Thursday, July 6, 2000 | 9:54 a.m.
His face painted a ghostly white and armed with a solitary red feather, Mark Lemberger walks -- or, rather, sashays -- through an unsuspecting throng of tourists at the Paris hotel-casino.
Standing on the perimeter of the hotel's main walkway, Le Boulevard, is a growing number of spectators. All are snickering as Lemberger brandishes his feather to tickle a woman's cheek, then quickly turns afield.
The woman flinches and flicks at her face, feeling she's being pestered by a fly. The giggles grow. She then notices Mark the Mime walking away, carrying his trusty feather, and blushes.
By now Lemberger has found another foil, deftly separating a couple with a gentle tug of the wife's arm, pulling her aside and clutching the husband's hand. The husband, blithely gazing skyward at the hotel's Parisian motif, clutches Lemberger's hand and walks a lengthy distance, not noticing the crowd's laughter.
Finally, he turns to his wife -- and is startled to find Lemberger at his side.
More blushing. And laughing. The crowd has become the show.
"My favorite thing is to grab people, pull them away and grab someone's hand and walk with them," says Lemberger, one of the growing number of strolling performers -- call them "Street-mosphere" -- throughout the city. "I like to tease them with the feather, imitate how they walk. People seem to like to watch others being imitated. That's where I get the biggest response."
Just down the walkway is Lemberger's colleague, sleight-of-hand magician Star Alexander. Alexander is working with a silver dollar, effortlessly rolling it through his fingers and describing his craft.
"Ninety percent of the people I meet have never experienced magic one-on-one," he says, continuing to roll the coin and -- presto! -- making it vanish. "They've seen it on television, or in a theater at a show like Siegfried & Roy and Lance Burton, but they haven't had a chance to interact this way."
Alexander then produces a spongy red ball and holds it just inches from a spectator's face. Then it's gone, and a collective "oooh" goes up from the appreciative group, which is experiencing the show for free.
It's a circus
One of the first hotels to use strolling entertainers was Circus Circus. Entertainment Director Mike Hartzell says that the performers are among the hotel's most valuable employees.
"They are visible and they are always 'on,' " Hartzell says. "Even if you're on break walking through the casino, you have to be in character. It can be demanding work, because not only are you performing, but you're an ambassador and almost like a walking information booth at times."
One of Circus Circus's chief ambassadors is Dave DeDera. A well-built 6-feet-5- inches tall, and speaking with an authoritatively deep voice, DeDera would make a good cop.
Instead, he's a clown.
"I was living in Chicago, going to school to be a state trooper, and I saw an ad for the Ringling Brothers clown college. They were having auditions and on a lark I went down there one day."
A few days later DeDera received two pieces of mail bearing dissimilarly good news. One was a notice that he'd been accepted to the police academy. The other was to inform him that he'd been accepted to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus clown college in Florida.
Instead of the badge and baton, DeDera opted for the bright red nose and floppy shoes.
"I spent two months in Florida, goofing around," he says, laughing. "I was 19. It sounded like a pretty cool way to spend the summer."
The summertime dalliance turned into a career. DeDera toured with the circus for six years before being hired by Circus Circus six years ago. But for DeDera, working as an interactive entertainer had its rough moments, especially at first.
"I was a big dinosaur character back when Grand Slam Canyon first started and it was really uncomfortable," he says. "Luckily they did away with that. I got ganged-up on by 10 kids one time and got the snot knocked out of me. They were only 8 years old, but they had me on the ground and I was like a turtle, just getting pummeled.
"It seemed like there were 80 of them."
These days, DeDera is safe in his clown costume.
"I get everyone from kids (who) are 3 years old to little old ladies who are 80, so I run the full gamut," he says. "Little kids are always amazed -- all you have to do is be in costume and they're entertained. And older people like clowns and all the gags because it reminds them of their youth. The toughest group is the 12- to 24-year-olds, who hate clowns. When I can win them over, it's a really rewarding feeling."
Immovable object
Unlike DeDera's high-energy act, Joe Trammel gets paid to do nothing.
Seriously. But it's more difficult than it looks.
Trammel is a human statue at the Venetian's new Artistie Del Arte showcase of street performers in the hotel's Grand Canal Shoppes.
Trammel is on for four hours per shift, taking 15-minute breaks by the hour. The idea is to remain totally motionless, but Trammel -- who is also a comic in the "Les Trix" show at San Remo -- adds a few wrinkles. Occasionally, while spectators are snapping pictures or sidling up to see if Trammel is indeed an actual human being, he'll smile or wink.
Spectators are typically stunned when he moves. "It's like, 'Whoa! The statue lives,' " Trammel says. "I love doing that."
It usually takes Trammel up to a half hour to get fully into character.
"I get into kind of a zone and it's weird, but I almost feel like a statue after a few minutes," he says. "I'm totally aware of every body part, not moving anything, and the only way I can explain it is it's like self-hypnosis."
Spectators usually mill around, gawking, and many take photos. Trammel moves ever so slightly, sometimes even making rabbit's ears behind a visitor's head with his fingers. He's rarely rattled as spectators amble up, winking and sometimes even poking at him. But Trammel does remember being knocked off guard soon after he started at the Venetian.
"A group of my friends came in," he says, laughing at the memory. "I was doomed. I couldn't keep my composure. It was a dirty trick."
Feeling stilted
Paul Ortiz is 5-feet-9 inches tall -- except when he's at work, when he's closer to 8 or even 10 feet.
"I don't know what I prefer, but at the end of the day I do get tired of being tall," Ortiz, a stilt-walker at the MGM Grand Theme Park, says. "It's very physically demanding."
But it doesn't show during Ortiz's performances. He's apt to approach a group of tourists, dressed something akin to a red-headed neo-hippy with a beer gut and sagging jeans and say, "Hey my brothers, where are you from?"
When the answer is "Miami," Ortiz instantly concocts a fake biography.
"I used to live in Miami, on the beach, showing off my muscles," the visual oddity says as the group stares skyward. "I used to love the ladies down there, and of course they loved me ... y'all take care now."
This goes on for hours.
"You might as well have some fun in life, let it all hang out," says Ortiz, who also does radio commercials and voice-over work at various hotels to supplement his income. "I'm not just a guy walking around on stilts. I play a character, I do voices. I try to be an actor."
Ortiz just learned to stilt-walk three months ago, but moves around quite ably and seems comfortable in his role.
"It's a constant flow of people here and that's what I like, meeting the people, especially the kids," he says "When a little kid sees me dressed up, 8 or 10 feet tall, it makes a real impression, trust me."
Rio impressive
Over at the Rio, interactive entertainment is much more splashy -- and expensive -- as guests are hit with the "Masquerade Show in the Sky," a $25 million production that runs repeatedly every afternoon (except Wednesdays) at the hotel's Masquerade Village.
But even with the dazzling costumes, bouncy live music and five floats hovering overhead, the key to the performance is the performers.
"We meet people from everywhere and they're all curious about our background, where we're from," says dancer Phoebe Rumsey, who has just shed the giant strawberry she wore in the afternoon performance. "We've all had a bit of acting and improv classes to help us deal with people and be interactive. People ask a lot of questions, about the hotel, about directions around the hotel or around town."
Guests repeatedly request photos or might even ask for a piece of a costume as a souvenir. But the performers' most popular function is tossing out the famed Rio beads, and even that act takes training.
"Oh, there's a particular way to do it -- throw underhand, always make eye contact first so you don't hit someone who's not looking," Rumsey says. "You can't imagine what people will do to get beads -- reach in front of a kid or jump in front of a wheel chair. It's wild."
It's also hard work. Rumsey dances and smiles through four 12-hour shifts per week. "At least I get three days off," she says. "It's fun work, but it's not easy."
Speaking for all "Street-mosphere" performers, Circus Circus staple DeDera says that it's a reputable form of entertainment.
"The biggest misconception about people who do this, whether it's here or at the Excalibur or Venetian or wherever, is that we're a bunch of teenagers doing this as a summer job. Wrong," he says. "It's our career. I've spent 13 years doing this type of stuff. I've been all over the world, I own a house, I have a wife and we're having a kid soon. This is what I do."
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