18 Years of Can Can with Chris Pink
What started out as a little cabaret theatre with a house band and dancers (that doubled as servers) has now, 18 years later, grown into an iconic Seattle institution focused on world-class productions and charitable giving. Can Can creates 5+ in-house shows annually and is the city’s longest-running cabaret. It has truly evolved into one of the most unique and empowering artistic havens the city has to offer.
We sat down with Chris Pink, the founder of Can Can, to hear more about our tantalizing theatre’s first steps, how failure cultivates success, and what he’d tell himself way back when before embarking on the wildly wonderful, divinely drudging journey that is Can Can.
Read on to take a trip down memory lane and celebrate the good, the bad, and the sexy over 18 years of Can Can.
THECANCAN.COM: Can you take us back in time and tell us what Can Can looked like as just an inkling of an idea?
I had been traveling back and forth between California and Seattle and was beginning to consider the idea of living in Seattle as opposed to California. At the time, I was working with a company called One Reel. I was with them for one season working on a couple of their larger concert series, including Bumbershoot. The last year I was in California, I think we did 1200 events. It was ridiculous. I was very burned out on this idea of dealing with the general public en mass. My contract with Bumbershoot had us dealing with 289,000 people over a weekend. It was crazy. I was over this idea of large-scale, huge public events, so I was like, “All right, I've got this idea…”
I was just coming back from my contract at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and living in California and producing, presenting, and ticketing my own productions along with working with a bunch of arts organizations. So, I decided that I would take my love for opera, which was my training, and my love for the arts and all of the things that I had loved and admired along the way through my school and training and thought, “Why not take all of this and create something original?”
A tiny, little cabaret theatre. Not a lot of people. It will be very simple – we'll have a bar and a restaurant, and we’ll have music and dance. It'll be this tiny, easy, little thing to run compared to everything else I’ve done. Chris laughs. Little did I know it would end up being 10 times harder than anything I've ever done. You're producing the shows, running a bar, running a restaurant, dealing with all the humans that are required to do all of that along with still having to deal with the public but on a smaller scale.
That’s really how we got to Can Can. I just wanted to open up a creative, little cabaret venue where I could combine my various loves of art, and that was pretty much where it started. I thought, “Oh, we'll do everything from punk to opera, it'll be cool!” And that's how we opened. Opening night, we had one of my friend's rock bands from California and another one of my friends from California who was a famous cabaret artist. Then, we had our house dance troupe, which was literally can-can centric with a live jazz band. Everything I had envisioned happened, and I was like, “Wow, what?”
THECANCAN.COM: Many of your co-creatives and collaborators describe you as perpetually optimistic. How have you managed to keep your glass half full throughout a long career?
Chris Pink: I am not sure if that's a positive or a negative thing. Chris chuckles. As the founder of the organization, I think our mission and what we do far surpass any of our individual wants and desires. Can Can has truly become its own thing, and I've really come to trust in the fact that no matter what happens, we have to exist. Not for my sake or anybody else in the organization's sake, necessarily, but because people actually need what we bring to the world. The escapism, joy, and hopefulness that people feel when they attend our shows is something that almost feels like a public service. Inadvertently, we have also been afforded the platform to support compromised communities through financial contributions which is the icing on the cake.
So, I think my optimism comes from just always knowing that everything will be okay. We have to make it okay. We can stress about it, we can think that the world is going to end, and we can have everything go wrong–but the show is still going to go on, it's still going to happen. So we can stress about it or not, but I just know that I have faith in Can Can and our team. I have faith in our people, and I have faith in our infrastructure to be able to make miracles happen on a regular basis.
Everybody's so supportive in the most insane of situations. We have this extraordinary team of people that are endlessly coming up with creative ways to handle devastating situations like pandemics, recessions, and other notable world issues. It's happened over and over, so I have no choice but to be optimistic and trust the universe that everything will go as it should.
THECANCAN.COM: Describe your relationship with failure and success over the last 18 years.
Chris Pink: I have a much stronger connection to failure because we’ve failed so many times. To have even an inkling of success has required all of that failing. So, I feel highly familiar with failure. I understand what it is. I have a very close relationship with it, but I do try to stay as far away from it as I can.
Honestly, success is something that is relatively new to us in the sense that, right now, we don't need to worry about every tiny, little financial decision every moment of our lives. In the past, there was a lot of me, or anybody I could get to help, winging it to get by to get to the success we have now.
There were times that I wanted to throw in the hat like, “You know what? F#$% it. This was fun, we did it, this was a great experiment, but let's move on to the next thing.” But, I keep moving forward. When I get discouraged, Fae and Jonny are my cheerleaders saying, “Shut the f#$% up, pull your baby pants up, and make it work.”
THECANCAN.COM: Can you tell us how you've built Can Can's community, especially within Pike Place?
Chris Pink: It's been a slow growth. Working in organizations like Can Can has waves of natural evolutions that allow us to grow. It might be an artistic evolution, it could be a staffing evolution.
But I think the thing is, for all these years, we've just kept our minds on the prize. No matter what happens along the way, we try to continue to put positivity into the world which sometimes translates into building a new community. Other times, it doesn't. We’ve had moments where we just have to shrug our shoulders and say, “It’s all right. It is what it is.”
It's part of the artistic growth that we live in. We always try to put our best foot forward. We try to create things that are enjoyable to both our guests and artistic communities.
THECANCAN.COM: What is your vision for the future of Can Can, both near and far?
Chris Pink: The big next milestone is getting Portland open, which is going a little bit slower than we hoped. We've had a few hiccups in the construction process, but it's moving along. We're moving forward, but getting Portland open is our next big thing.
In the back of my head, I have this idea of having a national presence in large cities. I'm torn between growing or keeping what we have and keeping it homegrown. Do we try to spread what we're able to do in other cities that have the infrastructure to support what we do? We would do it with the intent of being able to spread positivity in these other areas and being able to contribute on a grander scale to some of the larger national problems that compromised communities are facing.
We just have such a unique platform that we could use to be able to help the community, whether that be our local communities or national communities if we ever go down that road.
THECANCAN.COM: What would you tell yourself 18 years ago? Would you give yourself advice? A warning? Or perhaps nothing at all?
Chris Pink: I would have told myself to meditate. Honestly, that is probably the one thing that allows me to get through my day every day, no matter how much stress is happening or what's going on.
Hmm, what’s another good one? I would remind myself to make sure that taking care of your mental and physical health always comes first because if you're not mentally or physically healthy, then it's hard to take care of anybody else (and we have an entire tribe of mouths to feed).
A lot of the time we just get so overwhelmed, especially in this business, in particular. The restaurant business is grueling, the bar business is grueling, and the entertainment business is grueling, so put all of those together and you've got your work cut out for you. But, if you take care of yourself and you stay positive and you keep your peace of mind, then you can get through these things without it being so painful. In fact, this allows us to keep manifesting positivity and continue to bring joy into the world. So just stop, take a deep breath, and take care of yourself, Chris…the rest will follow
Experience for yourself what Mr. Pink and the whole Can Can family have built. Make your reservation today at tickets.thecancan.com.