CMU School of Drama


Friday, April 25, 2014

Cirque du Soleil’s Highest Grossing Shows

www.cirquefascination.com: Guy Laliberté is the man behind the fantasy, who turned circus acts into magic and acrobatics into fairy tales when he laid the foundations of Cirque du Soleil. Accordionist by trade, a specialist in walking on stilts, and fire eater, Laliberté and a group of 20 Montreal performing artists founded Canada’s most successful export product back in 1984. Just as their slogans says, “we reinvent the circus,” Cirque du Soleil created a new niche, focusing on a new type of audience, where clowns became sophisticated and their numbers elaborated, all the while increasing the public’s comfort. Furthermore, they added theater elements, each show with its own storyline and musical score, dedicated exclusively to the most skillful of human talents.

3 comments:

AnnaAzizzyRosati said...

Although the number statistics aren't super interesting to me, it's cool to see which style of show earns the most profit. It seems like the shows that are based off of cultural icons, such as Michael Jackson or The Beetles are able to charge more for their tickets AND they end up earning the most. The main outlier is "O" coming in second. The show does not need to rely on pop culture to gain interest. It really is just an insanely impressive show that millions of people will pay lots of money to see! The other thing I appreciated about this article was reading about how different each show is from the other. It's crazy how diverse each Cirque show is despite there being SO many of them!

Hunter said...

Wow I've never seen a definite income from Cirque before. I had a general idea but they really exceeded expectations. Its no wonder Cirque's shows are such marvels they have quite a bit of money to spend on them. I find it fairly surprising though that the main Vegas shows aren't here. Especially shows like ka and zoomanity. I wonder if it is because there is not enough information on them or if they really don't make as much money as I think they do.

Trent Taylor said...

I think its really interesting to see where cirque makes its money and the breakdown between the different shows revenue. The think that i find most interesting is that KA is not on this list anywhere. Cirque, a company that places emphasis on spectacle, does not make the most money from its most spectacular show. When I started reading, I thought KA was going to be number one. I also think its really interesting that the michael jackson show that is number one is more like a concert than a typical cirque show. I wonder if anyone at cirque feels weird at all about their most successful show being one that isnt as much circus based?