Q: So the Baie-Saint-Paul festival of street entertainers in 1981 ended with a rather distinctive atmosphere. Were you already thinking of the Cirque?

René Dupéré: A circus-like atmosphere prevailed, of course, and we had the feeling that we had to do something with all these assembled people. Anyway, we had talked about it the previous evening. Something had to happen, we had in our hands all the elements to let us do it.

Q: Cirque du Soleil was born in benefit of the festivities surrounding the Quebec 1534-1984 event. Was the circus formed solely for that event?

René Dupéré: Yes, at first it was solely for that occasion. Guy Laliberté had gone to meet René Lévesque -- for a 24-year-old kid, he had to do it! He had obtained from the government a million-and-a-half dollars to put on the Cirque show: buy a tent, a sound and lighting system, all this for the Quebec 1984 festivities. From start to finish, it was a monumental success. In fact, almost the only success of those festivities...

Q: You did a full tour of Quebec.

René Dupéré: Yes. Quebec, Montreal, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Rimouski, Baie-Comeau... eleven cities in eleven weeks. That’s the reason René Lévesque agreed to pay us that amount: we were really offering a Quebecois event. In each city, we performed four shows in four days.

It was a huge party that lasted eleven weeks. We all knew each other, except the group of Belgians... but after one day, they got to know the whole team.

Q: And the public’s reaction?

René Dupéré: Absolute insanity everywhere. In Quebec, we barely escaped a riot; we were afraid that the situation would deteriorate. There were only 800 seats available and nearly four thousand people were waiting, hoping to get tickets! Since we were performing a different show every day, there were many people who wanted to attend.

Q: So the Cirque was created for a specific event. At that time, it gave work to people like you who had learned a profession.

René Dupéré: Basically. The Cirque gave work to people who had a profession but no place to practice it. It came to fill a void. This was the case for us, street entertainers, but also for clowns and acrobats who had studied at Montreal’s Ecole de cirque. It was created in 1979, and this was an important asset in the creation of Cirque du Soleil.

Q: A huge first hit: Quebec 1984. You didn’t stop there.

René Dupéré: After the tour in Quebec, we did a tour of English-speaking Canada: Toronto, Niagara, Vancouver. That wasn’t easy. The first three years, the Cirque was far from being a financial success. Each year, we had to completely reinvest our meager profits. Our problem was due to the limited tour time, which wasn’t enough to allow us to offset the infrastructure’s cost.

In 1985, Robert Fitzpatrick, director of the prestigious Los Angeles Times theater festival, attended our show in Toronto. The houses were barely 40 percent full. For us, that was very depressing. Well! this Mr. Fitzpatrick literally “fell in love” with the show. He invited us to open the 1987 Los Angeles Times theater festival! In 1983, Arian Mnouchkin and the Théâtre du Soleil had done the premiere there.

Q: From the Théâtre du Soleil to the Cirque du Soleil...

René Dupéré: Yes. This festival was the Cirque’s biggest challenge. On the one hand because Los Angeles was a gateway into America. On the other hand, when we left for Los Angeles, we had just enough money to get there... and not a cent to get back. It had to work!

Q: You had put all your eggs in the same basket. “We’re going to get there. Afterwards, we’ll see.”

René Dupéré: Completely. And that’s one of the strengths of the Cirque: the people who run it have the temperament of gamblers, but intelligent gamblers. They know how to take risks.

Q: In what way was the Los Angeles risk important for what followed?

René Dupéré: On the one hand because we didn’t have enough money to come back! On the other hand, it was also the entrance into the American market: a success would permit us to enlarge the schedule of the shows. This was what made the difference between two months of shows per year and the nonviability of this enterprise, and one or two years of performances and the success of the enterprise. We were performing a show without words, without text, without narration, only music! It’s the ideal show to take around the world. We absolutely had to break through into the American market.

Los Angeles was truly the key event: it would work or it wouldn’t work. If it didn’t work, that was it! But if it worked, it would be the grand coup. Even today, that’s the strength of the Cirque’s managers who, when they explore new markets, take chances, but intelligently. They have the flair one needs to succeed.

Q: Tell me, how did you get back from Los Angeles?

René Dupéré: Not in first class, but we came back by plane. I was there, the evening of the premiere, and it was one of the most beautiful days of my life.

First I should describe the context. The show took place in the area of Los Angeles named Little Tokyo, two blocks away from the hotel, which was enormously reassuring. But it was also two blocks away from South Central, the place where the racial riots of 1989 began. At night, we heard gunfire. We saw people get very seriously beat up by policemen. The circus was surrounded by barbed wire. We found ourselves in a sort of fortified camp. But no one there seemed to be surprised, everything seemed perfectly normal.

The evening of the premiere, at the four corners of the big top, there were searchlights, huge turning lights. The limousines, a lot of them, began to arrive. Since at the time I didn’t watch any more television than I do today, I didn’t know who these actors and actresses were. I recognized one or another from films I had seen at the movie theater... But we felt so small before this big crowd to whom we hardly meant anything!

Just before the show, a clown was interacting with the spectators; he liked to provoke people. At a given moment, the ringmaster, to make the transition to the beginning of the show that was ready to start, said to him: “Listen, stop harassing the spectators!” The clown replied to the ringmaster, in English, so that everyone understood: “Hey, I don’t give a fuck, none of them paid for their ticket!”

Q: Was that true?

René Dupéré: Yes, it was true! In the wings, we said to ourselves, “Oh no!” For a second, there was a deathly silence, then people began to laugh. “Oof!” The tension eased. Then the show began.

Q: René Dupéré, how did you feel in Los Angeles, directing and listening to your own music, in front of all those people?

René Dupéré: In fact, what happened for me was more outside of me than inside. We were there, watching what went on and crossing our fingers. We knew we had something really good in our hands. And we were fascinated by our own show seen by the eyes of those people. We also became conscious that it was an English-speaking show, in another culture, in another country. We found ourselves, for the first time in our lives, in front of the upper crust of Hollywood, in the context of the Los Angeles Times theater festival! I was not concerned with my internal feelings. I was riveted by what was happening around me. I was studying the people who were talking. At intermission, we exchanged our circus jackets for ordinary jackets and we went walking among the crowd. We felt that something was happening then. After the show, we got a standing ovation. All the spectators were totally dazzled.

Q: In this winning team, you were “the oldest of the gang.” Were you the group’s moral advisor?

René Dupéré: Not at all. I didn’t have any moral weight. I was new to the environment. Guy Laliberté, for example, already had four years of experience as a street entertainer. He played accordion, breathed fire. He could show me! Even if I had fifteen years of teaching experience, who was I to come tell him how to make shows?

Q: Here, in Quebec, the circus tradition had till now been based on the model of American circuses, with animals, a very particular music, accompanying acts, without anything more. In 1984 did you already have the feeling of creating something different, with this group of musicians and public entertainers?

René Dupéré: Completely. We didn’t know where this would lead us, if our enterprise would be crowned with success, what type of success we could hope for. But what we were putting on its feet was based not on circus families, as in Europe, nor on the big three-ring circuses as in America, but on theatricality. Public entertainers, used to playing in the streets, brought this whole theatrical style, made up of several aspects -- theater, mime, slapstick, etc. -- which transmit emotions, expressions. The show relies also on the acrobatic style, an offshoot of Russian and Chinese acrobatics. So it doesn’t present animals, but rests exclusively on human abilities, with a minimum of hardware. The power of Cirque was in integrating those two styles. In the beginning, it presented largely theater and a bit of acrobatics; today, the shows present a little theater, brought to life by a few characters in particular, and lots of acrobatics, of much higher quality. In the beginning, the acrobatic dimension was truly elementary, but the spectacle was so full of energy, of craziness, that people were seduced by everything that surrounded the acrobatic numbers. Today the lunacy has abated, resulting in much more integrated shows.

Q: What was your role within the Cirque in the beginning?

René Dupéré: In 1984, as Fanfafonie was the Cirque’s orchestra, I was the musical director. I also composed a few pieces, but very few. In 1985, I did a few more compositions. In 1986, for the first time I composed the entire show’s music. I realized that I couldn’t combine the responsibilities of composer and musical director on tour. Then Benoit Jutras became the bandleader, and I was able to begin to compose full-time for the 1987 show.