Artistic director, Writer & Stage Director
crédits: Isabel Rancier 2017
By exploring the marvelous and the imaginary, Hugo Bélanger has delighted audiences for more than 26 years with shows where theatricality and inventiveness spur dreams and poetry.
A handy creator and a specialist in masked and physical play, he creates for theater, circus and opera with equal happiness. His artistic signature, marrying the precision of the body with a love for strong and poetic images, knows how to reach an audience of all ages and all types.
Artistic Director of the Théâtre Tout à Trac, the company he founded more than 26 years ago, he creates shows that have marked the spirits like The Princess Turandot, MÜNCHHAUSEN, the Machinery of the Imagination, Around the World in 80 Days and The Dreamer in his Bath. His shows rally critics and the audience, winning many awards including a Mask in 2006, audience awards in 2015 and 2023.
Anxious to create for all audiences, his adaptations of Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland have delighted children all over the world for more than 16 years with more than 950 performances in America, Asia and the Middle East.
He collaborated with Théâtre Jean-Duceppe several times with great success. He won 8 Duceppe Audience Awards for his staging of Harold and Maude and his adaptation, in 2018, of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time received an unprecedented acclamation from the audience and a unanimous critical reception in addition to winning 8 Duceppe Audience Awards.
He also teaches in Quebec’s leading vocational institutions, including the National Theater School of Canada and the National Circus School. He frequently gives master classes around the world.
In 2012, he collaborated with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra where he directed Beethoven upstairs. Two years later, the Opéra de Montréal asked him to direct Hansel und Gretel where he merged the opera and the circus.
He was hired by the Cirque du Soleil to direct the Opening Ceremony of the Canada Pavilion for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and has created in 2019 X, the Land of Fantasy, the first major permanent show of Cirque du Soleil in China in a highly technological theater specially designed for this show of which he is the author and the director. He also directed ÇA, the latest comedy show by André Sauvé nominated for comedy show of the year, best staging and best scenography of the year at the 2019 ADISQ Gala. In 2022, he directed Vérités, the show of illusionist Luc Langevin. In 2023, the TNM hosted his original creation, Le Rêveur dans son bain, a production that received three Gascon-Roux awards, and for which he served as both author and director. He also won the 2023 Critics’ Prize for Best Young Audience Production for his creation Alice de l’autre côté. In 2025, he is directing a new version of the Off-Broadway hit Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors at TOHU, as well as an original adaptation of Voltaire’s tale, Candide, at Théâtre Denise-Pelletier.