Franco Dragone (12 December 1952 – 30 September 2022) was an Italian-born Belgian theatre director. He was the founder and artistic director of Dragone, a creative company specializing in the creation of large-scale theatre shows. He was also known for his work with Cirque du Soleil and Celine Dion. CNN said that Dragone was "one of the key architects of Cirque du Soleil's theatrical style", and that "while Cirque du Soleil's signature was contemporary circus, Dragone's solo work embodies more theater, dance -- and, of course, water" through the use of his "trademark" aquatic stages. Dragone died from a severe chest infection in Cairo, Egypt, on 30 September 2022 at the age of 69. Early life Dragone was born in 1952 in Cairano, a small town in southern Italy. At the age of seven, he moved to the mining region of La Louvière in Belgium with his family so his parents could work in Belgium's coal mines. He remembers that being an "artist" was not treated seriously by the mining community in La Louvière. His father, however, was broad-minded and enrolled Dragone in a liberal lycée. As a student, Dragone was taught a wide range of topics and was allowed to choose his field of interest. Dragone chose the arts. In the 1970s he studied theatre at the Belgian Royal Conservatory of Mons. Starting his career as an actor in subsidized Belgian art theater, he switched to activist theater, or "theater without actors" according to Dragone. His earliest theatrical work was explicitly political, working as a director of theatre and film in the mode of the commedia dell'arte dramatist Dario Fo. The theatre works he helped create expressed social situations, interpreting true stories of the homeless, drug addicts, and prison inmates, and casting non-actors who shared their stories to perform in the shows. In this context Dragone began to teach staging, or visual expression, and came to believe that it was "possible to do high quality shows for mainstream people". Cirque du Soleil In the 1980s, Dragone came to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in pursuit of "a beautiful girl". In Montreal, Guy Caron, director of the National Circus School, invited him to conduct workshops with the students and teachers at his school. Dragone then created, directed and produced a show for the end of the school year. Guy Laliberté saw one of these performances in 1984, the same year he formed