Marie-Ève Milot dirige Paradis perdus à Trois-Rivières for Jean Leloup
Marie-Ève Milot is signing the mise en scène of Paradis perdus - Hommage à Jean Leloup, and jean leloup’s tribute show is arriving this summer in Trois-Rivières. It is her second Cirque du Soleil production, after the Daniel Bélanger tribute she staged last summer.
Milot said the project fits Leloup’s catalog because “Jean Leloup, c’est un artiste qui a été en soi très théâtral, très spectaculaire. Il a eu plusieurs cycles. Il y a même eu mort artistique, et il est revenu sous un autre nom. Il a fait des happenings. Ça s’amalgamait bien à un spectacle à grand déploiement. Il y a beaucoup de personnages dans son œuvre, alors c’était un territoire riche pour un spectacle de cirque”.
Trois-Rivières and the 10e spectacle
The production is the 10e spectacle de la série hommage du Cirque du Soleil, and it adds acrobatic disciplines that had never been seen in Trois-Rivières. That makes this more than a catalog tribute: it is another step in a series that keeps widening what the company is willing to stage around Quebec artists.
The show opens with “Le dôme” and brings in the characters roi Ponpon and the Enfant fou. Milot said she is still listening to Leloup’s work, adding, “Encore aujourd’hui je l’écoute. Jusqu’à son dernier album, en 2019 (L’étrange pays), qui est beaucoup plus sobre et épuré, mais qui m’a aussi beaucoup accompagnée.”
Jean Leloup and the special request
Leloup also made a special request, and Milot took care to integrate it into the show. She said the scale of his catalog made the assignment unusually open-ended: “J’aurais pu faire un spectacle sur chacun de ses albums.”
Milot’s own process comes from theater and writing, which helps explain why the production leans into excess without losing structure. “Je viens du théâtre et j’écris aussi,” she said, while describing a show built on “l’excès, la démesure” and a freedom that meant, “On ne peut pas être conventionnels.”
For audiences in Trois-Rivières, the practical takeaway is simple: this is not a routine homage, but a Cirque du Soleil staging built around a Jean Leloup universe that is being treated as dramatic material, not just a song list. The production’s 10-show lineage and its first-time acrobatic elements in the city set the expectation for a large-scale run rather than a nostalgia exercise.
