Robert Lepage S Scenographic Dramaturgy

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.

Robert Lepage/Ex Machina: Revolutions in Theatrical Space provides an ideal introduction to one of our most innovative companies – and a much-needed and timely reappraisal of Lepage's oeuvre. International, interdisciplinary and intercultural to the core, Ex Machina have negotiated some of the most complex creative and cultural challenges of our time. This book maps the story of that journey by analysing the full spectrum of their richly varied work. Through a comprehensive historiography of productions since 1994, Robert Lepage/Ex Machina offers a detailed picture of the relationship between director and company, while connecting Ex Machina to culturally specific features of Québec, and its theatre. This book reveals for the first time how overlooked aspects of creativity and culture shaped the company's early work, while installing a dynamic interplay between director and company that would spark a unique and ongoing evolution of praxis. Central to this re-evaluation of practice is the book's identification of an architectural aesthetic at the heart of Ex Machina's work, an aesthetic which provides its artistic and political centres of gravity. Moreover, this architectural aesthetic powers the emergence of concrete narrative as a new and distinctive mode of theatrical storytelling – uniting story and space, body and technology, content and form – and demanding that we discover the politics of these performances in the energetic gestures of theatre design, and space itself. Drawing on extensive interviews with Lepage, Ex Machina personnel and collaborative partners, Robert Lepage/Ex Machina calls upon us to revise both our creative and critical perceptions of this vital and distinctive practice.

Scenography – the manipulation and orchestration of the performance environment – is an increasingly popular and key area in performance studies. This book introduces the reader to the purpose, identity and scope of scenography and its theories and concepts. Settings and structures, light, projected images, sound, costumes and props are considered in relation to performing bodies, text, space and the role of the audience. Concentrating on scenographic developments in the twentieth century, the Introduction examines how these continue to evolve in the twenty-first century. Scenographic principles are clearly explained through practical examples and their theoretical context. Although acknowledging the many different ways in which design shapes the creation of scenography, the book is not exclusively concerned with the role of the theatre designer. In order to map out the wider territory and potential of scenography, the theories of pioneering scenographers are discussed alongside the work of directors, writers and visual artists.

This book 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.

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.

Offers a formal account and theory of endurance as a practice in performance art and protest. Discusses influential performances by Marina Abramović, Chris Burden, Tehching Hsieh, Yoko Ono, and others, as well as 1960s lunch counter sit-ins and twenty-first-century protest camps. Essential reading in performance theory, art history, and political activism.

This insightful book explores the relationship between theater and digital culture. The authors show that the marriage of traditional performance with new technologies leads to an upheaval of the implicit “live” quality of theatre by introducing media interfaces and Internet protocols, all the while blurring the barriers between theater-makers and their audience.

Totem est repise sur la plaine de jeux de Bagatelle du 25 octobre au 2 décembre 2018 (Paris). Kanata est jouée du 15 décembre au 17 février au Théâtre du Soleil (Paris). Robert Lepage est aujourd’hui l’une des grandes figures de la mise en scène internationale. Né en 1957 à Québec, il entre au Conservatoire d’art dramatique de la ville avant un séjour à Paris, où il suivra un atelier dirigé par Alain Knapp et découvrira les spectacles du Théâtre du Soleil. Très vite, il développe un théâtre visuel, inspiré à la fois par le théâtre d’objets, l’univers des marionnettes et la culture orientale.