[Aleksandar Saa Dundjerovic] Robert Lepage (Routle(BookFi.org)

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ROBERT LEPAGE

Routledge Performance Practitioners is a series of introductoryguides to the key theatre-makers of the last century. Each volume explainsthe background to and the work of one of the major inuences ontwentieth- and twenty-rst-century performance.

Robert Lepage is one of Canadas foremost playwrights and directors.His company, Ex Machina, has toured to international acclaim and hehas lent his talents to areas as diverse as opera, concert tours, acting andinstallation art. His most celebrated work blends acute personal nar-ratives with bold global themes. This book is the rst to combine:

an overview of the key phases in Lepages life and career an examination of the issues and questions pertinent to his work a discussion of The Dragons Trilogy as a paradigm of his working

methods a variety of practical exercises designed to give an insight into

Lepages creative process.

As a rst step towards critical understanding, and as an initial explorationbefore going on to further, primary research, Routledge PerformancePractitioners are unbeatable value for todays student.

Aleksandar Saa Dundjerovic is a Senior Lecturer in TheatrePerformance at the University of Manchester and a professional theatredirector with international experience. His books include The Cinemaof Robert Lepage: Poetics of Memory (2003) and The Theatricality of RobertLepage (2007).

ROUTLEDGE PERFORMANCEPRACT I T IONERS

Series editor: Franc Chamberlain, University College Cork

Routledge Performance Practitioners is an innovative series of intro-ductory handbooks on key gures in twentieth- and twenty-rst-centuryperformance practice. Each volume focuses on a theatre-maker whosepractical and theoretical work has in some way transformed the way weunderstand theatre and performance. The books are carefully structuredto enable the reader to gain a good grasp of the fundamental elementsunderpinning each practitioners work. They will provide an inspiringspringboard for future study, unpacking and explaining what mayinitially seem daunting.

The main sections of each book cover:

personal biography explanation of key writings description of signicant productions reproduction of practical exercises.

Volumes currently available in the series are:

Eugenio Barba by Jane TurnerPina Bausch by Royd ClimenhagaAugusto Boal by Frances BabbageBertolt Brecht by Meg MumfordMichael Chekhov by Franc ChamberlainJacques Copeau by Mark EvansEtienne Decroux by Thomas LeabhartJerzy Grotowski by James Slowiak and Jairo CuestaAnna Halprin by Libby Worth and Helen PoynerRudolf Laban Karen K. BradleyRobert Lepage by Aleksandar Saa DundjerovicAriane Mnouchkine by Judith G. MillerJacques Lecoq by Simon MurrayJoan Littlewood by Nadine HoldsworthVsevolod Meyerhold by Jonathan Pitches

Konstantin Stanislavsky by Bella MerlinHijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo by Sondra Horton Fraleigh and

Tamah NakamuraMary Wigman by Mary Ann Santos NewhallRobert Wilson by Maria Shevtsova

Future volumes will include:

Marina AbramovicAntonin ArtaudPeter BrookTadeusz KantorRichard Schechner

Ive always believed even before I was working with the RepreCycles or this method of working we have now that writing startsthe night that you start performing. Before that, at what peopleusually call rehearsals, we structure and improvise. The writing shouldbe the last thing we do. In theater it should be the traces of whatyouve done on stage The whole notion of playing in theatre hasbeen evacuated in this century. I think that the people who are part ofour company are not interested in acting that much they are inter-ested in playing.

Lepage in McAlpine, 1996, 135

ROBERT LEPAGE

Aleksandar Saa Dundjerovic

First published 2009by Routledge2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2009 Aleksandar Saa Dundjerovic

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced orutilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, nowknown or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or inany information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writingfrom the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataDundjerovic, Aleksandar Saa, 1965Robert Lepage / Aleksandar Saa Dundjerovic.p. cm. (Routledge performance practitioners)

Includes bibliographical references and index.1. Lepage, RobertCriticism and interpretation. I. Title.PN2308.L46D85 2008792.0233092dc22

2008025941

ISBN10: 0-415-37519-3 (hbk)ISBN10: 0-415-37520-7 (pbk)ISBN10: 0-203-09897-8 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-37519-1 (hbk)ISBN13: 978-0-415-37520-7 (pbk)ISBN13: 978-0-203-09897-4 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledgescollection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

ISBN 0-203-09897-8 Master e-book ISBN

CONTENTS

List of gures ivAcknowledgements xi

1 CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC BIOGRAPHY: ROBERTLEPAGE IN-BETWEEN WORLDS 1

Introduction 1Storytelling and languages 2Apprentice (197884) 8Exploring forms: Thtre Repre (198491) 13Multi-disciplinary performance: Ex Machina (1994) 19Conclusion 25

2 WRITINGS ON THE TECHNIQUES OF PERFOMANCECREATION 26

Introduction 26Evolving the creative process 27Geography: transformations and connections 28Combining arts and cultures 32The cycles 35Discovering hidden stories 39Intuitions and accidents 42

Dramaturgical devices 44Multi-media and performance art 46Languages of a new technology 50Conclusion 52

3 PERFORMANCE TEXT: THE DRAGONS TRILOGY 54Introduction 54Synopsis of The Dragons Trilogy 55The rehearsal process 64Playing with material objects 71Obstacles 76Games sessions 80The audience response as a resource 84Conclusion 86

4 PRACTICAL WORKSHOPS AND REHEARSALTECHNIQUES 89

Introduction 89Workshop conditions 90The body 94The space 106The objects 114The score 120Montage 127Text 133Conclusion 139

Glossary 142Bibliography 154Index 161

v i i i C ON T EN T S

F IGURES

1.1 Robert Lepage rehearsing the last six-hour version of TheDragons Trilogy in 1987, for Montreals Festival deThtres des Ameriques (FTA). Photo by Claudel Huot. 15

1.2 Scene from The Red Dragon (rst version), the rst ofthe three Parts of The Dragons Trilogy. The interactionbetween objects, actors and lighting creates the theatricalspace. 15

2.1 Poster for the second version of The Dragons Trilogy, forthe VII Chekhov International Festival in Moscow in July2007. 30

2.2 Scene from The White Dragon (rst version), the third ofthe three Parts of The Dragons Trilogy. Pierre (RobertLepage) and the third Yukali (Marie Brassard) are inPierres studio with a light installation resembling aconstellation and Chinese yin and yang symbols. Photo byClaudel Huot. 33

2.3 The RSVP Cycles diagram. 363.1 Scene from the end of the Prologue (rst version) of The

Dragons Trilogy. Photo by Claudel Huot. 583.2 One of the earlier phases of The Dragons Trilogy in

1986. Marie Brassard re-creates St Joseph Street byplaying with sand and a toy car. 59

3.3 Crawford (Robert Lepage, in the rst version of TheDragons Trilogy) emerges as a real character out of achildrens game (Marie Brassard and Marie Gignac) withshoeboxes. Photo by Claudel Huot. 60

3.4 Scene from the rst version of The Dragons Trilogy. Visionsof China in Crawford andWongs collective dream are seen inan opium den underneath the laundry. Photo by Claudel Huot. 60

3.5 The skating ring made of sand and shoes, at the end ofThe Red Dragon (rst version), the second of the threeParts of The Dragons Trilogy. Photo by Claudel Huot. 62

3.6 The airport in The White Dragon (second version), thethird of the three Parts of The Dragons Trilogy. Thewooden cabin is a duty-free shop. photo: rick Labb. 63

3.7 Crawford (Tony Guilfoyle) in The White Dragon (secondversion), the third of the three Parts of The DragonsTrilogy. A lm is projected live on the back screen. photo: rick Labb. 63

3.8 Crawfords death in The White Dragon (second version), thethird of the three Parts of The Dragons Trilogy, is symbolizedby a burning wheelchair. photo: rick Labb. 64

4.1 Body sculpturing (exercise 2.3). Photo by AleksandarDundjerovic. 98

4.2 Energy ball (exercise 2.8). Photo by AleksandarDundjerovic. 102



4.5 The bubble (exercise 3.2). Photo by AleksandarDundjerovic. 108

4.6 Moving space (exercise 3.6). Photo by AleksandarDundjerovic. 112

4.7 Improvisations based on score sheet (exercise 5.1). Photoby Rodrigo Garcez. 121

4.8 Discovering space (exercise 5.4). Photo by Rodrigo Garcez. 1254.9 Robert Lepages nal version of A Midsummer Nights

Dream in the Thtre du Trident in Quebec City, 1995. Apool of water is the central location for performersactions. Photo by Daniel Mallard. 141

x F I GURES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The contents of this book are based upon my PhD thesis on Lepagestheatre, my previous book The Theatricality of Robert Lepage andteaching students over the last fteen years in directing and devising. Iam thankful to a great number of people for helping me on thisjourney.

I would like to express my gratitude to my editor FrancChamberlain for his support and valuable comments that enormouslyhelped me in compiling this book. I am thankful to Professor DavidBradby under whose supervision I started my research on RobertLepages directing practice. Thanks too to sta at Routledge for helpin making this project come together. I am grateful to a number ofpeople associated with Ex Machina who have helped me over the yearsof my research, but particularly to Robert Lepage, Linda Beaulieu,Michel Bernatchez, Michael Morris and Micheline Beaulieu archivistfrom Ex Machina for her time and understanding. My heartfeltthanks goes to my circle of readers and commentators RmyCharest, Tracy Lea, Meretta Elliot, Sarah Meadows, Christine Carsonand Teodora Dundjerovic.

During the past ten years I have worked with many students,exploring Lepages devising and workshop process, at Royal Holloway,University of London; Brunel University; The University ofManchester; and The University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. I am thankful to

all of them for their participation and insight. I am particularlygrateful to Rodrigo Garcez for his help with the images in Chapter 4.

Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to my wife, IlvaNavarro Bateman, and express my gratitude to my father ProfessorDr Aleksandar Dundjerovic.

x i i F I GURES

1

CULTURAL AND ARTISTICBIOGRAPHY: ROBERTLEPAGE IN-BETWEEN

WORLDSINTRODUCTION

Robert Lepage is one of the worlds foremost theatre directors, and iswidely regarded as a key contemporary performance visionary. He is adirector, playwright/deviser, actor and multi-media artist whose per-formance practice combines various artistic forms, traditions and cultures.The theatre is only one of the media used by Lepage. He also works asa lm auteur and directs opera, rock concerts, installations and largespectacle performances notably his directing of KA in 2004, a$200 million production for the Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. Lepageconnects popular culture with high-art aestheticism, through a visuallyengaging theatricality made for people dissatised with traditional text-based theatre. He challenges the audiences understanding of the theatreperformance as a nished and complete artistic act through his work-in-progress approach, which is developmental, open and one of continuoustransformation. Consequently, Lepage views performance as rehearsaland rehearsal as performance blurring the dierence between the two,he often uses the term open or public rehearsal for performance.

Lepages theatre connects a number of important late twentieth-and early twenty-rst-century performance practitioners, such asJacques Lecoq, Peter Brook, Pina Bausch and Laurie Anderson.Lepages theatre inspires new practitioners, directors, actors andscholars alike, and the process of his work is studied at universitiesworldwide. In spite of this there are very few studies of his work, andeven fewer which examine his creative process. The reason for this isthat Lepage is very prolic as a director-author. As he makes three or

four major projects a year, any study of his work can only temporarilybe bound by the date that the material is published. Moreover, Lepageis a practitioner who creates live theatre performance and not awritten text. Textual or video recordings of his performances arelimited, but there has been a more organized approach since theconceptualization of La Caserne in 1997, his home-based performancelab in Quebec City. Lepage is not interested in theatre as a pedagogue, nor ishe setting up his own system of work to be studied by others. In fact,he contradicts the view that there is any method to his work practice,although there is a very recognizable directors signature in all of hisproductions. He does not write about his understanding of theatreand until now the only account of his work is given in Robert Lepage Connecting Flights (1997), a book of interviews with Rmy Charest.

Lepages real inuence lies in his creative process rather than theproduct, regardless of its accomplishment. He is important for anunderstanding of the liveness and immediacy of contemporary perfor-mance, because of the way he uses all of the theatre production elements(making a mise-en-scne into a main medium for narration), and thebelief that theatre art could encompass all other art forms. Lepages workproposes that meaning in the theatre is found in the relationship betweenevery element (the sum of all the dierent parts) of theatre production,not just the text or the actor. His focus is on understanding performanceas a rehearsal a performance is not a xed form, but alive. It is pre-senting work that [is] unnished, expecting and ready to integrate orreect audience response (Heddon and Milling, 2006, 21). Similarly toAnna Halprin, whose teaching of The RSVP Cycles Lepage adopted, heemphasizes the process and not the achievement of a nal product. In thetradition of Jean Cocteau, Lepage is a multi-disciplinary artist who alsobrings dierent art forms (live performance, and lm in particular)together in a montage. In total theatre the equal emphasis is on allelements rather than verbal language. Lepages theatre is founded on thedramaturgy of visual images and actors performativity, through whichhe wants to achieve global communication that will not be inhibited bythe audiences inability to understand the productions verbal language.

STORYTELLING AND LANGUAGES

Robert Lepage was born in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada on12 December 1957, into a typical working-class French Canadian

2 CUL TURAL AND ART I S T I C B I OGRAPHY

family. One of four children, his mother was a housewife and hisfather a cab driver. What made Lepages family unusual was that theywere bi-lingual. Lepages mother had lived in London during theSecond World War and his father had been in the Royal Navy, andduring that time they had become uent in English. Initially unable tohave children, they adopted two English-speaking children. Some yearsafter the adoption, Robert and his sister were born. In their homeEnglish and French language co-existed simultaneously and were con-stantly mixed. Lepage liked to see his family with its bi-lingual mix asa metaphor for Canada, a cultural metaphor (Lepage, 2002). His bi-lingual upbringing was exceptional in the francophone cultural envir-onment that was Quebec City.

The concern for language and communication in Lepages theatreemerged in response both to the cultural duality (English and French)in Canada and to two opposing forces those of the isolationism ofQuebecs nationalist politics, and the internationalist Quebeckerswho needed to connect to the world and get out of its linguisticenclosure. Lepage is aware that if Qubcois theatre is to be under-stood and to have access to the market, to be invited all over theworld, it has to overcome the limitations of language. As he explains:You have to do this extra eort to get the story clear, to illustrate it,to give another layer to it (McAlpine, 1996, 150). This need totranslate and the urgency to be understood forced theatre authors inQuebec to invent a theatricality based on visual images, sound, musicand a physical expression that was able to communicate beyond theconstraints of verbal language.

Growing up in Quebec City in the 1960s and 1970s, Lepage feltthe powerful impacts of clerical nationalism, conservative ideology andthe dominance of white French Catholics over all aspects of life, inparticular family and cultural politics. The Anglophone minority inQuebec was mainly centred in Montreal, and had economic power.The francophone majority lived mostly on farms, while the workingclass lived in the cities. Since Lepages family was bi-lingual, he couldnot fully identify with a dominant francophone centre. This culturaland linguistic position meant that Lepage did not belong to either ofthe two groups. Combined with his sexual ambiguity and his alopecia(the loss of body hair that he suered at the age of six) this made hischildhood dicult, and as a result he was somewhat reclusive, shy andprone to depression (Lepage, 2002). He became an outsider in his

CUL TURAL AND ART I S T I C B I OGRAPHY 3

own cultural context, assuming the position of otherness. It was inthe theatre that Lepage found a place of escape where he couldassume alternative identities, exorcize his fears and engage with hisown personal problems. The questioning of language, of human com-munication, and the stability of identity and going out of ones ownlocation into other cultures to nd answers to ones own dilemmas aredominating themes in Lepages theatre. In fact, all of his theatre andlms are shaped through the conict between a local (inner) andinternational (outer) perspective, by exposing Quebecs local characterto the world and outside inuences.

When he was a child, Lepages mother often told him war storiesabout Europe and life in old Quebec City. The stories were personalrecollections of the past, distorted through the lens of memory andtransformed through time. It was this imprecision and embellishment,rather than their accuracy, that attracted Lepage to the oral traditionof storytelling. He has said that in order to create, one has to be amytho-maniac: You have to be able to amplify the stories you hear,give a large dimension to stories you invent. This is how you trans-form them into legends and myths (Charest, 1997, 19). At the sametime, Lepages childhood fascination with the stories his father madeup on the trips he organized for tourists around Quebec City had asignicant inuence on Lepages own storytelling in the theatre. Hewould accompany his father and listen to stories that were an intox-icating mix of local myth, ction and fact, and that were often adaptedaccording to the occasion and who the spectators/tourists were.Lepage uses his childhood sense of wonder and the discovery of theunknown in telling his stories through the theatre. Each of his pro-jects inevitably deals with a main character going into a new countryor environment, and discovering something about themselves in thenew location that signicantly changes their life.

Lepages favourite subject in school was geography. As he points out,all his work in the theatre relates to geography, travelling and culturaldierences between countries. It is not just going to Europe in a plane,its also the geography of the human environment and what that meansand how does it have an inuence? (Dundjerovic, 2003, 153). Hisversion of intercultural theatre has the navety of a rst discovery,of travel to a new destination and stories told about a journey that isalways transposed through a personal memory and perspective. It washardly a coincidence that Lepages main fascination with the theatre


was as a live, improvised and unstructured performance, where theactor-creator (often Lepage himself) gives a personal account of eventsand establishes their own relationship with the stories, thus creatingwhat is known in performance as auto-mythologies.

All of Lepages stories sit at the local and the global cultural inter-section, where the personal is confronted with outside perceptions.His theatre is created in Quebec City for the purpose of global tour-ing, to go to audiences across the world from London and Paris toSydney and Tokyo. However, his theatre performances remain pro-foundly inuenced by Qubcois social and cultural references. Lepagesmise-en-scne creates a debate between and interaction with nationalidentity and internationalism, individual and collective creation, localand global references, and live and recorded media. Within thepostmodern context, his theatre exists between worlds (cultures,art forms, identities, territories, narratives, destinations) and throughthe interface of live and subjective with recorded and collectiveexperiential process.

Lepages performance practice reinforces Roland Barthes idea ofmythologies in contemporary life, where everything has its form ofnarrative and that, in contemporary culture, we are surrounded with aplurality of narratives rather then one main narrative (Barthes, 1993).In this way, a culture is the sum of the narratives arranged in socialpatterns that we have experience of, that we accept, and with whichwe can identify. This also means that narratives are subjective andexible so that they can be re-ordered according to memory andpersonal interpretation. Lepage invariably arms that the veracity orpreservation of a story is not important. What is important is how thestory interacts with the outside world and how those who interpret itgive it its actualization. Subjectivity in Lepages creative process has acentral place; his storytelling is a way of telling audiences about him-self. In order to nd out who he is, Lepage has to dene himself inthe context of the outside world. He takes up the position of astoryteller, he uses all the apparatus of various theatrical elements torelate to and communicate with an international audience. In thewriting of the story as well as its presentation Lepage uses publicrehearsals in front of an audience, whose presence helps in the dis-covery of the actual structure of the performance narratives.

The motivation to explore language as sound is an outcome of thecultural politics of Quebecs linguistic isolation, as well as Lepages


reclusive personality. Lepage acknowledges that linguistic problemsare the main issue with which Quebec artists have to deal, and theyneed to nd a way to get their ideas across if the audience doesnot understand their language. In a 1991 census only 25% of Canadaspopulation spoke French, and the majority of these people werelocated in Quebec. As a result, the seventies and eighties saw awidespread move away from text-centred theatre (Jacobson, 1991,18). Quebecs language isolation and politics of nationalism was aconcern shared by a number of other theatre companies workingthere in the 1980s and 1990s. They had to use touring models aswell as non-verbal theatre to reach audiences outside of Quebec andeven more so outside of Canada. The goal of Qubcois collectivetheatre and performance groups was to create a means of commu-nication that was unobstructed by the limitations of verbal language,and so enable them to communicate cross-culturally. Other inter-nationally renowned Quebec companies, such as Carbone 14,LaLaLa Human Steps and Cirque du Soleil, all developed ways ofcommunicating in their own performance style that overcame theobstacles of cultural politics, language and geographical location toattract international audiences. In the work of Carbon 14, the con-crete language of the stage (corporal movement, music, light andother scenographic elements) is understood as more important thanspoken language for the purposes of creating and communicatingmeaning (Wallace, 1990, 190).

Replacing text and verbal language with a concrete language of thestage is central to Lepages theatricality. It is an expression founded onthe performers engagement with space, objects and the body, creatinga mode of communication that is free from verbal language. It isimportant to note that, while the Qubcois cultural context (parti-cularly the quest for national identity) inevitably inuenced Lepage, histheatrical language was a communication tool that he used on a morepersonal level to escape loneliness and isolation. He adopted theexisting discourse of theatrical language in the broadest sense, appro-priating the new corporeal language without political or ideologicalreferences. He built theatricality on discourses created from verbaland non-verbal utterance, comprising visual elements such as gestures,mime, movement, space, properties (objects) and light.

To explain this shift in emphasis, Lepage points to the politicalfunction of language in Montreal and Quebec City:


Words were so coloured with politics, at least in the 1970s, that people turned

to non-verbal theatre to try and get other messages across. Politics were so

present in Canadian life in the 1970s that a lot of the creative work in Canada

was based only on the politics of the mind, not the politics of the body, of

emotions, or of relationships. I think an artist sometimes has to put words

aside, to explore these types of politics.

(Huxley and Witts, 1996, 239)

The linguistic situation prompted Lepage to provide an answer byworking within the scope of bi-lingual or multi-lingual productions,emphasizing language as sound and working with the performersphysical and vocal expression, separated from narrative or textualstructures. Words as sounds are resources (theatrical objects with whichthe performer can play). To me and the actors I work with, theperformance is whats most important. Words are sometimes just a wayof saying music (Jacobson, 1991, 19). Mixing languages and projectingtheir translation, making a simultaneous collage of dierent languages(English, French, Italian, German, Serbo-Croatian, Chinese, Japanese,etc.) and using language as a sound or as music rather than as a locusof meaning can be a key element in the performance mise-en-scne.

Although Lepages performances are often theoretically situatedwithin intercultural theatre, they are as much about the collision ofcultures and linguistic misunderstandings as cultural exchanges. Thisrelates to Lepages experience of the Canadian dual identity. However,his theatre is pertinent to a global reading and has themes that areaccessible to interpretation by other cultures outside the Canadianexperience. This is because his theatre appeals to the urban cosmo-politan audience which is exposed to cultural collisions and a pluralityof perspectives. The interpretation of his plays is open it allows theaudience to create their own meaning, and to indirectly inuence thefurther development of a performance which Lepage refers to as awork in progress. This ability to change and evolve a performancewhile touring comes from the tradition of improvised theatre. Theplurality of perceptions in Lepages performance narrative emerges notonly from the tensions between the local and the global, but also frompersonal and collective improvisations. Lepages theatricality focuses onthe interaction and interconnection between the performer and thespectators, where the performer does not follow a xed narrative butis open to discovery in front of the audience. Lepages collaborative


method invites continuous debate between individual and group crea-tion, and allows for substantial creative input from the actor as theauthor of the performance.

Many dierent perspectives are also achieved through the pluralityof media used for storytelling. Peter Gabriel was an importantinuence on Lepage in the 1970s, with rock group Genesis usingtheatrical inuences and mixing media. Genesis created in 1974 therock opera The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, mixing rock with liveperformance, masks, projections of lms and slides. It was not tradi-tional theatre that had an impact on young Lepage, but theatricality.As he explains, the inuence came from seeing rock shows, danceshows and performance art, then from seeing theatre (1992, 242).Lepage has always been attracted to working with collaborators fromdierent media each bringing their own artistic vocabulary andskills and combining this with live performance to provide thenecessary mixture of live and recorded theatricality.

APPRENTICE (197884)

In 1975, at the age of 17, Lepage was admitted to the Conservatoiredart dramatique de Qubec, which was the main training school forprofessional actors in Quebec City. Students had to be at least 18years old and have a high-school diploma. Lepage had abandoned hishigh-school education and he lied about his diploma. His inexperienceand youth were seen as positive aspects in the audition, and he wasaccepted. The Conservatoire had a fairly rigid programme, which fol-lowed the tradition of professional theatre schools training actors forthe demands of the industry. Students were taught with very specicacting techniques and, consequently, used the tools (and clichs) ofpsychological realism that were so dominant in the TV, lm andtheatre industries of the 1970s. At the Conservatoire Lepage couldnot subscribe to one specic style of acting. His performances did notfollow one technique, but were eclectic and diversied. Furthermore,as a performer, Lepage was working more on the action and energyproduced in performance than on emotion and psychological realism.

At the Conservatoire, I was taught a denition of emotion, which I learned

but never managed to produce on stage. And for three years, I was told that I

acted without emotion. Right from my very rst professional shows, however,

8 CU L TURAL AND ART I S T I C B I OGRAPHY

I managed to move the audience. I didnt really understand what made this

happen and it took me a long time before I begun to sort it out, before I

could really distinguish the difference between the emotion that an actor

feels on the stage and the energy he needs to generate that emotion in

the audience.

(Charest, 1997, 155)

Lepages training as an actor was held back by his inability to repro-duce ordinary realistic scenes acted with emotional engagement andpsychological involvement, as required by the realistic, character-basedactor training methods. However, creating emotional response in theaudience is not the same as actors feeling psychological emotions.What had a big inuence on Lepage at the Conservatoire was workingon physical improvisations and character observations, through thelimited exposure he had to Jacques Lecoqs techniques in movementclasses that were taught by one of Lecoqs former students, MarcDor. In fact, Dor encouraged Lepage to explore techniques using thebody, space and everyday objects. The Lecoq exercises that had the mostimpact on Lepage were movement improvisations and the observationof everyday situations.

After graduating from the Conservatoire in 1978, Lepage and hisclassmate Richard Frchette were the only graduates who wereunemployed. They did not have an agent, and realized that they wouldhave to start their own company if they wanted to work. In thesummer of that year they went to Paris and joined Alain Knappsworkshop at his Institut de la personnalit cratrice for three weeks. Theworkshops taught actors how to become the creators of their perfor-mance by working simultaneously as directors and writers. The sessionswere based on Knapps artistic philosophy of teaching the actor towrite their own performance text, rather than to be an interpreter ofsomeone elses work. The actors would write, perform and direct theirown material as well as working on all aspects of production-making.In Knapps workshop, Lepage learned how to devise theatre. ForLepage, the most important aspect of Knapps workshop was that itgave him an awareness of his own ability to work in many dierentways as actor, writer and director, and that it was good to be eclectic.By working in this way he was able to turn what were formerly con-sidered to be his faults in the Conservatoire (reserve, control and aplurality of styles) into a personal style for creating a performance.


When Lepage returned from Paris, he founded Thtre Hummm with Richard Frchette, working as actor and director, adapting playsand writing his own performance texts. The company existed for ayear, and mainly toured schools and local arts venues in towns aroundQuebec City. Two years later, in 1980, Lepage was asked by JacquesLessard, one of his teachers from the Conservatoire, to take part in acollectively created performance Lcole, cest secondaire (School, itssecondary) for Quebec Citys newly established experimental theatrecompany, Thtre Repre. Returning from a year-long study withAnna Halprin in San Francisco, Lessard had gathered together severalgraduates of the Conservatoire in 1979 and founded Thtre Repre,using Halprins The RSVP Cycles as a creative method for theatre per-formance. In short, Lessard argued that the collective creative theatrein Quebec had reached a situation of stalemate, that it lacked anycreative system able to produce its own structure, could not be usedto make ideologically driven text and, in fact, less successfully repli-cated Quebecker text-based theatre.

The initials RSVP meaning please respond are used not as anindication of any structure, but to suggest communication, an invita-tion to the audience to respond. This creative process was conceivedby Lawrence and Anna Halprin. Lawrence was a landscape architectand environmental planner. His wife Anna was a dancer, choreo-grapher and director of the Dancers Workshop in San Francisco.Together they put together in the late 1960s the theory-practice of TheRSVP Cycles, utilizing their own combined experiences with environ-mental design/space and dance theatre/body. This work processbecame extremely inuential in helping to increase human creativepotentials. The RSVP Cycles can be adapted to any human creative processand have a varied application, not only in dance and performance butin psychology and therapy. The word cycles refers to a cyclical formwhere human action is a cycle and the creative process can start fromany point within the cycle. The RSVP Cycles are founded on (r)esour-ces, (s)cores, (v)aluaction and (p)erformance which in dance andperformance are space, objects and the body, placing improvisation atthe core of the creative process.

However, Lessard perceived that theatre performance requires agreater emphasis on the actors form of expression and on the sequentialorganization of the working process. He re-worked The RSVP Cycles,making them a central pre-occupation of his Thtre Repre. In

1 0 CU L TURAL AND ART I S T I C B I OGRAPHY

French repre means reference or landmark point. At the core of thework process is a performer who establishes a personal referencepoint with the material that is devised. Repre demonstrates the eectof reducing the importance of words and increasing the importance ofother theatrical forms of expression, such as movement, light, sound,objects, etc. As Lessard indicates, The Cycles Repre are an extremelyprecious working instrument which gives the creator a tool, withoutlimiting the liberty of imagination and sensibility (Roy, 1993, 3132).

After their initial collaboration, in 1982 Lepage was invited byLessard to direct and perform in En Attendant (Awaiting), about youngartists in a sate of limbo waiting to get a break with their careers. Inthe same year he and Richard Frchette both joined the ThtreRepre as full members. The emphasis in En Attendantwas on one simplesituation and image rather than words and narrative. Lessard, Lepageand Frchette manipulated physical objects through games, usingimprovisations and playing a range of characters. The set was simplewith Oriental references (a backdrop painted with Japanese characterswas the key image). Props and costumes were transformed by being usedin dierent ways. For example, a simple chair had many uses dependingon the needs of the actor/character at any given time. In fact, EnAttendantwas a collective creation containing the origins of basic theatricalinclinations that would eventually become the foundations of Lepagestheatrical vocabulary.

Another important inuence on the development of Lepages prac-tice was his experience with La Ligue Nationale dImprovisation(LNI), which he joined in 1984. The idea behind LNI was not only tobe a Qubcois version of Keith Johnstones Theatresports, but torevitalize the local theatre by bringing in actors with dierentexperiences to engage in improvisations in the manner of a sportingcompetition, through a game, and therefore making the theatre amore active and unpredictable place. It was also serving as a placewhere actors could practise and perform in front of live audiences.Actors were invited to tell their stories and improvise their sessions ina way similar to that of stand-up comedians, surrounded by an audi-ence in an area set up like a hockey ring.

Lepage as actor was excellent in short improvisations, and hadalready been performing short improvisations for Thtre Repre insmall local theatres as part of a one-night bill of solo acts. Here, in1984, Lepage received his rst critical recognition as a performer by

CUL TURAL AND ART I S T I C B I OGRAPHY 1 1

winning the OKeefe trophy for the actor awarded the most stars forsolo improvisations, and the Pierre-Curzi award for recruit of the yearat the LNI. Through these improvisation sessions Lepage learned touse all the external elements from outside reality (most importantlyaudience presence) as personal resources (stimuli) to play with. Heexplored ways of improvising from peripheral consciousnesses. This isthe ability to take all of the surrounding elements of the actorsenvironment and incorporate them into the improvisation as stimuli torespond to. For example, any accident or spontaneous unplannedmoment that the performer becomes conscious of (even outsideevents, such as noises from the street, things that happened beforerehearsal, or cultural/political happenings at the time) can be used asmaterial from which to improvise.

EXPLORING FORMS: THTRE REPRE(198491)

Lepages involvement with Thtre Repre subsequently shaped theform and direction of the development of his theatrical style. InCanada in the early 1980s, when Lepage started to work in collectivecreations, it was important to nd a new form of expression whichwould be dierent from text-based verbal theatre. The development ofnew technology and communications led to the breakdown of thebarriers between dierent media and the arts. This was followed by anincreased interest in and borrowing from other traditions (particularlyfrom the East), that opened the possibilities for new hybrid art formsto be created. The plurality of artistic forms in Lepages performancesreects a collective creative tradition of using all available elements tocreate a production. We can also see his work in the context of apostmodern unication of visual disciplines (lm, paintings, popvideos, internet and advertising) into one visual culture (Mirzoe,1999, 139). Regardless of the media he employs, Lepage embodies thepostmodern position of author as editor, gathering various stimuli intoa montage of performance experiences.

Lepages main role in Thtre Repre was not as a performer but asdirector. He directed collectively created material and edited impro-vised solo or group material into a performance. In 1984 he acted inand directed Thtre Repres devised project Circulations, after whichhe became responsible for devising new touring projects. He began


working on experimental projects with a group of performers as aseparate wing within Thtre Repre, re-creating and representing theworld that interested him a world that existed in-between dreams,memories, reality and fantasy, and was theatrically expressed throughvisual images. This way of making theatre and communicating aboutthe world found its audience in the 1980s.

After the success of Circulations, the work in Thtre Repre wasdivided into two areas. Jacques Lessard was concerned with thepedagogy and training of actors who could work through the RepreCycles, with its very strict creative system, while Lepage was anartistic director responsible for explorations of storytelling throughtheatrical forms. For Lepage, this period with Thtre Repre wasmarked by the search for his own directing style and technique. Heexplained that, coming to Thtre Repre, he united Jacques Lessardscreative theories about the Repre Cycles with the intuitive methodthat we [Lepage and Frchette] were using in our shows (Charest,1997, 139).

Devising performance material in the theatre is a result of groupexperiences and an external stimulus rather than an existing dramatictext. One characteristic of devised work is that it is multi-layered andoften uses multi-media, drawing upon various artistic traditions andperformance vocabularies. Alison Oddey explains that:

Devised theatre can start from anything. It is determined and dened by a

group of people who set up an initial framework or structure to explore and

experiment with ideas, images, concepts, themes or specic stimuli that might

include music, text, objects, paintings or movement. A devised theatrical per-

formance originates with the group while making the performance, rather than

starting from a play text that someone else has written to be interpreted.

(Oddey, 1994, 1)

It was with Thtre Repre that Lepage learned how to furtherdevelop his devising skills and to use The RSVP Cycles. In performance-writing, his main focus was on the interaction between the actor, thespace and the objects, and also how to use the actors personal mate-rial as a resource from which to create scenes. Above all, The RSVPCycles taught Lepage how to make his own material relevant and toplace his subjectivity at the centre of a creative process. He placesimportance on intuition, accidental discovery and a groups collective


unconsciousness to generate the work points to a very personal natureof creative process. As with any other devising process, Lepage createsperformance from a groups unconsciousness, approaching collectivematerial as a vast chaotic source of creativity, where the artist shapesand translates images into experiences that can be communicated tothe audience.

Circulations went on a national tour, and at the La QuinzaineInternationale de Thtre du Qubec it won the Grand Prix, awardedfor the best Canadian production. This recognition eectively placedThtre Repre on the national map of promising collective compa-nies. Circulations pointed to Lepages directing style which was foundedon a collage of languages and diverse places, taking the story throughdierent geographical locations. This was followed by the collectivelydevised The Dragons Trilogy, in which Lepage acted and directed(Figures 1.1 and 1.2). Through an extensive world tour, this was theproduction which established Lepages international reputation. BeforeThe Dragons Trilogy he was known as a member of Thtre Repre after the international success of the production, Repre was knownas Robert Lepages group. Lepages directing was favourably receivedby critics, and he was seen as someone who had managed to build abridge between the world of visual, physical avant-garde theatre, post-Pina Bausch, and the ancient tradition of the saga or epic storytelling(Hemming, 1991, 5). The success of The Dragons Trilogy in LondonsRiverside Studios in 1989 marks Lepages entry into the milieu ofinternational contemporary intercultural theatre, and comparison ofhis theatrical language to that of Peter Brook.

Lepages emphasis on performance-writing through theatrical ele-ments is similar to what the French director Roger Planchon referredto as criture scnique (scenic writing) or Richard Schechnersnotion of performance text. The emphasis on mise-en-scne is not onthe xed narrative and character but on the development of a per-formance, a new theatrical language. The idea of criture scniquerevolves around discussions held in the early 1960s concerning theadaptation and modernization of a classical text to be used in con-temporary theatre. The classical text would be re-written throughstage-writing mise-en-scne and the director, as an author, wouldcreate his own criture scnique that would contemporise the text.Planchon believed that criture scnique is on an equal footing with theauthors written words (Bradby, 1997, 41).


Figure 1.1 Robert Lepage rehearsing the last six-hour version of The DragonsTrilogy in 1987, for Montreals Festival de Thtres des Ameriques(FTA). Photo by Claudel Huot.

Figure 1.2 Scene from The Red Dragon (rst version), the rst of the three Partsof The Dragons Trilogy. The interaction between objects, actors andlighting creates the theatrical space.


Lepages attraction to a plurality of styles and transformation intheatre comes from his belief that performance is a process, a processof change which, for him, is at the heart of ritual as a pre-theatricalform of expression. The audience witnesses the ritual, the passagefrom one state of existence into another, and is part of this process ofdiscovery. Lepage extends this principle of transguration into the wayhe creates mise-en-scne. In theatre we witness transformation. Heexplains that he is attracted

to plays in which the characters are transformed, but also to plays in which the

sets are transformed and matter is transcendent. Its incredible to be able to

travel through time and place, to innity, all on a single stage. Its the meta-

morphosis brought about on stage that makes this kind of travel possible.

(Charest, 1997, 135)

Alongside his work with Thtre Repre, Lepage developed an inde-pendent career as an actor, mainly in his solo performances. In thisperiod he developed a theatrical expression founded on visual images, anda collage of various technologies (namely lm and photo projections) witha strong live, actor-centred performance. Indeed, his experience with acombination of multi-media and live improvised performance led him todevelop his practice as a solo performer. In 1985 Lepage wrote, directedand acted in his rst solo performance Comment regarder le point de fuite(How to look at the moment of escape), produced by Thtre Repre andpresented at the Implanthtre, a small theatre venue in Quebec City.This solo show was the rst part of a multi-disciplinary performance,Point de fuite, presented as a bill of solo performances.

In 1986 Lepage created his rst solo performance, Vinci, whichdrew national and international attention to his talents as both anactor and stage writer. He created mobility of space by interactingwith the everyday objects on stage, transforming their meaning for theaudience. He won the Best Production of the Year Award for thiswork from the Association Qubcoise des Critiques du Thtre, andhis theatricality was widely discussed in Quebec. Although co-pro-duced by Thtre Repre, Vinci was a solo performance. Lepagewanted to nd a wider audience, and so began to think about thetheatricality needed for performances which could be toured. The rstcritical recognition for Vinci came from performances given outside ofQuebec, an armation that there was a larger audience with whom


he could communicate. Vinci went on to have major national andinternational tours, winning Lepage his rst international award in1987, the Prix Coup de Pouce at the O Festival dAvignon, for thebest fringe production.

Solo performances established Lepages international reputation asan artist. They also pointed to his multi-media mise-en-scne throughthe use of cinematic and photographic images. It was with his secondsolo show, Needles and Opium (1991), that Lepage gained internationalrecognition particularly for his integration of visual technology intolive performance, using lm projections as a vital element of the per-formers action. The production toured until 1996 (with another actorfrom 1994, once Lepage had nished developing the performance).This approach to mise-en-scne, made up of a collage of forms andmedia where a live performer was juxtaposed to technology andrecorded images, was subsequently developed, particularly in his soloperformances, throughout the 1990s.

In 1987 he co-wrote and co-directed Polygraph with MarieBrassard, a performer and an initial member of Thtre Repre, withwhom he collaborated on all of his projects throughout the 1990s.The production opened in Quebec City and toured until 1990, goingthrough a continuous process of transformation and development. Itwas also the rst text that was published of his devised performancewhich was meant to be live without any recording. With PolygraphLepage began to depart from Lessards live experimental concept ofimprovised devised scores to the concept of using them as works inprogress; cycles that were transformative and eventually led towards amore structured performance text and larger audiences. In 1997Lepage used the performance text of Polygraph as a resource for thedevelopment of another cycle using a dierent medium, that ofthe cinema, to make the lm version of Polygraph. In 1989, Lepageand some of the other original members of Thtre Repre (MarieBrassard, Richard Frchette and Michel Bernatchez) left ThtreRepre over artistic dierences with Lessard, who wanted to keep ThtreRepre as an experimental fringe theatre with no presence in mainstreamcircles. Lepage had, in the meantime, associated himself with mainstreaminstitutional theatres around the world as a freelance director.

In 1988 Lepage received his rst commission as a freelance directorfor a major arts theatre in Montreal, the Thtre du Nouveau Monde.He staged Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream, setting record


audience numbers at the Theatre. A year later, in 1989, he was invitedto stage Bertolt Brechts Life of Galileo at the same theatre. AlongsideBrecht and August Strindberg, Shakespeare is the playwright thatLepage has staged most. In 1989 he collaborated with an English-Canadian theatre company in Saskatchewan on the adaptation of the bi-lingual project, Romeo and Juliette in Saskatchewan. In 1992 he devisedthe Shakespeare Cycle, comprising Macbeth, The Tempest and Coriolanus,as an international co-production between Quebec, France andGermany. However, Lepages most signicant relationship with aShakespearean text has been with A Midsummer Nights Dream. Hisinterpretation of the text was inspired by Jan Kotts inuential bookShakespeare Our Contemporary, which oers a highly erotic analysis of AMidsummer Nights Dream with hidden sexual subtexts. Lepages treat-ment of the text was similar to his approach to devised projects. In aseven-year production cycle, between 1988 and 1995, he directedthree dierent versions of the play, creating three mise-en-scne. Eachused the previous one as a resource for its own development.Following the rst production of A Midsummer Nights Dream in theThtre du Nouveau Monde, the second phase was in 1992 at the RoyalNational Theatre in London, and the nal version took place in 1995in Quebec City at the Thtre du Trident.

Lepage and Thtre Repre began work on Tectonic Plates in 1987.They had originally been commissioned by Lili Zendel, the theatreprogrammer for the Toronto Harbourfront World Stage Festival, todo a show for the 1988 festival. At the same time they were com-missioned to do a collaboration with Glaswegian actors in theTramway theatre for Glasgows 1990 European City of Culture celebration.Michael Morris, former artistic director of Londons ICA theatre andLepages European agent and producer, supported the development andpromotion of Tectonic Plates. One of the objectives for the company, rightfrom the start of the project, was to experiment with the form and natureof the performance-making process. Tectonic Plates extended the method ofwork previously explored in The Dragons Trilogy; this was developedthrough phases, on tour, while having set production objectives. It alsointroduced a new concept collaboration with actors from dierentcompanies who spoke dierent languages. The idea was to develop theproject through cyclical phases until it reached the nal phase in Glasgow.

Tectonic Plates was a commission that collaborated with internationalpartners, used the English language, various locations, and had to be


developed through dierent media, from theatre performance to TVand lm. In many ways the project pointed to future developmentswith Ex Machina, where Lepage worked with collaborators from othercountries, actors speaking other languages, and developed perfor-mances that would be transformed into another medium (that of tel-evision). Turning theatre performances into lm was somethingLepage explored further with The Seven Streams of River Ota, whichbecame the lm No, and the lming of his solo show The Far Side ofthe Moon under the same title.

In 1989 Lepage moved to Ottawa, to become the youngest artisticdirector of the French language section of the Canadian National ArtsCentre. This move from the margin towards the centre and institu-tionalized culture signalled Lepages own interest in centralizing hisactivities, and in emulating institutionally supported theatre (theensemble type of theatre production organization so common in con-tinental Europe). While at the National Arts Centre Lepage continuedworking on his personal material, creating his second solo showNeedles and Opium. The performance premiered in October 1991 at thePalais Montcalm in Quebec City, before opening in Ottawa in Novemberat the National Art Centre. Needles and Opium became a tribute to theart of Jean Cocteau by using Cocteaus personal life as a resource,including his passion for Raymond Radiguet and his life-long camar-aderie with opium. It makes references to Cocteaus aestheticism,quoting his text Lettres aux Amricains. Lepages own nostalgia, painover his own lost love, and the need to look for answers inside onesown artistic heritage were juxtaposed to Cocteaus world. By inter-twining the lives and works of Jean Cocteau, Miles Davis and a char-acter called Robert, Lepages alter ego, Needles and Opium explored thecontradictions between artistic work and everyday life, and betweenartistic representation and nature life itself.

MULTI-DISCIPLINARY PERFORMANCE:EX MACHINA (1994)

In the 1990s Lepages work was characterized by the mixing of mediaand digital technology in his theatre and by his involvement with otherdisciplines, such as opera, lm and installations. It was also a period inwhich Lepage looked for stability, independence and control over allaspects of theatre production. After serving as artistic director at the


National Arts Centre, in 1994 he created his own company in QuebecCity, Ex Machina, with some of his old collaborators from ThtreRepre and some new ones (inviting a mixture of artists from operasingers and puppeteers to computer designers and video artists).

Lepages artistic work in the period with Ex Machina has beenreferred to by critics as the Canadian Renaissance because of hisversatile approach to the arts, regularly directing opera and lms,mixing media and artistic languages. At this time he made his directorialdebut in opera, staging in 1993 for the Canadian Opera Company adouble bill of operas Bla Bartk and Bla Balzs Bluebeards Castleand Arnold Schoenbergs Erwartung. Since then directing opera hasbecome integrated into his multi-disciplinary theatricality, directing in1999 Hector Berliozs The Damnation of Faust, Lorin Maazels adapta-tion of Orwells 1984 (2005) and Stravinskys The Rakes Progress(2007). In 1993 Lepage directed Peter Gabriels rock concerts SecretWorld Tour and Growing Up Live in 2002. In 1989 he worked as anactor on Denys Arcands much acclaimed lm Jesus of Montreal. Inthe mid-1990s Lepage started working on his rst lm, Le Confessional,which opened in 1995. As a lm auteur he has made four more fea-ture-length lms: Le Polygraph (1996), No (1998), Possible Worlds(2000) and The Far Side of the Moon (2003).

In 1993 Lepage collaborated with opera singer Rebecca Blankenship,whom he invited in 1994 to join Ex Machina on a new project TheSeven Streams of the River Ota. Originally titled Hiroshima Project, theperformance was a commission to mark the 50th year of the nuclearbombing of Hiroshima. The intention was to create a collage fromseven dierent arts, to be split into seven parts, last seven hours andtake place in seven locations. The multi-disciplinary project was theinaugural production for Ex Machina as The Seven Streams of the RiverOta it was internationally launched, together with Ex Machina, at theEdinburgh International Festival in 1994. Lepage had visited Japan forthe rst time in 1993, going to Hiroshima where his guide told himabout the citys history and his own experience of the atomic bomb asa hibakusha (survivor of the bombing). This personal account made aprofound impression on Lepage, and the starting point for theHiroshima Project was the atrocity of the US atomic bombing. Followingthe pattern set with Tectonic Plates, a number of other co-producers fromToronto, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Vienna and Paris marketed the projectinternationally before it was created.


The intention of the new company was to develop productionsthrough phases in Quebec City and then take them on national andinternational tours. The process of creation cannot be separated fromthe social and cultural milieu for which the performance is made,particularly since Ex Machina is founded on the idea of internationaltours and collaborations involving a number of co-producers fromdierent countries performing at international festivals and perfor-mance venues. This work in progress while touring approach wasfully developed in The Seven Streams of the River Ota. It could be saidthat Ex Machina, and later La Caserne (Lepages specially adaptedmulti-disciplinary studio), grew out of Lepages experience with TheSeven Streams of River Ota. If we look at the space for this performanceand the space at La Caserne we can see remarkable similarities. In theproduction of Ota the space is a Japanese house with sliding doors,which hides and is transformed throughout the performance to relateto seven dierent locations. The studio space in La Caserne consists ofa big black box (the studio) at the centre, surrounded on two oorsby numerous rooms/small studios which face the central studio. Thestudio-based black box can be adapted to the travelling needs of thisproject, which was created through touring world venues.

The choice of name for the company relates to Lepages artisticinterest in hybrid art forms. Apart from the obvious reference to theAncient Greek drama Deus Ex Machina (god from the machine), thatresolves the unsolvable crises of human conditions, the name ExMachina is a central metaphor for the interconnections between theperformer and technology, and a meeting place between dierent arts.Lepage created his most technological and aesthetically elaborate per-formances with Ex Machina The Geometry of Miracles and The Tempest3-D version (1998), Zulu Time (1998), a new version of The DragonsTrilogy (2003), Buskers Opera and KA with Cirque de Soleil (2004) andthree solo shows Elsinore (1995), The Far Side of the Moon (2000) andThe Anderson Project (2005). Working with hybrid forms combiningactors who are simultaneously performers, dancers and musicians withvarious interdisciplinary artists who bring dierent skills and techni-ques into rehearsals is crucial for the development of Lepages thea-tricality. This was explored in The Geometry of Miracles where he workedwith actors as dancers, Zulu Time where he worked with digital androbotic artists and Buskers Opera where he worked with actors who weresingers and musicians. It also embodied the idea of creating theatre


and taking it to the audience, instead of bringing the audience totheatre. Ex Machina was a global theatre company from the start, notrepresenting any one cultural or national centre but having an inter-national cast along with a network of collaborators and co-producers.

Lepage would not have been able to realize this global, multi-mediaand cross-cultural theatre if there had not been an investment of7,000,000 Canadian dollars (approximately 3,300,000) for the creationof La Caserne. This former re station, on Dalhousie Street in QuebecCity, was turned into a multi-media studio by adding modern archi-tectural elements to the existing early twentieth-century design. Thenew building was a result of collaboration between engineers, archi-tects and stage designers working to create a multi-functional spacewhich was also clearly a production facility. The large black box at thecentre of La Caserne is an empty space, similar to a studio theatre butwithout any xed arrangements for the audience. Numerous oces,multi-media and digital studios are arranged around the black boxspace and look into it. Lepage uses this general space for rehearsal, tomake sets for theatre productions which are integrated with live per-formance, as a lm studio and also as a live theatre venue. Moving tothe new facilities meant that Lepage had a permanent laboratory and amulti-disciplinary creative venue to house his company Ex Machina.The intention was to connect with other international centres and tocreate work that could be taken to international audiences.

The group could now develop the mise-en-scne in the relative safetyof their production lab before premiering it to international audiences.The Geometry of Miracles had a long rehearsal period before opening tothe audience, which created problems with co-producers who expec-ted to see a show that was not yet ready. To take the performance onto the next level in cyclical development, Lepage needed to have anopen rehearsal in front of an audience. The company realized that fornancial as well as artistic reasons their next project, Zulu Time(1999), had to confront the audience earlier.

The international partners collaborating on Lepages productionsinclude, among others, major festivals that create their own networks(such as the Edinburgh International Festival, FTA Montreal, theFestival dAutomne Paris, Berlin Festspiel and the Sydney Festival)and a number of production partners (for example, Cultural IndustryLtd, Londons The Royal National Theatre, Londons Barbican Centreand the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York). With all of Lepages


projects, setting up tours by involving international co-producers(often government-sponsored commissions and theatre festivals) is anintegral part of the creative process. Lepage begins working on aproject by establishing performance dates and venues before he hasdevised a production. This serves as an overall frame for the production.Every Ex Machina show follows this pattern international events,festivals, international partners and performing venues have a budgetfor their themed productions (or commissions), for which Lepage devisesa performance. Michel Bernatchez, administrative director of ExMachina and Lepages North American producer and organizer of newproductions, is responsible for pre-arranging his tours.

In order to nance the production process, the international venuesand co-producers buy into the project before it is complete. In thisway, touring becomes an organic part in the development of the workin progress. It is a well-established practice in the festival network thatproductions of international theatre companies are commissioned orco-produced, as well as invitations being extended to leading theatredirectors such as Peter Stein, Lev Dodin or Calixto Bieito. Theyform a circuit of internationally sponsored and cultivated theatre, andLepage as a director became a part of this circuit, with all his pro-ductions being co-produced by international partners. However,Lepage works from the actor-audience interaction in a exible andopen performance with continuously changing, unstable structures,which often poses problems for expensive, high-art events that requirea nished product. Also, in recent years, the practice of EU govern-ments paying money in advance for large-scale projects has been dif-cult to maintain, while Lepages shows are becoming more expensiveand harder to fund. The funding of a production is ruled by businesslogic, either through the state or privately, but co-producers need anassurance that the nal cultural product will attract critical recogni-tion and mainstream approval, thus providing publicity as well asprotability for its sponsors.

In recent years Lepage has discovered that the balance between abig production frame and the work-in-progress approach is dicult tomaintain. His work process depends on intuition and spontaneousdiscovery, which is dicult to maintain with nancial structures whereco-producers need denitive results. In the programme for his fourthsolo show, The Far Side of the Moon, Lepage explained his approach tomise-en-scne:


I consider myself a stage author, understanding the mise-en-scne as a way of

writing. For example, in this work, the ideas from the mise-en-scne alternate

with the actors lines, one leads to the other What fascinates me about the

act of creation is that you ll a space with objects that have no relation to each

other, and because they are there, all piled up in the same box, there is a

secret logic, a way of organising them. Each piece of the puzzle ends up

nding its place.

(Lepage, 2002)

This approach underpins the key concerns of Lepages performance the ways in which fragments are related and, ultimately, how thepuzzle is composed into a performance. Lepage often compares therehearsal process to a psychotherapy session (in fact he likes to use apsychotherapy session as a way of telling a story to the audience),where the hidden side of the human personality is allowed to comeout in front of someone who is observing them.

Dependence on the global cultural network in order to produceshows resulted in a setback in 2001, when the premier of Zulu Time inNew York and its subsequent world tour was cancelled. This newversion of Zulu Time was produced by Lepages Ex Machina and PeterGabriels Real World Ltd., and at one million Canadian dollars wasconsidered to be the most expensive Lepage production to date. It wasalso anticipated that a separate company would be set up to com-mercially promote and internationally tour Zulu Time after its NewYork launch. The performance was due to take place on 21 Septemberat the Roseland Ballroom, as part of a two-month festival entitledQuebec New York 2001. Its open-form technological cabaret structure,which could transform and invite various artists from dierent placeson tour and which could be adapted to the cultural circumstances ofspecic locations, made Zulu Time an ideal project for both artists.However, the events of 11 September 2001 (seemingly prophesied inZulu Time with its Middle Eastern terrorists and the crashing ofhijacked airplanes) caused the cancellation of the New York premiereand the subsequent tour. In this case, art preceded life and displayedcharacters described by one critic as human automata, animatedobjects incapable of anything but the most gross emotions universallust, a drug smugglers greed or a terrorists hatred (Radz, 28 June2002). The events of 11 September 2001 transformed Zulu Time andthe cultural and social dialogue around it.


CONCLUSION

Lepage has built a considerable international reputation over time,beginning with a small experimental theatre in Quebec City in theearly 1980s. Starting o in Quebecs theatre fringe scene, his theatri-cality being able to communicate with an international audience hasmade Lepage one of the key theatre practitioners of our time. He hasreceived prestigious awards and numerous recognitions for his artisticcreativity over the years. In 1999 he received the medal of lOrdreNational du Qubec. In 2002 he was awarded the French Legion ofHonour and was the recipient of the Herbert Whittaker Drama BenchAward for his outstanding contribution to Canadian Theatre. In 2003he was awarded the most prestigious Prix Denise-Pelletier by theGovernment of Qubec for his services to theatre arts.

Lepages theatre is founded on a non-verbal performance language,which is able to communicate outside the Qubcois cultural settingand the francophone linguistic milieu. Lepages use of a non-verbaltheatrical language that brings together physical improvisations, play-ing with objects, cinematic images and visual projections, can be seenwithin the context of Qubcois cultural politics as an attempt tocommunicate globally by exporting theatre to international audiencesand to express Qubcois concerns without the limitations of verballanguage. The inability to reach a wider audience outside of Quebecwith productions in French language forced Lepage to take his storiesto another level, and to replace the centrality of verbal language withtotal theatre and theatrical language. Because Lepage was unable tond a forum for his work within the traditional text-based theatreforms, either as an actor or director, he had to nd a suitable way ofexpressing himself through scenic writing.

His creative process starts from intuition, and through free asso-ciations allows the group of collaborators to look for, and make, poeticconnections. Lepage discovered his creative context in collective per-formance, working simultaneously as an actor and director and devisingmaterial by looking into and borrowing from dierent cultures, mediaand art forms to express his own position. His theatrical languagecame out of the need for personal expression, to overcome the lim-itations of traditional theatre forms and the obstacles of language.


2

WRITINGS ONTHE TECHNIQUES OF

PERFORMANCE CREATION

INTRODUCTION

Robert Lepages practice can be seen in the tradition of directorstheatre. Like Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Brook, Robert Wilsonand Elizabeth LeCompte, Lepage is a director-author of perfor-mance. In the course of the twentieth century, the mise-en-scnebecame redened as an independent artistic element, a vehicle oftheatricality rather than simply an extension of the text. The directorbecame author of the mise-en-scne, and the mise-en-scne a separateartistic expression from the written text. Lepage may start from anexisting text, as in William Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dreamor August Strindbergs A Dream Play, but it is ultimately the collectiveprocess of discovery through rehearsals, not a pre-dened concept,which determines the performance vision and the outcome.

This chapter analyses the main texts on Lepages performancepractice, contained in a book of interviews rst published in French in1995: Robert Lepage Quelques zones de libert, by Rmy Charest. Thebook was translated into English in 1997 as Robert Lepage ConnectingFlights, from which most of the quotations and ideas discussed in thischapter are taken. Although this is Lepages book, where he discusseshis own work, he refers to a plural we and to a group work. He veryrarely uses the rst person when describing the creative process. His

discussion of practice is done rather fragmentarily and anecdotally.The text is a loose organization of what are at times very general ideas,quoted from various sources, on theatre, art and life. However, inthese interviews Lepage does not talk about his performance techniqueor how his theatre is actually achieved. He does not give the methodbehind his creative process. In order to point to Lepages performancetechnique and contextualize his practice, this chapters analysis of thewritings will be complemented by my own interviews with Lepage(conducted over the last eight years) and by looking at Lawrence Halprinsseminal book The RSVP Cycles: Creative Processes in the Human Environment(1969). However, Robert Lepage Connecting Flights remains the keywriting that authors Lepages voice and from which his essential ideason technique and approach to theatre practice can be deduced.

EVOLVING THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Any writing about a living author is in danger of undermining thetotality of his creative opus, particularly when one is writing aboutsuch a prolic author as Lepage, who is simultaneously very active indierent media (theatre, lm and opera). Lepage turned 50 in 2007,so it can be expected that the next decade of his life will be markedwith new and dierent productions evolving out of his creative pro-cess. The analysis in this chapter does not attempt to be exhaustivebut to set up some key parameters of Lepages creative process, asestablished by his own voice through interviews.

This is the rst book to engage with the rehearsal techniques ofLepages performance practice. The stated purpose at the beginning ofthe book is to explain Lepages process of devising and directing. Thischapter examines the most important texts on Lepages theatre practice.However, this is not an easy task. Unlike some other practitioners inthis series (Barba, Chekhov and Boal), who are interested in a theore-tical and pedagogical approach to their own performance practice,Lepage does not provide any direct or concrete assertions of hismethods. He does not write about his own process and does not havehis own book dealing with the key elements of his technique andexercises. Lepage is not intellectual or analytical about his own thea-tre; rather, he sees himself as a practitioner, a renaissance man who isable to do various arts and whose art is inseparable from his way ofliving. When Lepage does talk about his work in interviews, he talks

THE T ECHN I QUE OF PER FORMANCE CREA T I ON 2 7

about his views of theatre and arts, often in a very broad and multi-referenced way, always connecting his theatre to his personality. Hepoints out that his work has followed the direction of his life and thathis theatre was shaped by what he always wanted to do to travel andto know other countries (Charest, 1997, 115).

A number of considerations have informed the choice of RobertLepage Connecting Flights and The RSVP Cycles as the key referencesfor this chapter. The former centres on what Lepage says about hisown work and the thematic concerns that resulted from his perfor-mance practice. It also gives valuable information on what Lepageconsiders to be essential in his theatre. On the other hand, the materialfrom The RSVP Cycles oers an understanding of a creative methodthat is at the core of Lepages practice transformation of performancethrough cycles. In a cyclical structure, the opening of a performanceto the audience serves as a starting point for devising the next cycle.Undoubtedly Lepages performance techniques will continue to evolve,but the inspiration and stimuli founded on re-adapting The RSVP Cyclesto solo and collective creation will remain a dominant aspect ofLepages practice.

GEOGRAPHY: TRANSFORMATIONS ANDCONNECTIONS

In the Introduction to Robert Lepage Connecting Flights, RmyCharest observes that at the centre of Lepages theatre is somethingwhich lies at the very heart of theatre: transformation and connection(Charest, 1997, 9). Transformation lies at the heart of Lepages crea-tive process and is the reason behind his elusive and ephemeral thea-tricality. Lepage wants theatre performance to be uid, open tochange, an association of ideas that connects with the audience. Hedoes not want to start from set goals and pre-dened outcomes;rather, he is interested in discovering goals throughout the rehearsals.In opposition to the obvious synergy in theatre production betweenplaywright, director, designers, actors and technicians, where all theproduction elements work towards creating an end result that isunderpinned by the directors concept, Lepage works towards anunknown destination. Lepage explains that the group does not leadtheir production project

2 8 THE T ECHN I QUE OF PER FORMANCE CREA T I ON

to a given place. We let the production guide us there. We try not to force

our ideas, our concepts, on to it; the show has its own logic, poetry, rhythms,

that we have to discover. This is as true for a newly created work as it is for an

established play.

(Charest, 1997, 99)

The performance narrative is found and developed through a processof transformation that may take several years of touring in dierentcountries before reaching its nal destination. Lepage points out thatcrossing geographic borders is also a way of crossing artistic borders (Charest, 1997, 29). Indeed, geography has an important place inLepages life and work. As an artist he makes work for touring, per-formances that are presented at international venues and festivals for aglobal audience, where he constructively encounters dierent cultures.His theatre is typically done through international co-productions withdozens of festivals and major international venues (Figure 2.1). Moreover,his devising process of developing the performance narrative by tar-geting international audiences and through international tours isreected in the narratives themselves. Typically, in his original pro-jects, characters go out into the world to another location in order tond something about themselves. On this journey they establish aconnection with something that is missing, something that will helpthem transform by discovering a truth about themselves. This passage,a journey of self-discovery, always includes a going out of ones originallocation. In this development, personal geography is inseparable fromspatial geography. As Lepage says, his point of view is that of someonewho has a strong interest in geography (Charest, 1997, 42).

Lepage explains that in their productions the group attempts to integrate

different places and periods telling distinctive stories about these places.

When you actually travel, you discover the essence of a country or a city, you

perceive what makes it unique, what its soul is made of. In this sense, the

shows are travel narratives and their success can perhaps in part be measured

in the same way as we measure a trip. We are either travellers or tourists. A

successful production communicates a travellers experience.

(Charest, 1997, 37)

As seen in chapter one, Lepage approaches performance as an openrehearsal rather than a nished production. The audiences interpretation


helps Lepage and the group to make further transformations andconnections between the various parts of the devised material. Theperformance presented to the audience is Performance as a nalpart of The RSVP Cycles, and not necessarily a nalized and xed per-formance as expected in professional theatre; on the contrary, theperformance structure remains uid and open to further change.The presence of the audience during the performance is used as astimulus to help the group put in place all the parts that have beenexplored in rehearsals. This area of work in progress and creativeprocess is what interests Lepage.

Lepage believes that the fact the performance is not nalized whenit rst opens to the audience is key to the devising process. In fact, hefeels the material is only really found through the interaction betweenaudience and actors during the performance. Over time, the material

Figure 2.1 Poster for the second version of The Dragons Trilogy, for the VII ChekhovInternational Festival in Moscow in July 2007.


written and researched during the rehearsal period continues to workin the groups sub-consciousness. The audience presence then facil-itates the opening up of this material through improvisations andinteraction with all the elements from the performers environment.Lepage creates from intuition, asking his performers to be free towrite their text through associations, spontaneous discovery andplaying with resources, accepting that meaning comes after the fact.Lepages devising and directing process understands performances asrehearsals before an audience, where the audience witnesses creativityhappening in front of them. Lepage sees the creative process as beinginseparable from using a collection of improvised and random, acci-dental events. He is deliberately inviting chaos and provoking sponta-neous reactions in a process that is more similar to children playingthan to serious professional acting.

Lepage is attracted to eclecticism and transformation in theatrebecause they represent change which, for him, is at the heart of ritualsas a pre-theatrical form of expression. The passage from one state ofexistence into another (as in, for example, the transformation of waterand bread into the body and blood of Christ) is witnessed by theaudience, who become part of this process of transguration. First itcan be a young actor playing an older character or cross-gender casting.On a second, more spiritual level, the audience come to see transfor-mation when an actor is inhabited by a character or vice versa. Finally,transformation is part of the narrative when, through the text, char-acters are faced with obstacles that cause them to undergo change andto metamorphose through the play. Lepage, as we have seen in chapterone, is attracted to theatre where metamorphoses occur throughoutthe journey of a play of character and space alike.

In Lepages criture scnique the subjective presentation of one per-former is contextualized through the use of various media and thecollective interpretation of a group. It is the use of objects that denesits meaning for the observer. For example, in a Lepage production arow of chairs can become trees if put one on top of the other (as inthe 1992 London version of A Midsummer Nights Dream) or indicate anaeroplane when an actor lies stomach-down on them with his armsextended sideways (as in the rst version of The Dragons Trilogy). It isthrough the actors interaction with objects that the new meaning iscreated. Theatre space comes out of actors actions that has to reecttheir personal material and experience. This can be seen in The Seven


Streams of the River Ota via the simultaneous action of various char-acters in the bathroom engaged in their own events as if they werealone in the space; or in Tectonic Plates where stacks of books initiallyrepresent a library, but with dierent lights and projection onto a poolof water create an illusion of a New York apartment block. The pro-cess of transformation is not something that is explained to the audi-ence, as an exciting trick, but rather it is something that isexperienced by them as part of the performers storytelling.

COMBINING ARTS AND CULTURES

References to Asian culture in theatre, music and dance are relevantto Lepages performance practice. Although he has not been to China,Lepage and the other co-creators of The Dragons Trilogy rely heavilyon their knowledge of China (Figure 2.2). He is particularly inu-enced by Zen Buddhism. However, Lepage plays on duality of posi-tion to local culture his position is that of an outsider, while tointernational cultures it is of a local Quebecker character. He has atourists fascination with other cultures, represented in his productionsby a local Quebecker character who tries to engage with the outsideworld and in this process nds out something about himself and his past.

Lepages version of intercultural theatre allows him freedom to usevarious cultural and artistic resources as a material for his devising.

Working with such a plurality of media, traditions, styles andartistic forms potentially re-frames the role of director as a facilitatorfor collective creativity. By bringing together multiple perspectives,Lepage is outlining a new understanding of the directors role and thecreative approach to performance-making. Lepages performances com-bine personal and collective perspectives and multiple points of view,typically connecting and confronting dierent cultures. The transfor-mation of forms that characterizes Lepages performances comes outof the connections between these dierent cultures. His description ofa Sunday afternoon in a park in Tokyo, where an open-air concertbrought together all kinds of rock groups to perform, is very tellingabout his own appropriation of intercultural performance:

You see Elvises, Marilyn Monroes, Led Zeppelins etc. But they lter the music

in a very different way from us. Our Elvis impersonators do everything they can

to reproduce the King, but they do it less well than he did. So they do Elvis


Figure

2.2Scene

from

The

White

Drago

n(rstversion),the

third

ofthethreeParts

ofTheDragons

Trilogy.P

ierre(Rob

ertLepage

)and

thethird

Yukali(Marie

Brassard)

arein

Pierresstud

iowith

alight

installationresemblingaconstellationandChinese

yinand

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ls.P

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byClaud

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Japanese-style, giving him a specically Japanese character. They dont imi-

tate the West. They seem to transcend it.

These games of superimposition create a kind of pizza style of working

They have no problem performing the role of a samurai to the music of

Brahms or mixing very disparate techniques in the same show.

(Charest, 1997, 456)

Lepages free interpretation and borrowing from other culturalresources (art forms, objects, texts, music, etc.) appropriates anyemotional or material content that can become the starting resourcefor a performance. Lepage observes that, There is the physical place andthen theres what the place represents for you. The China of the Trilogywas a China that suited what we wanted to say in the production(Charest, 1997, 35). His intercultural transposition subverts the ori-ginal cultural and social context found in a location, or the art formsof the tradition which he is using as a stimulus for devising, to a newlyfound meaning established within the performances context. As inperformance art, his performances eclectically connect varied artisticforms from the Japanese theatre traditions of Noh and Bunraku toKaprows happenings and installation art. Any artistic form canbecome material for improvisation and playing, and anything is possi-ble if it is justied by the actors actions. For example, in The DragonsTrilogy Occidental actors are openly playing Oriental characters; inThe Seven Streams of the River Ota traditional Asian art forms aredirectly quoted as part of the mise-en-scne.

Oriental references, particularly Japanese, were not only importantto Lepage as stimuli for devising, but also for the development of hisstyle of intercultural theatr

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