my parents encouraged me to do what I wanted to do, to follow my passion, and it led me back to the company. Maybe it will be for her, too, but that’s her decision.” If history repeats itself, there just may be a fourth generation of the Feld family running The Greatest Show on Earth.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus XTREME comes to Talking Stick Resort Arena in Phoenix June 23-26. Tickets are available by phone at 800-745-3000 or online at ringling.com.
