Cirque du Soleil is a Canadian entertainment company and the largest contemporary circus producer in the world. Located in the inner-city area of Saint-Michel, it was founded in Baie-Saint-Paul on 16 June 1984 by former street performers Guy Laliberté and Gilles Ste-Croix.
Nottingham Playhouse is a theatre in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England. It was first established as a repertory theatre in 1948 when it operated from a former cinema in Goldsmith Street. Directors during this period included Val May and Frank Dunlop. The current building opened in 1963.
Matthew Warchus is an English theatre director, filmmaker and dramaturg. He has been the Artistic Director of London's The Old Vic since September 2015.
Varekai was a Cirque du Soleil touring production that premiered in Montréal in April 2002. Its title means "wherever" in the Romani language, and the show is an "acrobatic tribute to the nomadic soul".
Love is a 2006 theatrical production by Cirque du Soleil which combines the re-produced and re-imagined music of the Beatles with an interpretive, circus-based artistic and athletic stage performance. The show plays at a specially built theatre at the Mirage in Las Vegas.
Nick Winston is an internationally renowned English director and choreographer working in theatre, opera and film.
David Shiner is an American actor, clown, physical comedian, playwright and theater director.
Kenny Leon is an American director, producer, actor, and author, notable for his work on Broadway, on television, and in regional theater. In 2014, he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for A Raisin in the Sun.
Michael Curry is an American production designer who lives in Portland, Oregon. He is also the owner and President of Michael Curry Design Inc. in Scappoose, Oregon, which was started in 1986.
The Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park is a regional theatre in the United States. It was founded in 1959 by college student Gerald Covell and was one of the first regional theatres in the United States. Located in Eden Park, the first play that premiered at the Playhouse on October 10, 1960, was Meyer Levin's Compulsion. The Playhouse has gained a regional and national reputation for bringing prominent plays to Cincinnati and for hosting national premieres such as Tennessee Williams' The Notebook of Trigorin in 1996 and world premieres such as the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Coyote on a Fence in 1998 and Ace in 2006.
Olga Pikhienko is a circus performer who specializes in handbalancing and contortion. Pikhienko started in rhythmic gymnastics at the age of five. When she was eleven, she started performing with her father, Sasha Pikhienko, at the Nikulin Circus based in Moscow. Olga's act with her father won them a gold medal in 1992 at the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain in Paris. In 1993, they won a silver medal in Beijing, China at the World Festival.
Stafford Arima is a Canadian-born theatre director. Arima studied at York University in Toronto, where he was the recipient of the Dean's Prize for Excellence in Creative Work. He is a member of the SDC and CAEA. In April 2017, he became the artistic director of Theatre Calgary.
Cirque Productions, also known as Cirque Dreams, is a subsidiary of Cirque du Soleil.
Cal McCrystal is an Irish theatre director and actor. He is the brother of the journalist Damien McCrystal and the son of the journalist and writer Cal McCrystal. Following an early career acting in theatre, television, radio plays and commercials, McCrystal became a director specialising in comedy. His notable credits include Physical Comedy Director on the National Theatre's One Man, Two Guvnors starring James Corden and physical comedy consultant on Paddington and Paddington 2. In 2018, he directed a new production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe for the English National Opera.
Cirque du Soleil: Fire Within is a 2002 Canadian reality television mini-series. The series follows eight Cirque du Soleil performers during the creation and production of the Cirque's touring production, Varekai. Stress ensues as several newcomers try to learn new acrobatic acts for the show, while the subplot also follows the crew behind the show trying to cast new performers, advertise the production, create the stage set, costumes, and make-up, and manage the show under the direction of newcomer Dominic Champagne.
John Gilkey is an American actor, director, comedian, juggler and clown.
Stalking the Bogeyman is an American play by Markus Potter and David Holthouse with additional writing by Shane Zeigler, Shane Stokes & Santino Fontana. It is based upon David Holthouse's Westword newspaper article, where Holthouse wrote about how he had once planned to kill his childhood rapist. Potter chose to adapt the play after listening to Holthouse's story on a This American Life podcast, and the play had its world premiere at the North Carolina Stage Company in September 2013. An off-Broadway production ran from September 29, 2014 until November 9, 2014 at New World Stages. A new production of the play opened in London on July 11, 2016. The play made its Australian premiere at the historic Old Fitzroy Theatre in Sydney on May 23, 2018. The play received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination off-Broadway, and three off-West End Award nominations in London including best production.
Matt Lenz is a New York City-based theatre director. His career encompasses work on Broadway, Off-Broadway, national tours, regional theater and international productions. He is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
François Bergeron is a Canadian sound designer and co-founder of Thinkwell Group and was the former sound engineer for Cirque du Soleil for more than twenty years.
Ron Kellum is an American producer, director, artist and choreographer known for being a Broadway veteran and the first African-American artistic director for the award-winning Cirque du Soleil. He was the artistic director for the productions of Koozå from 2015 through 2016 and Volta from 2018 through 2020.
