Zarkana

Zarkana
Logo for Cirque du Soleil's Zarkana
Company	Cirque du Soleil
Genre	Contemporary circus
Date of premiere	June 29, 2011
Final show	April 30, 2016
Location	Touring Aria Resort and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada (residential starting October 25, 2012)
Creative team
Writer and director	François Girard
Creation director	Line Tremblay
Set and props designer	Stéphane Roy
Costume designer	Alan Hranitelj
Composer and musical director	Nick Littlemore
Choreographers	Debra Brown, Jean-Jacques Pillet
Lighting designer	Alain Lortie
Image content designer	Raymond St-Jean
Sound designer	Steven Dubuc
Acrobatic performance designer	Florence Pot
Rigging and acrobatic equipment designer	Danny Zen
Makeup designer	Eleni Uranis
Guest creator and dramatist	Serge Lamothe
Music guide	Elton John
Other information
Preceded by	Totem (2010)
Succeeded by	Iris (2011)
Official website

Zarkana was a Cirque du Soleil stage production written and directed by François Girard. It began as a touring show in 2011 and was converted to a resident show in Las Vegas in late 2012. It premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on June 29, 2011, and later toured to the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow and the Madrid Arena in Madrid.

The show was marketed as a reinvention of the variety show, with a story about a magician in an abandoned theatre who had lost his love and his magic. As he cried and begged the gods for her return, he was plunged into a world inhabited by surreal creatures. The title Zarkana is a fusion of the words "bizarre" and "arcana", referring to the strange aura and atmosphere of this place and its inhabitants.

Following Zarkana's successful run in Moscow, the show started residency at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on November 9, 2012. The show replaced the Cirque du Soleil resident production Viva Elvis, which had closed in August 2012 at the Aria Resort. On April 30, 2016, Zarkana closed to provide space for a new convention hall at the Aria.

To fully rehearse for Zarkana, Cirque du Soleil needed to find a facility large enough to accommodate a space similar in size to that of Radio City Music Hall. Lacking enough space at the Montréal headquarters, the company looked around North America for a suitable place. They chose the Amway Arena, located in Orlando, Florida. The crew moved into the facility on February 28, 2010, and stayed for a couple of months. Cirque du Soleil paid US$2,500 (equivalent to $2,662 in 2016) a day plus expenses to rent the arena; around 200 company employees were eating in Orlando and staying in hotels, and around 100 Floridians worked on the project part-time, creating a "great economic boost" for the city, according to Orlando venues executive Alan Johnson.