Robert Lepage's Original Stage Productions


Book Description

This text calls upon globalisation, queer, cinema, and affect studies to explore key Robert Lepage productions from 1984 to 2008, analysing the systems through which his work is produced and disseminated.




Robert Lepage's original stage productions


Book Description

This book explores the development of Robert Lepage’s distinctive approach to stage direction in the early (1984-1994) and middle (1995-2008) stages of his career, arguing that globalisation had a defining effect on shaping his aesthetic and his professional trajectory. In addition to globalisation theory, the book draws on cinema studies, queer theory, and theories of affect and reception. Each of six chapters treats a particular aspect of globalisation, using this as a means to explore one or more of Lepage’s productions. Productions discussed include The Dragon’s Trilogy, Needles and Opium, and The Far Side of the Moon. Making theatre global: Robert Lepage’s original stage productions will be of interest to scholars of contemporary theatre, advanced-level undergraduates, and arts lovers keen for new perspectives on one of the most talked-about theatre artists of the early 21st century.




Seven Streams Of The River Ota


Book Description

"Of all Lepage's magic boxes, this is the masterpiece" (Independent on Sunday) Early one August morning in 1945, several kilos of uranium dropped over Japan changed the course of human history. Fifty years later, Hiroshima's vitality is striking: the city where survival itself seemed unimaginable today incarnates the notion of renaissance. Robert Lepage and Ex Machina's The Seven Streams of the River Ota makes Hiroshima a literal and metaphoric site for theatrical journey through the last half-century. In The Seven Streams, Hiroshima is a mirror in which seeming opposites - East and West, tragedy and comedy, male and female, life and death - are revealed as reflections of the same reality.




The Theatricality of Robert Lepage


Book Description

Since the 1980s, multimedia and new technologies have had a great impact on theatre, allowing performance to establish its own language of communication with the audience independent of the written text. Robert Lepage is one of the pioneers and main exponents of mixed-media performance, internationally renowned for a notoriously distinct aesthetic. Aleksandar Dundjerovic, in the first book to explore Lepage's practical work, offers a comprehensive analysis of his creative process, his "transformative mise-en-scene."




The Cinema of Robert Lepage


Book Description

The Cinema of Robert Lepage is the first critical study of one of the most striking artists of Quebecois and Canadian independent filmmaking. The book examines Lepage's creative methods of filmmaking in their cultural and social context and argues that his work cannot be seen separately from his oeuvre as a multidisciplinary artist and challenges the notions that Lepage should be considered only in the terms of Quebecois film tradition. The author explores such themes with Lepage in a new exclusive and detailed interview.




Intermediality and Spectatorship in the Theatre Work of Robert Lepage


Book Description

"Robert Lepage has imposed himself in the past three decades as a Wunderkind of contemporary theatre, with eagerly awaited and widely acclaimed productions at the most prestigious theatre festivals and venues around the world. Soon after his international breakthrough with The Dragon's Trilogy (1984), Lepage's work became an object of particular scrutiny for critics and scholars, and continues to be subject to media exposure, inspiring cultural critique, academic study and the admiration of audiences across the world. A recurrent fascination with the formal novelty of his theatrical approach imbues most, if not all, critical considerations. However, in spite of the wide interest provoked, little space has been devoted to the quintessential impact of his work on spectatorship, and, most importantly, to connecting the dots between his creative practice and its substantial impact on audiences. Intermediality and Spectatorship in the Theatre Work of Robert Lepage bridges this gap by exploring the notion that intermediality - observed both as a mise-en-scene strategy and a perceptual effect in performance - is situated at the core of the director's approach. This approach is situated in direct relation to the evolving expectations and medial competencies of spectators, demonstrating an in-depth understanding of the ways in which different media can be engaged in the creative process in a holistic way in order to alter the regime of spectatorship, to enhance its creative and cognitive potential.Lepage's work and theatre making process are analysed here from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines theatre, media and cultural studies, and which is applied to his solo shows, namely Vinci (1986), Needles and Opium (1991), Elsinore (1995), Far Side of the Moon (2000) and Project Andersen (2005). In bringing to the forefront interconnecting notions of intermediality and contemporary spectatorship, the book highlights the director's preoccupation with an ongoing dialogue with audiences across the world, and their particular involvement in the development of one of the most innovative practices of the Western theatre landscape."




The Blue Dragon


Book Description

In this stunning graphic novel adaptation of Robert Lepage and Marie Michaud's play of the same name, East meets West, the personal meets the political, and old meets new. Claire, a Quebecoise art dealer, arrives in China to adopt a little girl. There she visits Pierre, her ex-husband, who after fifteen years in China has been absorbed into a life of bicycles, tea, and calligraphy and has begun to question the new directions his adopted country is going in. Claire and Pierre's lover, the young Chinese artist Xiao Ling, become fast friends. Through this classic love triangle, "The Blue Dragon" looks at aging, cultural confusion, fertility, and creativity, and confronts some of modern China's most intriguing paradoxes. Fred Jourdain's gorgeous, colourful, and cinematic drawings do full justice to "The Blue Dragon's" genesis as one of the Robert Lepage's most dazzling theatrical constructions. A feast for the mind as well as for the senses, "The Blue Dragon" is a graphic novel for grownups.




Robert Lepage’s Scenographic Dramaturgy


Book Description

This book theorizes auteur Robert Lepage’s scenography-based approach to adapting canonical texts. Lepage’s technique is defined here as ‘scenographic dramaturgy’, a process and product that de-privileges dramatic text and relies instead on evocative, visual performance and intercultural collaboration to re-envision extant plays and operas. Following a detailed analysis of Lepage’s adaptive process and its place in the continuum of scenic writing and auteur theatre, this book features four case studies charting the role of Lepage’s scenographic dramaturgy in re-‘writing’ extant texts, including Shakespeare’s Tempest on Huron-Wendat territory, Stravinsky’s Nightingale in a twenty-seven ton pool, and Wagner’s Ring cycle via the infamous, sixteen-million-dollar Metropolitan Opera production. The final case study offers the first interrogation of Lepage’s twenty-first century ‘auto-adaptations’ of his own seminal texts, The Dragons’ Trilogy and Needles & Opium. Though aimed at academic readers, this book will also appeal to practitioners given its focus on performance-making, adaptation and intercultural collaboration.




Intermediality and Spectatorship in the Theatre Work of Robert Lepage


Book Description

Robert Lepage has imposed himself in the past three decades as a Wunderkind of contemporary theatre, with eagerly awaited and widely acclaimed productions at the most prestigious theatre festivals and venues around the world. Soon after his international breakthrough with The Dragon’s Trilogy (1984), Lepage’s work became an object of particular scrutiny for critics and scholars, and continues to be subject to media exposure, inspiring cultural critique, academic study and the admiration of audiences across the world. A recurrent fascination with the formal novelty of his theatrical approach imbues most, if not all, critical considerations. However, in spite of the wide interest provoked, little space has been devoted to the quintessential impact of his work on spectatorship, and, most importantly, to connecting the dots between his creative practice and its substantial impact on audiences. Intermediality and Spectatorship in the Theatre Work of Robert Lepage bridges this gap by exploring the notion that intermediality – observed both as a mise-en-scene strategy and a perceptual effect in performance – is situated at the core of the director’s approach. This approach is situated in direct relation to the evolving expectations and medial competencies of spectators, demonstrating an in-depth understanding of the ways in which different media can be engaged in the creative process in a holistic way in order to alter the regime of spectatorship, to enhance its creative and cognitive potential. Lepage’s work and theatre making process are analysed here from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines theatre, media and cultural studies, and which is applied to his solo shows, namely Vinci (1986), Needles and Opium (1991), Elsinore (1995), Far Side of the Moon (2000) and Project Andersen (2005). In bringing to the forefront interconnecting notions of intermediality and contemporary spectatorship, the book highlights the director’s preoccupation with an ongoing dialogue with audiences across the world, and their particular involvement in the development of one of the most innovative practices of the Western theatre landscape.




Robert Lepage's Intercultural Encounters


Book Description

This study returns to the origins of Robert Lepage's directorial work and his first cross-cultural interaction with a Shakespearean text to provide some background for his later work. This early work is situated within the political and social context of Quebec and Canada in the 1980s. Constitutional wrangling and government policies of bilingualism, biculturalism and multiculturalism all had a profound impact on this director, helping to forge his priorities and working methods. In 2018 two of Lepage's productions were cancelled due to concerns about cultural appropriation. Lepage responded by stating his view that the artist is as above the concerns of political correctness. While this approach was deemed acceptable in the 1980s, this study looks at the dangers posed by approaching cross-cultural creation from this standpoint in the 21st century.