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First assembled in Belgium shortly after the Second World War, the 18-metre-wide spiegeltent spent most of its life as a transient performance venue and sometimes dancehall. It roved around small-town Europe with hundreds of its kind for most of the 20th century until they fell out of general use and fashion in the ’80s. Retro nostalgia saved a scarce few — just over 30 original spiegeltents survive — and Cristal Palace is the first of its kind to ever pop up in Alberta, where between July 21 and 30 it will serve as a booth-ringed theatre in the round for local music, spoken word performances and circus acrobatics.
It’s a sweet celebration for the tent’s 75th birthday this year.
Peter Goosens is the Belgian-born owner of West Coast Spiegeltents, the North American arm of a company affiliated with the Klessens family going back five generations in the spiegeltent game. This tent is his.
Set-up wise, he explains, it takes a crew of six less than five days to assemble the tent’s 2,200 pieces, with nearly 3,000 kgs of steel beneath, like some giant Lego set with no instructions.
“And all we need,” says Goossens, “is a 14-foot ladder, a screwdriver and a hammer.”
Flat-packed, the whole thing fits into a single semi.
“I think this tent has a soul,” Gooseens notes, waving his hand around the gorgeous cylinder, “because it’s been around so many happy things, sad things — all kinds of emotions.”
He explains the tent was assembled in L.A. during the pandemic lockdown, yet dormant and empty for two years.
“I would regularly go in for maintenance and she — we say ‘she’ — felt sad, you could feel it,” he says. “But you can also feel now that people are visiting again, she’s happy. She’s back to doing what she’s supposed to do.”
Walk in through the painted facade and you’ll notice a few things, including the lovely glasswork and a functioning bar on the left. This leads into the central, pointed tent. A circle of plush red booths surrounds a tiny thrust stage with instruments set up at the back. From every direction, there’s light coming in from outside shining on the wood panelling and tent poles.
