Professional Lighting & Production - Fall 2018 | Page 23

C
irque du Soleil has been creating some of the world’s most awe-inspiring
live shows for over three decades. Each production stunningly blends
the best in music, lighting, and, of course, acrobatics and showmanship.
Though continually evolving over its 34-year existence, Cirque has been
able to consistently honour the circus traditions of the past century
while also firmly bringing the entire concept of what a circus production
is into the current world of live entertainment. There may be no better
example of this than Corteo.
Directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, who founded the Swiss clown
troupe Teatro Sunil, Corteo is set in early 20 th century Europe and tells the
story of a clown imagining his own carnival-like funeral. The producers
describe it well as “juxtaposing the large with the small, the ridiculous
with the tragic, and the magic of perfection with the charm of imperfec-
tion. The show highlights the strength and fragility of the clown, as well
as his wisdom and kindness, to illustrate the portion of humanity that is
within each of us. The music, by turns lyrical and playful, carries Corteo
through a timeless celebration in which illusion teases reality.”
The show premiered under the Big Top in Montreal in 2005, where
it was seen by more than 200,000 people before traveling the world for
10 years. The Grand Chapiteau tour took Corteo through
64 cities in 19 countries, spending one to three
months in each location, and wrapped up
in Ecuador in December, 2015.
“Since the creation of Corteo
in all its life in the Big Top,
everybody agreed that it
was kind of a special show
for Cirque du Soleil. A
lot of people thought
there was a soul to
that show because
there was a very
defined spirit,” recalls
Carl Thibaudeau. He
was the production
manager while the
current Corteo arena
tour was being devel-
oped and more recently
was promoted to senior
director of show technical
equipment and projects for
all of Cirque du Soleil’s touring productions. “One of the main challenges
in the adaptation from Big Top to arena was to make sure we kept the
soul of the production. Lighting was a very big part of that. The spirit of
the show is a really old European circus show. It’s set in the beginning of
the 20 th century, so it’s that spirit that we brought. The scenography and
the sound are obviously important, as well, but the lighting is very much
wrapping all that up and making it feasible.”
Throughout the show, the aesthetic blends the sombre and playful,
but given the early 20 th century European setting, it’s also fairly simple,
particularly the lighting. It’s that simple style – with the adjective “warm”
being constantly used to describe the show in PL&P’s conversations
– combined with the Italian, French, and Spanish music that gives the
show the soul that Thibaudeau refers to.
“The idea behind Corteo is it’s the story of a clown, [Mauro], who is
dying, so we see his memories. With all the lighting, really, the idea was
that everything is as warm as possible, as tungsten as possible – like
it was an old circus or an old souvenir,” explains Martin Labrecque, the
lighting designer for both the Big Top and arena productions of Corteo.
“So in the arena, it’s still like that. Every move is almost always the same
base, which is a tungsten, warm look, and the kind of feeling that we
have is an old circus from the ‘20s or ‘30s.”
Though the basic look of the two iterations stayed
consistent, Labrecque says there was a “huge
difference” in the technology. “One of the
reasons is that the [Big Top] had only
six moving lights and the rest was
colour changers and it was a
tungsten-based lighting plot.
Now, it’s all moving lights
– 120 moving lights and
there is no tungsten at
all. The reason for that
is because they have
to set up faster than
in the Big Top, so no
tungsten and no
conventionals were
allowed on this tour,”
he explains. “Plus, the
set changed constantly.
They rebuilt the set and
they rebuilt the tracks,
the stage, and so I had
different hanging points. The
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