Martin Labrecque
Lighting Design (KOOZA, Corteo)
Martin Labrecque’s professional credits include more than a hundred theatrical productions. Viva ELVIS is the third Cirque du Soleil show for which he has created the lighting, following his debut on Corteo and his subsequent designs for KOOZA.
Martin contributed to the critical success of several Quebec shows including L’Homme en Lambeaux in 2001, for which he won an award for his lighting design. In 2003 he co-wrote a show with Patrice Dubois about the life of Orson Welles: Everybody’s Welles Pour Tous, for which he received the Masque de la Meilleure Production Montréal. He has won two other Masque awards – in 2005 for his work on Le Peintre des Madonnes and in 2007 for Hosanna, both of which were directed by Serge Denoncourt. His other lighting designs have garnered a dozen award nominations.
Before coming to Cirque du Soleil, Martin Labrecque created the lighting for two acclaimed circus shows produced by Cirque Eloize, Rain and Nomade, which was directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, who went on to write and direct Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo.
In 2009, Martin won a Félix Award (Québec) for the lighting design of singer Pierre Lapointe’s show MUTANTES. The same year, he designed the lighting for an eleven-hour show by the Canadian author, director and actor Wajdi Mouawad, which was presented in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes in Avignon, France. He also worked on the show Paradis Perdu, directed by Dominic Champagne and presented in Montreal.
"For Viva Elvis, I wanted to bring some theatricality to a world that is more rock ‘n’ roll than Cirque is used to,” says Martin. “Particularly in the acrobatic numbers. I was looking to create a balance between the rhythms of the music and the visual poetry of the scenes.”
Martin Labrecque was born in 1972 in Montreal.