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WATCH: Cirque Du Soleil's creative director Lydia Harper speaks to GB News about creating the world-famous show
Feb 15, 2026
Michael Portillo speaks with Creative Director of Cirque Du Soleil Lydia Harper to find out what goes into making one of the most elaborate live stage shows ever.Ms Harper told GB News: "Last year we spent about four months in Montreal recreating all of OVO. "So now we've got new characters, new music, new stories, new new costumes, and the whole world is rebuilt. We've got a completely new set design as well."WATCH ABOVE.
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The circus has come to town
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Seat do Soleil Ovo is back in London for its annual run for the Royal Albert Hall
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The circus troupe is performing Ovo, which means egg in Portuguese. Ovo is a celebration of the insect world with at its heart a love story
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between a quirky fly, a spirited ladybug and a mysterious egg. With me now is the creative director of Seat do Soleil, Lydia Harper
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Lydia, fantastic to see you. Tell me a little bit about yourself
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What's your present position and where did you come from in the Cirque du Soleil? Absolutely. Hello, nice to be here
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I'm Lydia. I'm the artistic director of OVO by Cirque du Soleil
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and I've been working in this role for about three years now. I started working with Cirque du Soleil in 2015 as a performer
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I was an acrobat in a show called To Rook the First Flight, which was inspired by the movie's avatar
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So I was all painted blue and had a tail, did all sorts of acrobatic crazy things
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To be creative director is a tremendous role. Now OVO is a show that has been staged before but you reimagined it And I suppose a lot of the reimagination has been done by you personally has it Well in collaboration with Surely
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..a huge team of people from all across the world. Yes, OVO's been around since 2009
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It was originally created by Deborah Corker, who's a Brazilian dance choreographer, live art specialist
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And 15 years, 16 years is quite a long time to keep a show running, so we often go through restaging periods
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and we've just done one of them last year. We spent about four months in Montreal recreating all of OVO
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So now we've got new characters, new music, new stories, new costumes
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and the whole world is rebuilt. We've got a completely new set design as well
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So in short, if I've seen OVO before, I shouldn't think, oh, I don't want to go to that because I've seen it before
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It's all different. It's entirely different. You've never seen this OVO before. We've never before seen acts in Cirque du Soleil
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and a lot of joy and happiness comes out of this show
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Now, it so happens that you haven't come alone to the studio today. Sagi Bracca is also here He behind me And hello He is obviously now beginning to do some juggling
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And very splendid he is. By the way, what a wonderful costume. Lydia, I once went to the Céateau de Sleu in Montreal
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and I was dressed up in a costume not too dissimilar from that one. I was a sort of green bug
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I must say I enjoyed it very much indeed. Tell me a bit about the spirit of the circus
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What are your inspirations? What do you want people to feel? You're so different from every circus that came before
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What is the difference? The thing for me that makes Cirque du Soleil special
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and particularly with OVO, is it's about making the impossible possible right in front of your eyes
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So you come and see the show, you get immersed into a completely new world
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and you're fully transported away from the day-to-day life. OVO, as you say, it's about insects
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It's a day in the life of the bugs. We have a colony. We've got... It's about making them micro-macro
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and really, really bringing the audience in and completely taking them away from maybe a rainy Sunday morning And it perfect escapism Shall we let Sagi go on Yeah no we let him go on
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He's doing very well over there. One of the things that always worries me when I go to a circus
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is the risks that people are taking. How do you feel about risk
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For instance, you were a performer. How did you feel about risk then? Risk management is one of the biggest parts of my job
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as well as any performer's job. It's important that you understand the risk and the safety elements that need to be part of what you do
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We have people who've been training their entire lives to do this. We've got ex-Olympians in the show
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We've got gymnasts who've done world championships. We've got dancers and people from all different backgrounds who've been working on this for their whole lives
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So we mitigate risk in as many ways as possible by making sure we rehearse daily
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We have a lot of safety mechanisms in place. and we tour with two physiotherapists who help keep all the acrobats in good shape
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so they can help figure out how to do that rehab and prehab to avoid any injuries
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