- Guy St-Amour

 

Guy St-Amour has been involved in the performing arts for more than 30 years. He began his career in 1975 as a technician and has participated in an impressive number of projects in theatre, cinema, television and circus. In 2002, he was selected to contribute his talents to  Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee Royal Visit to Canada and in 2005 he worked on the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan’s Centennial Celebration of the Arts.

 

Guy has been associated with Cirque du Soleil since the very beginning, working in a number of pioneering technical direction capacities between 1984 and 1995. He participated in the creation of rigging systems for aerial numbers, special effects, acrobatic equipment and set design elements. He has also been interested in audio since 1984, and created the sound design for Nouvelle Expérience in 1989. He also designed, created and supervised the installation of the big tops for Cirque’s European and North American tours between 1989 and 1995.

 

In 1987 he founded his own consulting company which has worked for scores of clients including Expo ‘98 in Portugal (for which he created a teleport simulator), the Montreal Casino, the National Film Board of Canada, the Just For Laughs comedy festival, Opéra de Montréal’s Carmen Sous les Étoiles and the Montreal International Jazz Festival. At the same time he is intensely involved in training the next generation of technicians in Quebec, teaching at the National Theatre School, the École Nationale de Cirque and the Montreal-based circus arts national network En Piste.

 

In 2006 Guy created the motorized equipment and special effects for the show Joe Dassin in Montreal and the acrobatic equipment and rigging for the Cirque du Soleil show LOVE in Las Vegas. Wintuk is the second time Guy has worked as a Creator for a Cirque show, and he is currently also working on the Elvis Presley show that Cirque is presenting at Project CityCenter in Las Vegas at the end of 2009.

 

The greatest challenge Guy has faced on Wintuk is the theatre itself. “The ceiling at Madison Square Garden is only 20 feet above the stage,” he points out. “We don’t have the height we usually work with in the Big Top or in a theatre – and the equipment had to be designed to accommodate that reality. On the other hand, the space is wide and the performers fill the entire frame. The marionette numbers and the extreme sport-influenced acrobatics take place near the floor, which is a new challenge for Cirque du Soleil.”

 

Guy St-Amour was born in Montreal in 1959.