In the magical world of Robert Lepage, everyday objects are transformed into strange, powerful metaphors for life and time. Shoes become people, and ice skates depict war by trampling the shoes. Ropes couple to show lovemaking. A parking lot suggests a Chinatown that is no more.
At age 32, Lepage (pronounced le-Pahj) has been hailed as one of Quebec`s premier theater directors and a genius at innovative scenic effects whose work transcends Canada`s historic linguistic tensions. His theatrically marvelous, work-in-progress productions compel delighted audiences not just to watch, but to commune, and have helped put the theater of French-speaking Quebec on the world map.
This summer, Chicagoans will see Lepage`s acknowledged masterpiece, ”The Dragons` Trilogy,” an extravaganza of motion and music spanning Eastern and Western cultures, several time zones and 75 years in the lives of its Canadian characters-all told in three languages: English, French and Chinese.
Lepage`s celebrated Quebec City company, Theatre Repere, uses a combination of intuition, improvisation, evaluation and chance to create and update its effervescent stage efforts. Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn`t, but it seems to work wonders in ”The Dragons` Trilogy,” which has enjoyed considerable success despite the feeling by some critics that it should have fewer lines, characters and minutes.
Since it first opened in 1985 under Lepage`s direction, it has been constantly reworked and performed in 90-minute, three-hour and six-hour versions all over the world. (Chicago audiences will see the six-hour version.) The Times of London said it demolished ”the idea of Canada`s cultural dependence on Europe and the United States.”
Lepage`s work has been described by critics as ”artistic but accessible,” presenting a repetition of images that build on themselves to make the meaning understandable even if the dialogue slips into a language that is foreign to the audience. Repetition allows the audience to piece the puzzle together, and the result often rises above words when combined with the set designs, visual effects and musical accompaniment. By getting beyond language, Lepage and his generation of Quebec theater artists are able to take their plays on international tours, earning the group the nickname, ”Theatre D`Ailleurs” (”Theater of the Elsewhere”).
”It`s definitely American,” says Lepage on a recent evening at a Montreal restaurant as he holds forth on the subject of Quebecois theater.
”Maybe that`s what makes French (Canadian) theater right now so interesting for people from elsewhere, because it really is some strange kind of monster. We live like Americans. We`re really North Americans, but there is also the Latin side of it. We`re also very European. It`s a cross between these that maybe makes our work resonate for more people.”
But with the Chicago production of ”The Dragons` Trilogy” (also being presented in Knoxville and Los Angeles this summer), Lepage is making it more accessible for American audiences by adding more English to the dialogue and subtitles.
Lepage traces the idea for the play to his earlier cross-country tours with Theatre Repere, when he noticed Chinatowns were ubiquitous in Canada. Recalling that the Chinese helped build the railroads that united 19th Century Canada, he saw a unifying theme in apparent disunity.
It is seen through the eyes of two French-Canadian girls traveling through three Chinatowns-in Quebec City, Toronto and Vancouver-during three time periods from 1910 to 1986. Eight actors play a variety of characters, all of them linked in some way to the two girls` lives.
Taken together, their saga also depicts the multicultural society that is Canada`s peculiar legacy as a nation born of two founding cultures (English and French) and innundated by immigrants. The initial shock and clash of those two cultures moves toward greater cultural assimilation and penetration by the end. The Chinese Tao, with its two-pole principle of Yin and Yang, inspired the staging.
The set, taken from a parking lot where Chinatown used to be in his native Quebec City, is strange and eerie: more than two tons of hardpacked sand with a dimly lit electric pole at one end and the keeper`s shack at the other. All other props, furniture and accessories in the play are added to this set.
”The metaphor of the show is that if you dig in this parking lot, which is the set, you`re going to find a lot of things,” says actress Marie Gignac, who co-wrote the play and has starred in it from the beginning. Scratch the surface, she says, and you find water and motor oil. Dig a little deeper and you find jade, evidence of the past. ”If you keep digging,” she intones,
”you`ll reach China.”
The set also reveals how the company functions. Lepage says Theatre Repere was inspired by a creative ”resource” method developed by a San Francisco dance company. Repere means ”reference” or ”landmark” in French, but it also stands for REsources, Partition, Evaluation and REpresentation. A concept is developed not with intellect, but with intuition, starting with an object, or resource.
Lepage acknowledges that this creative method will sometimes produce a masterpiece and other times fail, fall short or produce a less rich, less exciting product.
”I don`t think it`s a question of chance,” he insists. ”This thing is intuition. Sometimes you have it. Sometimes you don`t. And you have to be confident that when you don`t personally have the intuition, somebody next to you, if they are stimulated, has it.”
Going on to speak of theater in general, Lepage says that ”Montreal is now considered a hot spot in local theater.” When pressed, the youthful actor, writer and director modestly takes some of the credit for that. But he also points to a deeper reason: the cultural stress between French-speaking Quebec and English-speaking Canada. Montreal is on the cutting edge of new theater, along with Brussels and Barcelona, Lepage explains, partly because all three are ”bilingual cities that each have a distinct conflict of culture, of identity.”
”It`s this inner conflict or tension that seems to be very creative,”
says Lepage. ”Who are we? How can we know who we are? What is our culture?
What is our background? Right now, that seems to be having a very big influence on theater. People don`t just have theatrical intentions for theater anymore. They have political ones.
”I`ve always been interested in geography. Before studying theater, I was interested in becoming a geography teacher,” he adds. ”So I see language and cultural expression as things that are not necessarily always in conflict. And I think it`s a great richness for me to have been brought up in this context, even if I feel very nationalist and separatist and all that. I don`t have any problems showing who I am, going to Toronto to show my stuff, because I think that`s what nationalism should be about. It`s being proud of your culture and seeing how it intermingles with others.”
A strong Quebec separatist, Lepage nonetheless landed the prestigious job as French language director of the National Arts Center in Ottawa, Canada`s biggest theater company, with a mandate to reflect the nation through art. He started the new post Jan. 1, leaving his duties as artistic director of Theatre Repere but remaining part of its administration committee.
A native of Quebec City, Lepage graduated from Le Conservatoire d`Art dramatique de Quebec in 1978 and studied later in Paris under Swiss director Alain Knapp. Lepage also was a successful improvisational comedian for a time. In 1981, he joined Le Theatre Repere, founded a year earlier by director Jacques Lessard. Lepage rose to become its artistic director, rearranging and reorienting the company as he led it through multiple productions.
Some, including ”The Dragons` Trilogy” and Lepage`s one-man show about art and life, ”Vinci,” which he wrote, directed and acted, have been critically acclaimed. Other shows have had problems. ”Echo,” which opened and closed last November, was panned by the Montreal critics. ”Polygraphe”
had problems when it played in French, so Lepage tinkered, rewrote it in English and took it to London, successfully.
Lepage, too, has had his problems. Asked to give notes on a program for classical theater, ”A Midsummer Night`s Dream,” Lepage ill-advisedly passed off a Polish critic`s work on Shakespeare as his own notes. When publicly accused of plagiarism, he apologized with disarming candor and moved on.
The Schedule.
The Theatre Repere performs the six-hour ”The Dragons` Trilogy” by Robert Lepage at 3 p.m. June 8-10 at the University of Illinois at Chicago
(UIC) Theatre, 1040 W. Harrison St. Tickets are $50, which includes a Chinese buffet at intermission. For ticket information: (312) 644-3378 or
(800) 545-3378.
