Delirium (Cirque du Soleil)

Delirium
Delirium in Antwerp, Belgium
Company	Cirque du Soleil
Genre	Contemporary circus
Show type	Touring arena show
Date of premiere	January 26, 2006
Final show	April 20, 2008
Creative team
Director of creation	Gilles Ste-Croix, Carmen Ruest
Creators, directors, set designers, and multimedia directors	Michel Lemieux, Victor Pilon
Musical director, recording producer, arrangements, sound effects designer	Francis Collard
Choreographer	Mia Michaels
Lyrics	Robbie Dillon
Costume designer	Michel Robidas
Lighting designer	Alain Lortie
Adaptation, research, design of acrobatic language	Catherine Archambault
Prop and set elements designer	Anne-Ségun Poirier
Sound designer	Yves Savoie
Make-up designer	Nathalie Gagné
Hair designer	Mario Huot
Associate producer, musical content	Ian Tremblay
Artistic director	Luc Tremblay
Original music composers	Violaine Corradi, René Dupéré, Benoît Jutras
Other information
Preceded by	Corteo (2005)
Succeeded by	Love (2006)

Delirium was a touring multimedia stage show by Cirque du Soleil featuring live music, video projections, and performances by acrobats and other circus performers. The production featured remixes of existing Cirque du Soleil music. The show premiered on January 26, 2006 and had its final performance in London, England on April 20, 2008.

Delirium was the first of Cirque du Soleil's productions designed to be presented in arenas outside Japan (first was Fascination in 1992, which was only presented in Japan); all the company's previous stage productions outside Japan had been toured with their own large, custom-built tent (referred to as the 'big top' or 'grand chapiteau') or were permanent shows performed in specially designed theatres. Delirium, as Cirque du Soleil's first significant experiment with arena venues, eventually helped pave the way for the company's subsequent show-by-show conversion of its older big top productions (e.g. Saltimbanco, Alegría, Quidam, Dralion, and Varekai) to a more cost-effective arena format.

Delirium's stage was set up on the arena floor, bisecting it lengthwise. Its two-sided, raised stage allowed for an alley theater-style presentation: the audience sat on both sides of the stage, at times able to look over the central stage to see the spectators on the other side. This presented unique staging challenges in that the most important actions had to be visible to both sides of the audience. However, the show could also be presented as a proscenium show, with the seats on one side of the arena left empty. In this case, the stage was set up closer to the sideline opposite the occupied seats, opening up a portion of the arena floor for additional seating. Despite the extraordinary complexity and size of Delirium's stage, it could be assembled inside an arena in approximately nine hours.

The ends of the stage were flanked by enormous projection screens, where real-time video footage from the stage performance was blended with prerecorded visuals. These end screens also served to block off a backstage area for the performers and technicians. Performers could enter the stage from behind the screens, from below (via several trap doors) and from above (via an elaborate system of motorized lifts). Two semi-transparent screens could slide out in front of the stage to turn both sides of the stage into a massive projection surface, roughly the equivalent in width of four IMAX screens.