Robert Lepage/Ex Machina: Revolutions in Theatrical Space 9781474276092, 9781474276603, 9781474276597

Citation preview

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

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Methuen Drama Engage offers original reflections about key practitioners, movements and genres in the fields of modern theatre and performance. Each volume in the series seeks to challenge mainstream critical thought through original and interdisciplinary perspectives on the body of work under examination. By questioning existing critical paradigms, it is hoped that each volume will open up fresh approaches and suggest avenues for further exploration. Series Editors Mark Taylor-Batty University of Leeds, UK Enoch Brater University of Michigan, USA Titles Adaptation in Contemporary Theatre by Frances Babbage ISBN 978–1–4725–3142–1 Authenticity in Contemporary Theatre and Performance by Daniel Schulze ISBN 978–1–3500–0096–4 Beat Drama: Playwrights and Performances of the ‘Howl’ Generation edited by Deborah R. Geis ISBN 978–1–472–56787–1 Drama and Digital Arts Cultures by David Cameron, Michael Anderson and Rebecca Wotzko ISBN 978–1–472–59219–4 Fiery Temporalities: in Theatre and Performance: The Initiation of History by Maurya Wickstrom ISBN 978–1–4742–8169–0 Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain: Staging Crisis by Vicky Angelaki ISBN 978–1–474–21316–5 Theatre in the Dark: Shadow, Gloom and Blackout in Contemporary Theatre edited by Adam Alston and Martin Welton ISBN 978–1–4742–5118–1 Watching War On The Twenty-First-Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict by Clare Finburgh ISBN 978–1–472–59866–0

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina Revolutions in Theatrical Space

James Reynolds Series Editors Enoch Brater and Mark Taylor-Batty

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METHUEN DRAMA Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Methuen Drama logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © James Reynolds, 2019 James Reynolds has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. x constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series design by Louise Dugdale Cover image: Frame by Frame Workshop (© David Leclerc) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-7609-2      ePDF: 978-1-4742-7659-7    eBook: 978-1-4742-7658-0 Series: Methuen Drama Engage Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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Erato Euterpe Kalliope Kleio Melpomene Ourania Polyhymnia Terpsikhore Thaleia

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Contents Acknowledgements 

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Introduction: Genesis  Ex Machina in brief  Revolutions in theatrical space  Architectural aesthetics  The road to Ex Machina  Learning curves  Foundations: La Caserne and the patenteux 

1 2 4 6 8 11 15

Part One   Foundations and stepping stones (1994–9)

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Introduction 

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Lepagean aesthetics  Discovering Japan’s geo-poetry: Seven Streams of the River Ota  Turning the power of space into theatre  Contradiction as aesthetic key  Flagships  Counterpoint: A Dream Play 

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Making concrete narratives  Ground work: The Geometry of Miracles  Concrete poetry  Making narrative concrete: Elsinore  Scenographic acting and the body politic  Concrete narratives: Sublime effects  Critical condition  Form as cultural expression 

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Critical themes  Evolution  Turning point: The importance of Celestine 

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24 26 28 30 33

37 39 41 43 45 48 50

54 55

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Contents

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Class, contradiction and the anti-hero  The Damnation of Faust in Japan  Process, collaboration, authorship and directing  Cultural difference, cultural specificity 

57 59 62 67

Part Two   Choosing all directions (2000–8)

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Introduction 

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Upgrades  Zulu Time: Q for Québec  Upgrading the Trilogy  The importance of Métissages  Making The Far Side of the Moon  Dramatic devices and the architecture of convergence 

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Québec stories  Art and politics: La Casa Azul and The Busker’s Opera  Dance with three hands: Eonnagata  Narrative terms: The story of the story of the storyteller  KÀ: Entertainment architecture  Writing the myth  Reading the circus 

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New ways  The Image Mill: All roads lead to home  Opera on tour: 1984 and The Rake’s Progress  Ex Machina at the Metropolitan Opera  The Blue Dragon: Character, culture and concrete narrative  Lipsynch: Staging the scream  Process in process 

76 80 83 87 90

98 100 103 108 111 112 117 117 121 124 126 130 132

Part Three   Starting points (2008–18)

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Critical relationships  The Nightingale and Other Short Fables 

137 137

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Totem: Evolving through the gift shop  Collaboration: Ex Machina and the Metropolitan Opera  Wagner, architectural aesthetics and Der Ring des Nibelungen  Reviewing the Ring  The Tempest and L’Amour de Loin  Paying for art 

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Brave new worlds  Virtual reality: The Library at Night  The Tempest: Collaborating the nation  Hearts design  Writing Hearts  Concrete Hearts  Writing  Bet on red 

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Beginning  Frame by Frame  Upgrades  Making 887  Taking the narrative turn  Le Diamant  Coda 

181

Notes 

142 147 148 151 156

159 161 162 166 169 175 177

181 186 188 194 195 198 199

Bibliography

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Index 

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Acknowledgements I owe much to many, and many thanks are due. While this book, sadly, must neglect numerous Ex Machina personnel and collaborators with a story to tell, all have my gratitude, particularly for welcoming observers so warmly. My greatest thanks go to Micheline Beaulieu, Sonoyo Nishikawa and Véronique St-Jacques for opening the doors that made this research possible. I observed Ex Machina rehearsals for Playing Cards:  Hearts in Québec (July–August 2013); workshops for Frame by Frame with dancers from the Canadian National Ballet (September 2016); and Lepage directing-in L’Amour de Loin at New York’s Metropolitan Opera (November 2016). It is a privilege to watch such talents at work, and I  am deeply grateful to all for many remarkable experiences, as well as to Kingston University for the financial support that made this possible. I am greatly indebted for the interviews I was granted in preparation, with Lepage (August 2013, September and November 2016), as well as company personnel and partners: Michel Bernatchez, Peder Bjurman, Steve Blanchet, Paul Bourque, Jean-Sébastien Côté, Michel Gauthier, Peter Gelb, Paul Masck, Pierre Parisien, Sonoyo Nishikawa, Viviane Paradis, and Sybille Wilson. Special thanks go to Jenna Ahrens, Lynda Beaulieu, Micheline Beaulieu, Guillaume Côté, Louis Fortier, Christian Garon, Karen Kain, Jean Lapierre, Virginie Leclerc, Jeff Lovari, Johanne Tremblay and Véronique St-Jacques for arranging archive access, interviews and observations, and for conversations and guidance. Special thanks for support go to Paul Fryer, Michael McKinnie, Catherine Silverstone and colleagues in Drama at Kingston University, with extra special thanks to Jen Harvie in this regard, for the gift that keeps on giving. I am tremendously grateful to Jim Alley, Aline Bertrand, Pat Cetinkaya, Toby Emmer (and Little Bit), Maxime Fleury, Kathryn Hunter, Frank Hentschker, Pálína Jónsdóttir, Andy Lavender, Marcello Magni and Mucho Muramatsu for their assistance during my time abroad. Huge thanks go to my parents and family, particularly my sister Suzanne, and also to Kate Angell, Nick Field, Sharon Harris, David Huntley, Andrew Nasrat, Simon Parkin, Ron Price, Demian Reis, Tony Taylor, Sarah Whitfield, Karen Fricker and Andy Smith for unfailing encouragement over many years. Finally, and most of all, thank you Inés!

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Introduction: Genesis

21 September 2016. I’m in a bookshop on Avenue Cartier in the Montcalm district of Québec City, passing time before heading up the street to interview Robert Lepage over lunch. From inside the shop – near his childhood home of 887 Avenue Murray – I see Lepage stop and peer into the displays. But whatever he is looking for he can’t see, so he comes in to search. We greet and he tells me the playtext of his most recent solo, 887 (2015), has just been published – timing neatly with a month-long run in Québec. The book hasn’t arrived in stock, but his excitement is genuine, and without arrogance. Over lunch, my first question is about process. I’m confused; I observed Ex Machina for four weeks in 2013, completed a second block of observation immediately before this interview, and neither case matches accounts of process I have read. What is the relationship between Lepage’s work and the RSVP cycles, the devising methodology to which his name is connected? ‘I don’t refer to RSVP anymore’,1 he says. There’s more to the story, of course, but the moment captures the essence of what I  attempt to unfold in this book. Lepage’s work has changed to such an extent that the discourse attached to it needs to be revised. Writing about theatre dates quickly and even quicker where Lepage is involved. I’m not distancing myself from the situation; writing this book has changed my perspectives, for example, on Lepage’s authorship within devising. The title Robert Lepage/Ex Machina reflects the root of this revision. It became clear to me while researching that, since its launch in 1994, Lepage’s company has done much more than embody a star director’s practice; Ex Machina, in fact, has significantly transformed Lepage’s practice. By reading their developmental dynamic as being intrinsically intertwined, this book generates a new narrative around Lepage’s oeuvre, and invites us to reappraise Ex Machina’s work as a whole. Our chance meeting in the bookshop, again, encapsulates much that unfolds in what follows. Here is Robert Lepage, searching a bookshop in his childhood stomping ground for the playtext exploring his family and its relationship to Québec’s ideological history. How does this match with charges of political absenteeism or lack in cultural specificity? How does the lexicon of chance, chaos and cycles match

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with textual order? These contradictions require us to revisit cornerstones of the discourse that emerged in response to Lepage’s work, and in relation to questions of aesthetics, audience, collaboration, cultural specificity, form, intercultural drama, narrative, politics, praxis, technology and the body, and the future of theatre. To generate a fresh narrative, Robert Lepage/Ex Machina:  Revolutions in Theatrical Space returns to primary sources  – interviews, rehearsal observations and performance analysis – supported by periods of work in Ex Machina’s archive.2 In this reading, practice is prioritized. Ex Machina’s theatre is sophisticated and merits an intricate reading, taking in the sum of its outputs – and my sense of it is that we have not yet properly understood the practice, which inevitably puts criticism off the scent. We need to look again at ‘Lepage and co’. Accounting for the development of a practice and its relationship with discourse and presenting new terms of analysis are complex tasks that demand quite systematic organization. This book is therefore divided into three parts, each containing three chapters. The distinctive phases of Ex Machina’s story are organized in loose chronology by these parts and chapters. Individual chapters address roughly three Ex Machina productions touching significant developmental, critical or creative themes. Lepage’s theatre pre–Ex Machina is addressed later in this introduction, revealing foundational principles and long-standing collaborative relationships. This reading shows how Lepage practised his company long before he actually created it. Ex Machina, therefore, is both the result of Lepage’s artistic maturity and the vehicle that he designed for its further development – and deserves significant energy of attention. This book explores its subject with just such attention, producing a depth of perspective via a wide-spectrum reading of Ex Machina’s developing theatrical ecology, and its historical underpinning.

Ex Machina in brief Ex Machina has between fifteen and twenty projects in various developmental stages, from inception to touring, at any one time. The number depends upon Lepage’s performing commitments; when touring a solo performance, he spends less time in Québec ‘starting fires’.3 The company’s slate may resemble a random helter-skelter, but the reality is one of carefully planned workload distribution. The easiest way to understand it is to picture it as a spiral. As projects are pushed up the spiral they reach a higher level of realization with each stage of development. By the time they reach the top, they have received multiple points of focus, but are just one of many projects touring the world.

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When Lepage is in Québec, the potential to work on more than one project at a time is heightened. Sometimes work is dropped to make way for new material; Needles and Opium (1991), for example, toured with a replacement performer until 1999, stopping when Lepage started touring The Far Side of the Moon in 2000. Spiral development ensures productivity, variety, maximum exposure, multiple revenue streams, continuous refreshment of creative focus and personnel, and a backdrop of cross-fertilization that nurtures projects, regardless of whether they are active or incubating. We must, therefore, read across Ex Machina’s often disparate performance events, and not on linear terms of one-production-after-another, to fully appreciate this practice. A three-dimensional approach recognizes not only Ex Machina’s distinctive approach to theatrical programming, but also connections between different works. I  treat nearly all of the following examples to some degree in what follows, but rather than grouping productions in categories as I do below, in chapters they are brought together in relation to their cousins on the spiral. The following list, however, usefully illustrates long-term developmental trajectories at work, and the overall coherence of the company’s programming strategy: ●●

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Classical forms – the negative experience of Elsinore caused Lepage to withdraw from acting, and somewhat from classical drama, or to rely on texts he had directed previously. Nevertheless, a steady pattern is represented by Elsinore and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (both 1995), The Tempest (1998, 2011), La Celestine (1998, 2004), Hamlet Collage (2014) and Coriolanus (2018). Co-productions – these begin with A Dream Play (1994), and La Celestine (1998 and 2004). Though initially rare, once Lepage defines personal terms of collaboration in 1999, partnership work accelerates with Cirque Du Soleil (KÀ, 2004; and Totem, 2010), various opera houses, Canadian National Ballet (Frame by Frame, 2018), the Stratford Festival (Coriolanus, 2018) and Théâtre du Soleil (Kanata, scheduled 2018). Dance forms – Ex Machina frequently work with dancers, but The Geometry of Miracles (1998), Eonnagata (2008) and Frame by Frame (2018) reflect major engagements with the form itself, at regular intervals of ten years. Music forms – there is a gap between Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs (1994), and Kindertotenlieder (1998), but Jean-Sans-Nom (1999), The Damnation of Faust (1999), Busker’s Opera (2004), 1984 (2005), The Rake’s Progress (2007), Ring Cycle (2010–13), L’Amour de Loin (2015) and SLĀV (2018) show steady patterns of engagement with musical forms.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina The gap between 1999 and 2004 is explained by Lepage’s world tour performing Far Side, and heavy commitments on KÀ in Las Vegas. Original ensemble works – these are scheduled regularly every four to five years: The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1994), Geometry (1998), The Dragons’ Trilogy (2003), Lipsynch (2007), Playing Cards series (2011– 14) and Kanata (2018). Original solo works – these occur on an almost precise pattern of five years: Elsinore (1995), Far Side (2000), The Andersen Project (2005), 887 (2015), with the 2010 solo ‘slot’ occupied with Lepage performing in The Blue Dragon (2008). Technological forms – regular engagement with the possibilities of technology-as-form occurs with Zulu Time (technological cabaret, 1999), Métissage (museum installation, 2000), KÀ (‘entertainment architecture’,4 2004), Image Mill (projection narrative, 2008–13) and The Library at Night (VR project, 2016). Three-handers – the rareness of three-handed work on the roster is remarkable, given the pre–Ex Machina success of Polygraph (1987). The following appear elsewhere, but they are worth noting separately as they emerge as creative solutions to works that actually began life with casts of one or two: La Casa Azul (2001), Blue Dragon (2008), Eonnagata (2008) and Needles and Opium (2014). Upgrades – Ex Machina upgrades and re-presents its repertoire when new information or technologies become available. The company handbook confirms the reworked Trilogy (2003) was revised due to a ‘new perception of Asia’.5 The transfer of Faust to the Metropolitan (2008/9) was enhanced by advances in lighting and projection technology. An upgraded Far Side (2017) was intended to reflect changes in the political landscape since 2000. A rotating, cut-away cube design first used in A Dream Play (1994) was redeployed in 1984 (2005), and subsequently enlarged to upgrade both Needles and Opium (2014) and revisit Elsinore as the Hamlet Collage (2014).

Connecting these complex activities is the notion of contradiction, which underpins Lepage’s project of revitalizing the theatre.

Revolutions in theatrical space Lepage’s engagement with contradiction as a creative, spatial principle began in the 1980s, was extended through engagements with Japanese culture in the 1990s (see Chapter 1) and would lead to Ex Machina’s conception as a

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meeting place where the contradicting imperatives of different disciplines could clash  – both demanding and leading to new theatrical forms and narrative modes. The following summary of Ex Machina’s praxis develops across subsequent chapters. ●●

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Ex Machina embraces the contradictory imperatives of performance disciplines because this presents them with unique creative problems, and propels their work towards interdisciplinarity, innovation and custom-made solutions. An inherent emphasis on customization according to needs gives theatrical labour at Ex Machina its particular character, imbuing both the creative process and resulting theatrical forms with cultural specificity, because this mode of customization stems from Québec’s culture of patentage. Such customization frequently entails reconfiguring the entire theatrical space, and this places spatial innovation at the forefront of Ex Machina’s style. Architectural elements are frequently favoured in spatial innovation, acting as a locus for contradiction, and giving it concrete expression. This also allows architectural elements to act as a bridging point for the reconnection of story and space. Architectural elements, especially when animated, energize the space by containing and/or mobilizing contradiction. This use of architecture produces not only concrete narratives – which I define as stories with meanings that are inseparable from spaces and objects – but also Lepage’s architectural aesthetic. Concrete narratives entail that the political effects of Ex Machina performances are embedded in the action of theatrical space itself, demanding a shift in criticism away from the psychological drama of character, and towards material relationships between figure, narrative, space and architecture. Concrete narratives require the integration of the actor with architecture and technology, producing stylistic innovation in performance. Simultaneously, this integration of actor and architecture necessitates a model of creation that demands the involvement of technical collaborators at every step. The complete involvement of technical collaborators, while ostensibly simple, actually necessitates an alternative model of theatrical production, both creatively and financially.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina When Ex Machina collaborates with other institutions and companies, this innovative model of production interacts with the mainstream as an impetus towards gradual change.

Contradiction is key – driving Ex Machina’s architectural aesthetic, cultural grounding, praxis, process, relationships with criticism and theatricality, and bringing their work into debates surrounding the narrative turn.

Architectural aesthetics The frequency with which architectural principles of shape, space, form, structure and perspective emerge as determining factors across the spectrum of Ex Machina’s work is striking – whether it be an artist’s house, building or rebuilding a theatre, the animated planks of a stage floor, a castle, a record-breaking architectural projection, the world’s greatest libraries, a bridge or a model of a childhood home – even architects themselves. This book therefore coheres around some key architectural concepts, using them to describe, read across and problematize apparently disparate works, and identify overarching architectural aesthetics in Ex Machina’s oeuvre. As Cathy Turner observes, ‘Such an approach has its risks’. Considering theatre in architectural terms means considering it as ‘world-building, socially as well as aesthetically’,6 which may be overstating its potential. However, I take this approach positively, as a lens through which to read Ex Machina’s theatre both artistically and politically. The most challenging element of this aesthetic in that regard is architecture as spectacle, what Ray Winkler of Stufish – ‘the architects behind the world’s biggest rock concerts, live events and theatrical shows’ – calls ‘entertainment architecture’.7 Lepage’s career covers everything from fringe performances, delivered with a suitcase and little else, to ‘the most elaborate sets ever’.8 Indeed, Mark Fisher of Stufish designed both theatre and set for Lepage’s first Cirque du Soleil show, KÀ (2004),9 at a cost of $165 million. Lepage’s commitment to scale is understandable, given his interest in theatre was triggered not only by the ‘poor man’s art form’ that gave him refuge as a teenager, but also the twenty-five-minute songs of 1970s Prog Rock bands. Lepage often cites youthful experiences of watching bands like Genesis as giving birth to his theatricality (hence chapter title). Without a band, theatre was simply ‘the next best thing’. He identifies groups like Genesis and Gentle Giant as important touchstones.10 Peter Gabriel, Lepage says, would ‘dress up as a flower, or as a lady, as a fox’, while Jethro Tull would use ‘amazing sets and costumes’ to ‘tell stories’.11 Unsurprisingly, Lepage and Ex Machina have

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created two of Peter Gabriel’s world tours (Secret World, 1993; and Growing Up, 2002).12 Beyond spectacle itself, ‘entertainment architecture’ is critically important; Lepage is often challenged for presenting spectacle at the expense of depth. Moreover, KÀ would witness the death of a Cirque performer, Sarah Guyard-Guillot, in an industrial accident,13 while Zulu Time (1999) would leave another, Jeff Hall, with life-changing spinal injuries (see Chapter  4). The ever-increasing risks involved in connecting body and technology bring architectural aesthetics into ethical question. Another aspect of architectural aesthetics requiring introduction is what Lepage calls ‘geo-poetry’.14 This is what Alberto Pérez-Gómez describes, in architectural terms, as embodied research in ‘lived time and space’.15 Lepage’s architecting of performances reflects his perceptions of physical place, revealing another level of architectural aesthetics, and this useful critical term. For, whenever Lepage works on a project, he travels to and surveys its source – a playwright’s home, a garden, the desert or a residency with puppet makers – and embeds himself in it to appreciate its ‘geo-poetry’. Travels in Iceland, for instance, gave Lepage the design concept for his Ring at the Metropolitan Opera (see Chapter  7). Landscape was translated into architectural scenography; indeed, Joseph Clarke writes, the ‘entire stage seems to gesture at the audience’,16 and these gestures were central to the performance. Lepage’s embodied experiences often become the architectural shape of Ex Machina’s process, and even their performances. Clarke argues that technology, ‘far from dematerializing the body, is reinforcing its fundamental role in our perception of space and information’, so much so that the ‘embodied experience of space’ is ‘back on the agenda’.17 As Gray Read writes, perhaps we should consider buildings ‘not as objects but as actors in the city’, and focus ‘on how architecture acts, even without moving, in a thousand stories depending on the people, the place, and their interactions’.18 Human agency and experience, then, can combine with architectural gestures, and form meaningful concrete narratives beyond the notion of spectacle. Additionally, the intersection of the performer’s body with architectural elements foregrounds the theatrical labour at the heart of the theatrical form, asking us to consider how we define – or are defined by – the ideologies of the material spaces we encounter. Connecting architecture and body also shapes the theatrical reception of Ex Machina’s work. As Peter P.  Goché writes, when entering ‘a new setting’, we follow ‘the impulse to instantaneously scrutinize everything’; architecture can sustain this ‘initial ontological wakefulness’  – extending what he usefully describes as ‘the passage sequence’ of entering a space.19 Audiencing in this context might be characterized as experiencing an extended ‘passage sequence’; indeed, pleasure here derives significantly from initially stimulating and then maintaining scrutiny. The idea that reception itself is architectural  – a passage sequence through a developing

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conceptual architecture – is developed subsequently, particularly in relation to characterizing Lepage’s process as one of architecting performances based around formal experimentation with various narrative architectures drawn from cinema (see Chapter 5). Another key architectural gesture in Ex Machina’s practice is their touring-in of self-contained theatrical units into performance spaces. Read’s characterization of Peter Brook is relevant here. Brook’s work ‘as a theater director is architectural’, emphasizing the shared ‘primary act of both theater and architecture’ – namely, the symbolic demarcation of empty space. This ‘architectural gesture’ produces ‘a doubleness in the present’ – a hosting of a place, event or story, that is both there and not there – which ‘opens up time and compounds space’.20 Lepage accentuates this opening of time and space by placing an empty space into an already empty space, but this is no mere intellectual gesture. Space within space is the very fabric of metaphor in Ex Machina performances. Lepage’s most recent solo, 887 (2015), is in many ways an emblem for architectural aesthetics. Beginning in direct address to the audience, Lepage initiates a guided journey through a series of recessive spaces, thus creating a spatial metaphor of moving backwards in time (see Chapter 9). Such architectural gestures reconfigure space as fluid and defined by human interaction. In what follows therefore, the term ‘architecture’ is not limited to the sense of ‘buildings as objects in relation to other buildings’, but is taken in the more active sense Read describes – architecture ‘as actions in the world that make a difference in the social life of a place’.21 It is through such architecture that narrative and space are reconnected, resulting in a concrete narrative that is simultaneously solid architectural material and intangible metaphor. While most theatre is material and intangible  – holographic in nature, we might say  – Ex Machina’s is particularly so. Here, the physical and metaphorical are joined in spatial elements that can have a continuous presence. If the spectator will read the relationship between the figure and the architectural form, the Ex Machina stage becomes dense with meaning. If the spectator will not, design can become dominant, and even oppressive. These ideas and arguments develop in detail as the book progresses. However, before proceeding, we must address Lepage’s career pre–Ex Machina, and understand how it drove the company’s creation.

The road to Ex Machina It is vital to recognize the latency of Ex Machina in Lepage’s early practice, and even as early as the 1970s – while Lepage was still in training. Without such

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understanding, we risk seriously misperceiving the nature of the company. In fact, Ex Machina, and the principles on which it rests, were developed prior to Lepage’s involvement in other companies and institutions. Lepage trained in acting at Québec City’s Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique (1975–8). While there, he discovered Japanese theatre: I was responsible at the Conservatoire, in my 2nd year, for finding cheaper tickets for students to go and see theatre – and I remember organising this whole school bus, about 40 students from the conservatoire, bringing them to the Kabuki. And nobody knew what the Kabuki was – I didn’t know, I was 18. We rented these films and watched them before we went to Montréal to understand  – ‘What’s the difference between Kabuki, Bunraku and Noh?’ – and all that.22

The experience was profound; ‘I will remember this performance for ever’, he says, ‘it was the most shocking thing’. The timeline is important; this profound experience precedes Ota (1994) by nearly two decades, and shows Lepage’s engagement with Japanese culture to be almost lifelong. In June 2016, Lepage visited Japan and serendipitously saw the same Kabuki piece, with the acrobatic role of the fox played by the nephew of the original actor; ‘And here I  was  – 40  years later  – it was incredible’, he says. Through his training, therefore, Lepage established a ‘connection to Kabuki’ well ‘beyond the tourist thing’,23 showing his engagement with other cultures was formed long before directing Théâtre Repère’s The Dragons’ Trilogy (1985). Given Lepage’s theatrical interests clearly ranged beyond acting, it is unsurprising he became ‘more interested in directing’ at the Conservatoire – even facing expulsion on three occasions for focusing on theatre craft at the expense of acting.24 Nevertheless, upon graduating in 1978, Lepage travelled to Paris, attended an influential workshop at Alain Knapp’s Institut de la Personalité Créatrice with some classmates and afterwards visited the Avignon Festival with fellow graduate Richard Fréchette – there encountering Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil. Lepage admired how she had ‘transformed and adapted’ the ideas of Jacques Lecoq, and combined them with the stylization of practices like Kabuki.25 This, then, would be a vital, early experience of a major practitioner working with contradiction to render sharply contrasting theatrical styles into new forms. Tellingly, an Ex Machina collaboration with Théâtre du Soleil, Kanata, was scheduled for performance in 2018. Lepage’s workshop with Knapp was important, but the influence of Lecoq is decisive, and he repeatedly stresses this. Lepage plugs into the Lecoq tradition via his Conservatoire tutor Marc Doré, whom Ex Machina describes

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

as a ‘worthy heir to the tradition of the Jacques Lecoq school where he . . . had studied’.26 Doré’s influence also precedes that of Knapp; it was Doré, Lepage says, who ‘gave us the idea, now so central to our work, that the actor is above all a creator’.27 This troubles claims that ‘[a]‌t the centre of Lepage’s creative process [is] a combination of the RSVP cycles Alain Knapp’s actor-author approach’.28 In 2006, Lepage reiterated Lecoq’s influence, saying that ‘all of my teachers were second or third generation disciples of Jacques Lecoq’, and that this ‘was, and still is’ his training.29 Lecoq even gets a mention in The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1994), Ex Machina’s first production.30 Lepage and Fréchette returned to Québec City, launching Théâtre Hummm . . . in January 1979. They served their apprenticeship on Québec City’s cafe theatre scene at le Hobbit, le Rimbaud, le Petit Champlain and le Zinc. Indeed, Hummm . . . began life at le Zinc on Ruelle des Ursulines in 1979, with l’Attaque Quotidienne, ou Nous ne Sommes Pas Seuls,31 which ran from 9 to 20 January. Hummm’s next notable creation, Saturday Night Taxi, did not arrive until August 1980 – probably due to Lepage’s work as a jobbing actor on ‘more than 20 productions’ between 1979 and 1982.32 This contradicts claims that Lepage ‘was among the few actors of his generation who could not get professional work’ after training.33 Rather, he was not bereft of commercial opportunities, but clearly preferred to work as an actorcreator whenever he could, a preference that remains in operation today. Opening on 19 August at le Hobbit on Rue St-Jean – with tickets on sale at $3.50 – and closing on 31 August, Saturday Night Taxi is notable for two main reasons.34 First, Ex Machina producer Michel Bernatchez worked as régie on the production – launching a partnership now in its fourth decade. The theatrical stomping ground that shaped these careers has faded, but this remains Ex Machina’s cornerstone. Bernatchez knew Lepage through mutual friends, and saw his earliest shows. While not ‘a fan of the theatre’, Bernatchez saw Lepage ‘did theatre differently’, made ‘interesting’ work with as little as $50, attracted audiences – and recouped costs on the door. It was theatre in miniature, but ‘the wheel was rolling’ Bernatchez says, and Lepage’s reputation grew enough to attract directing offers.35 Second, this was Lepage and Bernatchez’s first glimpse of the potential of touring. Where l’Attaque Quotidienne had been performed and was followed by a significant gap  – almost eighteen months between new productions  – Saturday Night Taxi would maintain artistic momentum by transferring to Théâtre de la Bordée.36 Although hardly a tour – the two venues were on the same street, at numbers 700 and 1091 – the artistic and economic lesson struck home. Unless shows toured, Bernatchez says, they ‘would run in Québec city for 20 nights and then die’.37 The cafe theatre scene was vibrant, but small. Lepage would also develop projects now faded into obscurity – le Rois Mangent, Dieu et l’Amour

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11

Complexe, a version of Carmen – but the successes of Hummm . . . helped form crucial relationships. Broader trends would also shape Lepage’s practice. The ‘Canadian Improv Games’ were popular in the 1970s  – taking place in ‘Vancouver, Regina, Toronto, Québec City and Halifax among other cities’.38 Improvisation, Scott Duchesne writes, is a ‘mobile popular theatre form which inherently demands constant growth and experimentation’.39 Lepage won ‘the O’Keefe Trophy for the actor awarded the most stars’, the ‘Pierre-Curzi Trophy for the recruit of the year at the Ligue Nationale d’Improvisation’ in 1984, and from 1983 to 1984 performed in Repère’s improvisation evenings (‘Top Repère’).40 Mobility, growth and experiment neatly summarize Lepage’s ethos to this day. Lepage had already started working with Théâtre Repère, on À Demi-Lune (1982).41 Later that year, Jaccques Lessard, artistic director of Repère and a Conservatoire tutor, performed with Lepage and Fréchette in en Attendant at le Hobbit, with a subsequent run at le Théâtre de Vieux-Québec.42 Hummm . . . was effectively swallowed by the more established company, with both Fréchette and Lepage joining Repère’s board. Repère, Bernatchez says, was ‘a small, but professional structure’ and he would join two years later as its first full-time employee; ‘I did whatever job had to be done . . . writing cheques, tearing the tickets for the shows, running the lights and the sound’. However, four years of hustle on the cafe theatre scene – making, piloting and re-selling work – had already given Lepage and Bernatchez a model for their partnership, and Ex Machina, well before Hummm . . . dissolved into Repère. The importance of extended shelf life for performances, working across art forms, and Lepage performing multiple theatrical roles – while Bernatchez took care of theatrical management – were already in place by 1982. Equally, Ludovic Fouquet shows Lepage’s significant engagement with puppets was also preestablished.43 Lepage and Bernatchez’s model was ultimately strong enough to split Repère. Bernatchez recalls it was disagreements over touring between Lessard and Lepage that caused the relationship to crumble – not artistic differences per se. Lepage’s work was ‘exploding’, while Lessard’s received limited local exposure – and Lepage’s wish to tour without restriction finally led him to propose a new company to Bernatchez.44

Learning curves Public money played a vital role in the success of Repère. The company received three years of annually increased funding from a then ‘relatively

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

generous’ local government – allowing them to grow towards participation in an international festival of new artists in Montréal.45 The success of Circulations (1984) in Montréal confirmed Lepage’s commitment to touring, and it was shown across Canada more than one hundred times.46 This led to an invitation to perform more new work, at a festival in Toronto the following year. The Dragons’ Trilogy (1985) was already in development, and was in the process of being ‘created in French, English and Chinese’, for ‘a 95% French-speaking’ audience. The Toronto invitation necessitated further development, therefore. Bernatchez recalls that Lepage’s experience in opera enabled them to find ‘a way to work with surtitles’ effectively. It was a turning point; because ‘the written word is only one’ of Lepage’s creative tools, surtitles were not problematic – and, crucially, they helped make the work ‘appealing to foreign presenters’47 – and reviewers. Irving Wardle’s presence in Toronto was critical. Bernatchez summarizes Wardle’s review for London’s Times; ‘With one night to spare I  settled on seeing an unknown director from Canada, and it proved to be a masterpiece’. Consequently, both Trilogy (1985) and Vinci (1986) were invited ‘to a small festival in Switzerland’, and the work caught the attention of ICA theatre programmer and producer Michael Morris, who brought it to London  – generating substantial interest. ‘Tours are the key to our development’, Bernatchez says – and just as importantly – ‘touring breeds touring’.48 The suturing of artistic and financial development through touring would be one lesson Lepage and Bernatchez would consolidate at Repère. But the key to understanding Lepage’s breakthrough, Bernatchez says, ‘is that Robert’s way of telling stories was an original one, an unseen one’. All the while Lepage continued learning the craft of theatre – taking on the role of Repère publicist in the 1983–4 season,49 and also discrete technical roles like lighting design.50 It was here Lepage encountered the RSVP cycles – which Lessard adapted and renamed the Repère Cycles, and built his company around. Originally developed as a design methodology by architect Lawrence Halprin, and popularized by choreographer Anna Halprin, the RSVP cycles drew heavily on improvisation. Her early experimental dance piece Hangar (1957) placed dancers in a construction site at San Francisco airport, capitalizing on ‘the abstract geometric quality of this “stage set” ’. Positioning her work in ‘different sites in the city’ allowed Halprin to work across boundaries, by bringing performers into non-theatre architectures.51 The Cycles are of much less importance to Ex Machina than they are to Repère, although it is clear why Lepage could operate the methodology to his own ends; it enabled contradiction, cross-disciplinary work, improvisation and engagement with architecture. The methodology remains connected with Lepage’s name, despite attempts to distance himself from it.

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That Lepage served his theatrical apprenticeship52 on Québec’s theatre scene, and therefore largely established his approach before the Repère years, is somewhat overshadowed by his rapid capture of international focus. Obscured by the Trilogy, Lepage’s production of André Jean’s À Propos de la Demoiselles Qui Pleurait (1985) was nevertheless crucial. Under Bernatchez’s stewardship, this drew financing not only from le Centre International de Sejour, le Théâtre de la Bordée and local businesses, but also Québec’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs, and the Canada Council for the Arts.53 The lesson of funding across revenue streams would not be lost on Bernatchez – even as the Trilogy propelled Lepage onto the world stage. Overshadowed by Vinci, Lepage’s le Bord Extrême (a reworking of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, 1986) is also important. With Bernatchez as ‘Direction de Production’, this piece saw Lepage collaborating with Holospectra, who created holograms for the piece.54 Here we should note the roots of Lepage’s interest in 3-D, Bernatchez’s changing role and the initiation of a pattern of collaboration with local hi-tech engineering companies. Lepage’s success outside of Repère also generated fresh collaborations and trends. These include En Plaine Nuit . . . Une Sirène (1987), with Jacques Girard. This piece also signposts the emergence of Lepage’s distinctive theatrical vocabulary, with him comparing its first Act to a ‘pizza’, and his awareness of principles like fragmentation.55 This, perhaps, is overshadowed by the international success of the threehander Polygraph (1987). Pour en Finir une Fois Pour Toutes Avec Carmen from the same year is also worth noting. Lepage worked as director, but is also credited alongside Daniel Toussaint and Sylvie Tremblay with ‘musical conception’, thus constituting a significant, early engagement with musical forms. Lepage would rework his approach to an earlier Carmen, revisiting it at a higher level of understanding, a pattern of upgrading still practised today. Similar to the ‘pizza’ of En Plaine Nuit  – a dish of contrasting elements  – Lepage’s programme notes reveal contradiction is already key. Where Peter Brook’s tragic interpretation initially suggested a comic interpretation to Lepage, he ultimately decided to mine Carmen’s ‘énergies contradictoires’.56 Contradiction is central to Lepage’s practice, and this perhaps is earliest public acknowledgement of it. These trends developed outside of Repère, and would be developed subsequently – demonstrating again the importance of reading Lepage’s formation as an artist in the particularities of Québec’s theatrical culture. However, Lepage was outgrowing the Québec scene even as he mined it. Tellingly, the Théâtre de Quat’Sous in Montréal staged Circulations, Vinci and Carmen in consecutive years between 1985 and 1987. Lepage’s profile on the Montréal scene would lead to multiple directing engagements  – notably with Gordon McCall on the bilingual Romeo and Juliette – Two

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Solitudes, by Nightcap Productions, presented at the ‘Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan Festival’ (30 June–13 August 1989)57  – and to direct Brecht’s Life of Galileo at the TNM (26 September–21 October 1989). The international collaboration Tectonic Plates (1988–90) sees Lepage maintaining his commitment to original devised work; Shakespeare and Brecht commissions, however, indicate Lepage’s seduction into mainstream theatre at this time. Bernatchez quietly continued to lay the groundwork for Ex Machina to be born; ‘I’m the guy who puts the tracks in front of the train as it’s moving’, he says. Lepage says Bernatchez has ‘the soul of a builder’58 – a good match for his architect’s mind  – and the company would not be incorporated until 1994. Lepage’s apprenticeship in Québec had given him ten years to define his vision, but he would soon face the lessons of artistic compromise that industry money demands. Nevertheless, between 1987 and 1990, the international agents Menno Plukker and Richard Castelli joined Michael Morris in marketing Lepage’s work internationally, and, crucially, Bernatchez says, that ‘was where the idea of co-producing with presenters came from’. With such partners promoting the work internationally, each covering roughly one-third of the global market, ‘money started coming in in line with the scale of what we were doing’ – and Bernatchez had established an expanded financial model of touring and multiple revenue streams capable of supporting the launch of Ex Machina in 1994. Before then, however, Lepage undertook a short (1990–3) but significant tenure as artistic director of the French section of the National Arts Centre (NAC) in the Canadian capital, Ottawa. His inaugural production was Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s la Visit de la Vieille Dame (1990).59 Lepage’s next solo, Needles and Opium (1991), would be hugely successful, touring until 1999, but requiring frequent absences from Ottawa. Nevertheless, crucial professional relationships developed at this time – Normand Poirier (la Visit),60 Michel Garneau, Michel Gosselin, Normand Bissonnette, Marie Brassard, Eric Bernier, Christian Gagnon (le Cycle Shakespeare, 1992) and others.61 Bernard Bonnier and Carl Fillion, Lepage’s most regular designer, would collaborate on Felix Lope de Vega’s story of people’s revolt, Fuenteovejuna (1993).62 Bernatchez remarks that ‘we’ve gradually built a strong team around Robert’.63 Collaborative relationships of notable longevity are seen in what follows to provide vital support to Ex Machina’s evolution. Similarly, establishing institutional partnerships built essential foundations for the company. These also allowed Lepage to establish his notoriety as a radical director of Shakespeare, via directing commissions:  A Midsummer Night’s Dream at London’s National Theatre (1992) – where Ex Machina would present their work until the early 2000s – Rapid Eye Movement, a Shakespeare collage, in

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Munich (1993); and another Shakespeare cycle at the Tokyo Globe (1993) – laying foundations for collaborations in Japan. Lepage would learn much from this intense engagement with Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s plays, he says, are ‘like sculptures, are multidimensional, and must be replayed . . . until every possible facet is discovered’.64 Lepage here describes his perhaps ideal theatrical text, in architectural, Mannerist terms. Complex architectural or sculptural forms cannot be perceived from a single perspective; they impose dynamic viewing by compelling us to move our angle of perspective. We must circulate around them, as it were. Ex Machina’s use of architectural forms imbues Lepagean theatrical space with social action – the demand to recognize that different perspectives are crucial to understanding a shared reality. Spectators must adopt a mobile perspective, thereby engaging in the ‘passage sequence’ that characterizes the reception of Lepage performances.65 Lepage’s tenure at NAC would conclude with national CAPITALe nationale (1993). With the launch of Ex Machina imminent, his programme notes are delightfully unguarded. ‘From the moment I arrived in Ottawa’, he says, ‘I was struck by how power seeped into all aspects of life here’. But ‘Ottawa’s power is strangely disembodied’, because Ottawa is ‘an artificial capital; it exists by virtue of imperial memoranda and the choice of a faraway Queen’. Political power there is ‘decapitated’ by ‘lobbyists’ who seek to ‘broker power’. The ‘site of their power is the lobby, where Racine, taking his cue from the Greek tragedies, located the crux of his action’.66 These remarks distil insights that become increasingly important for Lepage. Political power and theatricality share the same kinds of performative space – a spatiality that architectural forms can both describe, and critique.

Foundations: La Caserne and the patenteux Ex Machina launched in 1994, and a base of operations was essential. The then mayor of Québec City, Jean-Paul L’Allier, had been Québec’s minister of culture. His vision and economic savvy had already served to revive the St Roch area of Québec – through what Bernatchez describes as ‘a series of initiatives and influences, and arm-twisting’ – and he ‘saw in a newspaper that Lepage was looking for a building’. Lepage’s interest in another site had reached the press – resulting in the vendor deciding ‘to raise its price by a hundred percent’. L’Allier reached out to Lepage with the possibility of occupying la Caserne, a derelict fire station. L’Allier first gained local government support for the project, and after from provincial government. The ‘federal government slowly followed’, Bernatchez says, and L’Allier ‘got

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Robert to meet the then Prime Minister through a series of, you know, people opening doors. It’s a long story, but that’s the short version’. The building was extended on to empty land on one side, and some small offices on the other had to be purchased. Costs were substantial, but with L’Allier’s ‘genius’ and ‘enormous influence’ behind them, Ex Machina eventually occupied refurbished premises in 1997. L’Allier prevented Ex Machina facing extortionate demands based on Lepage’s reputation, but the company was undoubtedly folded into an agenda of urban regeneration in Québec City, which brought its own demands. Bernatchez tells me that while La Caserne is owned by the city of Québec, Ex Machina has the responsibilities – and bills – of ownership. The building is on a thirty-five-year lease to protect its historic status from developers; when Ex Machina move into their new home, le Diamant, in 2019 (see Chapter 9), it is their duty to find another cultural organization to occupy the building. L’Allier died unexpectedly in January 2016. He was more than just a crucial ally for Ex Machina, at a crucial moment, he was enormously popular in many quarters of Québec; ‘people were crying all over the city for three days’, Bernatchez says. Part of L’Allier’s legacy is retaining one of Québec’s key cultural assets in Québec. Jen Harvie, citing the suggestions of Richard Florida, writes that ‘for cities to be prosperous and to become successful creative cities’ they might ‘need to concentrate on attracting and retaining not major companies or organisations, but [the] creative class of workers’.67 Québec investing in Lepage made broad economic sense; he had already gone to Ottawa, and, like Peter Brook, might ultimately have chosen a physical base outside his nation. Would Ex Machina have survived without la Caserne? Bernatchez is unequivocal: ‘I don’t think so. No. It was becoming quite a mess. The number of old, abandoned rooms that we turned into rehearsal spaces in Québec City is staggering. When we created Ota, we went all round the city – in some of them we were freezing, in some of them water was leaking, or there was no height’. Lepage’s work rate is prolific, but maintaining that productivity clearly requires a base like la Caserne. One positive side effect of being baseless was that the principles by which la Caserne would run were identified in advance; ‘We decided to have our own creation space because we wanted freedom with regards to the hours we could be here’, Bernatchez says. La Caserne is not a union building, but it has its own bargaining agreement with the unions; because hours can be irregular, Ex Machina ‘pay people more than the union rulebook’ actually dictates. While rehearsing Playing Cards: Hearts in 2013 Lepage worked with the ensemble from 9.00 am to 1.00 pm, and again from 7.00 pm to 10.00 pm, while developing 887 with his newly appointed Director of Creation, Steve Blanchet, between 2.00 pm and 5.00 pm. Lepage’s

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way of working is out of sync with nearly every aspect of mainstream theatre production, but this is not only a question of irregular hours. His approach to creation – broadly speaking, three-week blocks of workshops, spaced out by six to twelve months of incubation – is also very different. This would not be possible without la Caserne. The concrete realization of la Caserne reflects a key principle of Ex Machina’s overall practice. With each new project, new requirements were determined, and the space became customized according to needs. ‘So’, Bernatchez says, ‘we’ve just gradually moulded the space to the way he works and we keep trying to make it as efficient as possible in helping him develop shows’: What I do is complementary – at the service of his work – that’s what we’ve built here, a tank, a box which is operationally adapted to Robert’s needs, the way he wants to develop shows, the way he wants to explore, the way he wants to write in a live sense, rather than strictly write. This space is essentially the fruit of the abilities and inadequacies of Robert as a creator.

It is telling that even the architecture of la Caserne reifies an important theme in Québecois culture. I  owe this observation to Lepage’s long-term collaborator, Sonoyo Nishikawa, who drew my attention to this important element of Québec’s culture. Lepage is, she says  – and so Ex Machina are – patenteux.68 The patenteux are celebrated in Québec – for example, through exhibitions at the Musée Québécois de Culture Populaire  – where they are presented as ‘ingenious Québécois creators who invent art or everyday objects using limited means’.69 The word is specific to Québecois French, and well known in Québec’s vernacular. Although the word patenteux was only registered in the 2014 Le Petit Robert (a standard French dictionary),70 the Wiktionary page set up for the term illustrates it through multiple citations from Le Devoir between 2005 and 2007, showing the term to be in common and current parlance,71 and using the word as a search term shows it appearing regularly in Québecois literature (from Satan Belhumeur, by Victor Lévy Beaulieu [1983], to Cruelties, by Lise Bissonette [1998]). Ray Ellenwood, in a 2011 article for Espace Sculpture, ‘The Passion of the Patenteux’, traces the patenteux back to the early twentieth-century avant-garde.72 One definition describes the patenteux as an ingenious bricoleur, resourceful with makeshift means. The word gives birth to ‘patente’ – a very useful generic word depicting an object

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina difficult to name or characterise, or describing a crazy contraption  – [and also to] the verb ‘patenter’ . . . [as in;] ‘I’ve patented something to tide you over, but you’d best get to the garage pronto’..73

In interview, Lepage agrees readily that his work fits into Québec’s ‘culture of patentage’.74 Transforming a discarded launderette washing machine into a spaceship in Far Side of the Moon (2000) is perhaps the most obvious example of a ‘crazy contraption’ in Ex Machina’s work. We might recognize in patentage the postmodern idea of pastiche. As Jen Harvie writes, pastiche’s ‘irreverent selection and assembly characteristic’ similarly ‘produces unexpected new meanings, productively breaks down unnecessary and unproductive creative boundaries, and encourages playful audience engagement’.75 However, the cultural specificity of patentage gives it a social significance which pastiche can lack. For Lepage, the patenteux are particular to Québecois culture; ‘it’s actually not a French word, it’s Québecois’, he says. It means ‘to invent something, starting from what you have, to confront a situation that is extreme’: Québec started with a bunch of French pilgrims who came here, and ended up in an environment that was very, very rugged. They were cold, it was very extreme, and they tried to live à la Francais. Then the Brits, then the Irish, then the Scots – and everybody came here, and dealt with that situation. But this creates a culture of patentage. Patentage is – how do I walk on snow? How do I carry this from here to there? So of course I have a European invention, in which I can put my stuff. But I can’t use wheels . . . but there’s this other thing that the Indians created . . . So what if I glue it to this, or attach it to that? That’s why we end up creating a lot of stuff, but nothing’s really original. That’s the thing that is nice about patenteux – and also the humility of being a patenteux – is that we are not inventing anything that didn’t exist. We’re just glueing together, we’re cross-breeding stuff. Sometimes we’re trying to do stuff where a machine doesn’t exist to do the things that we want to do. So we take two existing machines, and we try that. But it doesn’t stop us from trying to do what we’re trying to do. So we do it, we find a solution, and we create this weird patent. I’m not just talking about technology. I’m also talking about whether it’s writing, or any role. These things arrive as a solution. It’s always a question of necessity; you need this, we need to do this, we need this thing to do this, we need to clarify something we’re trying to express.76

It is important to draw out the significances of Lepage’s remarks.

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First, his approach clearly emanates from a specific aspect of Québecois culture  – patentage  – and Ex Machina’s experiments with form therefore express cultural specificity at every step of the way. We may need to search for ‘Québec’ in this theatre at times, but its culture is always expressed through Ex Machina’s innovative forms. After Marshall McLuhan, the medium is very much the message, here. Second, contradiction is an important aspect of patentage; washing machines are not spaceships, but they can be. In Chapter 1, we will see how Lepage’s relationship with Japan confirms his embrace of contradiction, but this nevertheless emerges from Québecois culture. Third, patentage shows that contradiction is not an abstract principle, but a functioning creative principle which drives Lepage’s creative process. Introducing contradiction to Ex Machina’s process  – via the different imperatives of different disciplines, and the different languages of international collaborators  – generates maximum creative pressure through the constant demand for solutions. Fourth, the ‘cross-breeding’ inherent to patentage underpins Lepage’s developing perception of culture (see Chapter  4), and helps us understand the political significances of the theatrical forms Ex Machina deploys. Lepage, then, is the troublemaker par excellence – creating problems for others to sink their teeth into.

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Part One

Foundations and stepping stones (1994–9) Introduction The three chapters in this section introduce the relatively difficult birth of Ex Machina, and productions during that period, including The Seven Streams of the River Ota, A Dream Play, The Geometry of Miracles, La Celestine and The Damnation of Faust. Among the company’s successes within this rapid change of context would be a number of high-profile critical and technical problems. Chapter  1, ‘Lepagean aesthetics’, explores the ways in which Lepage brought his deep-seated passions and principles into Ex Machina’s practice, from the outset. It is crucial in understanding Ex Machina that we recognize Lepage’s choice to engage with Japan’s geo-poetry and culture in Ota – a piece that must be thought of as a flagship project for the company, and a statement of intention. The emphasis Lepage places on direct interaction with culture, and his use of this to inform theatre making, is fundamental in setting Ex Machina on track towards continuous innovation in the use of theatrical space. Although Ex Machina are not ultimately limited by this early engagement with Japan, it nonetheless provides an aesthetic key to understanding their practice  – doing so by exploring the idea of contradiction in depth. In contrast to this artistic freedom is Lepage’s experience of directing A Dream Play in Stockholm. Although industry models of practice do not suit Lepage’s way of working, this counterpoint would help confirm Ex Machina’s early sense of direction – and develop an important collaborative relationship with dramaturg Peder Bjurman. Chapter  2, ‘Making concrete narratives’, explores productions following on from this very first wave of work, examining The Geometry of Miracles and Elsinore. These projects are shown to develop new and existing trajectories,

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

and allow Lepage to take his ideas about narrative and theatrical form a step further. The idea of concrete narrative is explored here as a lens through which to understand the interaction of a number of principles of practice, particularly the bringing together of story and space, and an emphasis on architecture. Reading these works shows how Lepage’s evolving architectural aesthetic makes unique demands on Ex Machina collaborators – particularly performers – and, predictably, questions surrounding body, technology and collaboration arise from these productions. However, while we see that the new types of narrative form that emerge from experiments with body and technology positively extend the vocabulary of theatre and its affects, the company continues to meet with particular difficulties. This in turn leads to a set of critical ideas becoming attached to it before the effects of changing context have been absorbed. Polarities in the reception of Ex Machina’s early work, and the crucial shape this gave to critical discourse, is introduced here, and developed subsequently. Chapter  3, ‘Critical themes’, explores collaborations in Japan and Stockholm which see the company starting to move out of its early phase of development – The Damnation of Faust and La Celestine. Importantly, in these works is both a recognizable intensification of architectural aesthetics, and a deepening engagement with social and political meanings inherent in character and narrative. The notion of the anti-hero, in particular, emerges as important – embedding both the idea of contradiction in the figure on stage, as well as the idea of resistance. This chapter concludes Part I by surveying the critical themes that emerged in response to Ex Machina’s early work, particularly in relation to creative process, collaborative context and culture. This chapter is important in revisiting, and revising, our ideas about Ex Machina’s changing creative process. Indeed, one of the major arguments of this book is that Ex Machina has not simply carried out Lepage’s practice, but has transformed it. Whether these critical themes have adapted similarly or still reflect the difficulties of the years 1994–9 is an ongoing question.

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1

Lepagean aesthetics

The basement corridor walls of la Caserne were lined with a series of thirtytwo prints picturing steps in the application of Kabuki make-up. A further fifteen completed the full series of forty-seven, but these hung in Lepage’s office on the top floor. From basement to roof, the influence of Japanese culture saturated Ex Machina. Lepage even has ‘a Japanese imagination’, says company collaborator and lighting designer Sonoyo Nishikawa.1 The following chapter thus explores ways in which Lepage confirmed or drew his vision of theatre from experiences in Japan, and early attempts to realize his aesthetic with Ex Machina. This goes beyond a simple process of transferring personal taste onto the materials of performance, or into the structure of the company. Rather, what we can observe here is the formation of a mutually nurturing dialectic. The cross-fertilization Lepage so admired in Japanese culture would drive both company and artistic director towards ever greater experiment with intersections of culture, form, history, language and technology, and establish an evolutionary dynamic based on an absolute willingness to embrace new influences. Previously, we saw how Lepage’s passion for Japanese theatre began in the 1970s at Québec’s Conservatoire, long before Ex Machina’s flagship production, The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1994; henceforth, Ota). Speaking at CUNY in 2016, Lepage reiterated its appeal. Japanese theatre resonates with him due to its Baroque detail, permissiveness and playfulness in performance. Coherence and harmonization he finds boring, preferring contradiction – what he calls Japan’s ‘Bento box’ approach to theatre – clash and contrast within a tight framework. Although ‘we see our contradictions as problems’, he argues, in reality ‘they are our real source of inspiration’.2 Contradiction is central to Lepagean aesthetics, but we should remember that he expresses this before engagements in Japan. Watching Japanese companies ‘mixing very disparate techniques in the same show’  – and discovering richness ‘in diversity [and] in the meeting and shock of styles’ – was of great significance to Lepage.3 But they confirm his opinion, rather than giving it to him. In this chapter we see it is the ‘geo-poetry’ of the country – particularly its culture of space  – that is decisive. Lepage was already directing at the

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Tokyo Globe by the time Ex Machina became a legal entity (1994), but his visits to cultural spaces and historical sites are especially noteworthy. Unlike the Trilogy – which began by announcing ‘I’ve never been to China’ in three languages – Lepage had definitely visited Japan before Ota, and, to the present day, he travels there at least twice a year.4 When contrasted with Lepage’s experience of directing Strindberg’s A Dream Play (1994) in Stockholm, at the same time as Ota was being made, we see in this chapter not only important features of company praxis emerging but further confirmation of the necessity for Ex Machina’s artistic and financial model of practice. Ota’s many contradictions would demand solutions to the interweaving of seven narratives spanning eras and nations into a single theatrical space, and bring with it equally complex lessons in intercultural theatre-making.

Discovering Japan’s geo-poetry: Seven Streams of the River Ota Hiroshi Takahagi was programme manager at the Tokyo Globe, and witnessed Ota’s inception. He put Lepage in touch with a Shakespearean scholar based in Hiroshima, who, he says, ‘did his best to give this talented young director a good account of Hiroshima’s history, as well as of his own experiences of the bomb. Some two weeks later, Lepage went home; we couldn’t have imagined at that time that his visit would become the germ of his Hiroshima project’.5 In Lepage’s words, the professor gave him ‘a fantastic two days of these little stories’, describing the reaction of ‘a woman who had been disfigured’ in the Hiroshima blast to the sight of her own face in a mirror, and explaining a plan to give the city back its ‘sexual organs’ in the symbolic architecture of two new Yin and Yang bridges over the Ota.6 On this first trip, Lepage saw from the mountains above the city that these bridges resembled human reproductive organs, one, he writes, ‘phallic in form, the other shaped like a vagina’.7 He says the ensemble explored the theme of ‘devastation and destruction coupled with rebuilding and survival’  – embedding archetypal themes in architectural symbols.8 These elements of geo-poetry became key features of Ota. Nozomi, the piece’s hibakusha9 character, studies her ruined face in a mirror, and the architectural metaphor is given flesh in the fertility motif running through the piece. The symbolic architecture of the Yin and Yang bridges is said to have encouraged Hiroshima’s rebirth – an important example of architecture as deliberate social action. Indeed, this architectural symbol is layered over the characters, with Nozomi, Hanako and Sophie each giving

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birth. The version of Ota that opened at the Edinburgh Festival even used ‘a sound-over of Hiroshima station noises’ Takahagi recorded for Lepage.10 Here we should note how Lepage’s engagement with Japan’s geo-poetry brought some important cultural specificity into Ota. Lepage clearly prioritizes the grounded experience of architecture, culture and geography in the early stages of architecting performance, above other forms of performance preparation. In Connecting Flights (1995), Lepage describes his first visit to a Zen garden, where he was fascinated to see ‘people plunge into their inner space’.11 In 2013, he readily confirms that this is an ongoing, active principle: ‘People read a lot about Zen. I never read about these things. I go to these things, I go to the temples, I go to Zen gardens, I go to these things. And I have the impression that, though I don’t understand the logic, I understand the reason for it.’12 Lepage’s concrete research brings both virtue and vice – the pleasure of apprehending culture through physical, sensory impression, through closely observed detail and grounded cultural experience  – and the potential pitfall of under-analysing less tangible but equally important elements of culture. Lepage is aware of these pitfalls, however, and clarifies how Ex Machina addresses the limitations of embodiment in research: What we do is that we tour, we become friends with a culture or a people, and we bring that into our work. And for a while it’s like a tourist coming back and showing their pictures. We have to go beyond that. It has to be beyond tourism. It has to be real – find what we have in common with the Japanese, and share that, and show it.13

Finding common ground across cultures is of paramount importance in today’s world, and theatre has its part to play in that. But intercultural theatre – optimistic at heart, but all too often reductive in its outcomes – inevitably reflects the perceptions of makers as much as it does actual culture. Lepage frequently braves these choppy waters, and not always successfully. The critical fallout from Ota is explored subsequently; at this point we need to recognize that concrete research clearly precedes the selection of starting points for practical exploration. The gathering of geo-poetic elements constitutes a definable, physical and creative process occurring prior to the selection of Resources for investigation – inviting us again to question established perceptions of Ex Machina’s process. Lepage’s architecting of performance begins with concrete research. Unsurprisingly, relationships between body, space and architecture underpin Lepagean aesthetics.

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Turning the power of space into theatre Japan’s geo-poetry provided definitive confirmation of Lepage’s practice. Ota would deploy both tangible and intangible elements of Japanese culture in its design and narrative. Its set evoked the feeling of a Zen garden, with a white gravel strip across the forestage present throughout as a dominant visual metaphor. This element provided continuity through the performance by compounding multiple spaces, while the set behind it evolved with each section, showing temporal changes. Alongside the exterior of a New  York tenement, Japanese architectural style was also deployed. The stage directions for Part I  include the ‘exterior of a Japanese house, which has a wooden porch and stairs leading down to a narrow raked stone garden’.14 Ota’s gravel forestage was used to demand particular forms of human interaction with space, akin to the principles of Zen gardens. Master gardener Kei Ishikawa describes these gardens as collaborations between gardener, visitor and nature.15 Because such spaces act upon those who experience them, we can interpret them not only in terms of natural architecture but also as a model for the ‘passage sequence’ that characterizes the audience’s conceptual journey through an Ex Machina performance. These gardens present more than abstract versions of Japan’s geography; they are deeply structured, affective spaces. Lepage confirms that he knowingly brought the architectural gestures of Zen garden space in his aesthetics: People sitting silently and watching a Zen garden, which has total equilibrium, the aesthetic of which is so obvious! . . . We sit there and we’re in a different energy, we forget the concept of time, it is dissolved by rocks and raked gravel. Anyway, me, I don’t know the rules behind this, I don’t know how to achieve this alchemy, but I borrowed it, and I checked it, and I tried it in my shows.16

In 2013, I asked Lepage to talk about how he brought this into Ex Machina’s theatre. He again returned to his embodied experience of the Ryōan-ji garden in Kyoto: You really just sit there and go. Immediately, it invades you, and you think ‘What is happening to me?’ And then you understand the power of space, and how you use space, and what story you tell with space . . . So for me, the power of space is turned into theatre. Space is rare and extremely precious in Japan, and when they open the curtains in the

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Japanese theatre there’s this huge, empty space, there’s a little tree, gold panelling in the back, and the way it’s lit . . . And you know that they’ve understood the power of space.17

The Zen garden, then, did not furnish Lepage with a new array of formal techniques, but rather deepened his appreciation of how the architectural gestures of space mould the performance-audience interaction. Because space is the one element of theatre that audiences experience continuously in performance, form and content are conditioned by, and must align with, its affective properties – not vice versa. In theatre, to get space wrong is to get everything wrong. Concurrently, Lepage’s remarks about the power of space turning into theatre express the principle of concrete narrative; theatrical stories must be told with space. Ota’s joining of story and space into concrete narrative is accomplished by linking places and persons to architecture. Alexander Alland writes that Zen gardens are ‘an art form with a distinctly theatrical quality’.18 Indeed, Ota’s audiences would experience what Noh spectators experience, being ‘purposely kept at a distance [by] an apron . . . of white gravel’.19 In Part Seven, Scene Nine, Hanako remarks that the gravel forestage was once her flower garden. When her husband (Japanese) Jeffrey died, it had to be overlaid as she could not maintain it. Through this evocation of absence, Hanako’s loss of her partner resonates more powerfully. The different locations represented by the gravel strip during the performance are brought together, as are the characters that previously interacted with the space to define it. In the moment, the erasure of peonies, cedars and a weeping willow20 evokes these lost relationships between person and place, and the monumental destructions of life which the play addresses can be apprehended as the work is stripped back to focus on a lost interaction with space – and consequently, on a specific bereavement. Ota, like Noh, ‘is reflection’ more than it is drama, because its spatial invitation to contemplation is enhanced by its narrative focus on ‘a past event’ or ‘an emotional tone created by that event’.21 Ota borrows its spatial power from the aesthetics of the Zen garden and Noh stage, therefore, blending their respective emphases on contemplation and the ghosts of the past into a concrete narrative. Hannah Scolnicov writes that theatre space is more than just a question of concrete elements; ‘the articulation of the theatrical space is . . . an expression of the playwright’s philosophical stance’, and it is consequently of ‘thematic and structural importance’.22 When the disparate characters of Ota experience and respond to the same architectural actions in different contexts, the space articulates their cultural differences. In concrete uses of space like this, we can apprehend

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cultural difference  – as well as the inseparability of the aesthetic and the political in Lepagean schematics. It is possible to read Ota in a more formalistic way, for example, through the ‘comprehensive and clearly recognizable aesthetic universe’ of wabi-sabi – which Leonard Koren describes as quintessential to Japanese culture.23 By the same token, we might read Ota through the principles of Zen gardening. Mai Kanzake and Jennifer Wise do just that, identifying ‘miniaturization, metaphoric minimalism, and asymmetrical fragmentariness’ and other forms of ‘aesthetic kinship’ between Lepage’s work and Zen gardens.24 But we should recall that these affinities confirm, rather than originate Lepage’s approach. As previously noted, the demands of touring to small venues witnessed Lepage working in miniature long before Ota  – and his early programme notes for Carmen and En Plaine Nuit (both 1987) show alreadyestablished perspectives on (respectively) contradiction and fragmentation. We must also recall ways in which Ota blends the aesthetics of East and West. Koren argues strongly that Japan’s wabi-sabi aesthetic is ideologically and ontologically incompatible with digital forms.25 While that aesthetic embraces contradiction, the situation is more complex than one of aesthetic appropriation – from Eastern culture to Western stage, as it were. Ota is a staging post on the way to artistic maturity, not a final destination.

Contradiction as aesthetic key Taking a broad perspective of Japanese culture in relation to Ota is necessary, given that Ex Machina had ‘10 or 12 collaborations over 6 or 8 years’ in the 1990s, with ‘actors and directors and designers’ from Tokyo.26 This level of saturation undoubtedly had an effect. Ota ultimately staged multiple Japanese cultural practices, including interdisciplinary elements from, or references to, Iaido, Noh, Sumiyé, Bunraku, Butoh and Kabuki. Ota’s company, Lepage states, ‘discovered that this was a world much thicker than we thought’: We think we know what Japan is about, but it’s a very deep precipice, a very deep canyon to excavate. And we were confronted with the whole thing when . . . we had to perform this in front of a Tokyo audience . . . [S]‌ome of the Japanese people . . . said ‘You’re sending the wrong the messages . . . the flowers in the hibakusha’s hair are sending the wrong message, the colour of the kimono, the way the stepmother walks in’.27

Consequently, he says, ‘Every detail of the show [was] rethought . . . rebuttoned, resewn, reconsidered, repainted’.28 Ota’s ensemble came to understand the

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importance of engaging with cultural specificity, and the lived experience of space. Nevertheless, Ota’s representational field was rightly problematized by numerous critics (see Chapter 3). Contrasting these critical difficulties is the success of the work with audiences  – an appeal that stems considerably from aesthetics grounded in contradiction. Alison McAlpine, for example, refers to Ota’s ‘jarring hybrid of forms’.29 Ota might even be read as constituting a Zen koan  – what Jerri Daboo describes as an ‘unanswerable’ riddle which exhausts rationalization, ‘computation and qualification’ – practised in certain schools of Zen Buddhism in an attempt to break through to a sudden realization of enlightened mind. The koan, Daboo writes, is not a question of using ‘one concept to destroy another’, but rather of contradiction  – putting ‘seemingly opposite or incongruous concepts’ together ‘in the same space’ in order to transcend the conceptual mind.30 Daboo’s description shows the difference between contradiction and contrast; it is not a question of creating a structured, binary opposition. The emblem par excellence for this is seen in Part Two, Scene Two of Ota, where five characters use the shared bathroom of a New  York tenement simultaneously, but in their own individual timeline.31 They cannot be in this same place at this same time, but they are. Simultaneously, Ota’s characters experience the action of the space in a way that is personal to them, and their cultural differences are thus described through their interactions with that space. Equally, contradiction plays a functional part in the success of the work. Karen Fricker’s analysis of Ex Machina’s Andersen Project (2005) furnishes us with terms through which to understand how contradiction facilitates reception across international contexts. Fricker cites the work of Patrick Lonergan to describe ways in which personal interpretation is facilitated in Ex Machina performances, particularly the ‘attempt to make themselves sufficiently open to interpretation to be understood in different ways by different audiences’.32 The ‘reflexive availability’ Fricker describes is crucial.33 Contradiction ensures ‘reflexive availability’ because it ensures indeterminacy of meaning, which in turn makes a wide range of interpretations possible – thus helping Ex Machina’s work to travel. Ota’s narrative climax models these principles, and, moreover, shows the company attempt the synthesis of Eastern and Western theatrical aesthetics which Lepage had admired in Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil. Ota’s narrative spine starts to build when Luke and Nozomi are thrown together by the bombing of Hiroshima; he a soldier, she a survivor. The son of their union, (Japanese) Jeffrey, discovers by chance that he has a half-brother in the United States – fathered after Luke’s return to America. Coincidentally, this brother is also called Jeffrey. Different sections of the work show Luke’s

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death from cancer and American Jeffrey committing assisted suicide after contracting AIDS, helped by his half-brother (who also later dies). Although Ota’s scope is much broader – notably encompassing the Nazi concentration camp Terezin  – its various sections revolve around this family drama. In the Epilogue, Japanese Jeffrey’s ashes are emptied into the River Ota at the same place where his father Luke arrived fifty years earlier. The final image in the published version of Ota (Part Seven, Epilogue) is of Jana, a Buddhist nun, facing the torii arch in the Bay of Miyajima with a group of friends. After performing ‘a short ritual’,34 she empties an urn containing the ashes of Japanese Jeffrey into the river. The ashes of Hiroshima and the ashes of the body are taken away by the Ota, and the body and the city itself are united in another metaphor that connects narrative and space – tellingly set against the iconic architectural detail of the arch standing in water. To complete the cycle, Luke then appears in silhouette, and is taken by a boatman onto the river. Ota’s narrative chronology moves back and forth, however, offering temporal cohesion only towards the end  – in Part Seven, Scene Twelve, ‘The kimono dance’.35 Here, the characters are connected visually through the device of taking turns to wear a kimono. As each character turns, the next character  – who has entered hidden and stood close behind them  – slips into the costume, turning and revealing themselves, while somewhat concealing the exit of the previous wearer. The conceptual network traced across the production’s seven sections converges in a physical object and singular moment of time, illustrating the common ground of experience, and the universality of suffering. Completing the formation of this symbol produces a moment of cathartic closure related to – but not quite the same as – that of Aristotelian narrative. Ota’s intricate homage to Japanese culture is synthesized with the Western narrative culture of its makers at its climax. Such contradictions accord rights of interpretation to spectators in widely different cultural contexts, and invite us to both note the presence of a distinctive approach to narrative and assess the balance of cultural power that this synthesis displays (see Chapter 3).

Flagships Ota would be Ex Machina’s flagship production  – being simultaneously a statement of aesthetics, a change in method of collaborative creation and an emblem of cultural synthesis. In 1995, Lepage described the process of making Ota as ‘a first attempt at working in this new way, at creating a meeting ground’.36 Ota would, then, crucially embed Ex Machina’s commitment to

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international, interdisciplinary collaboration with both on and offstage personnel. International collaborators are ‘one of the conditions of our work’, states Bernatchez. I ask him if such internationalism commits Ex Machina to an import-export business model; ‘What we import is talent’, he replies – ‘we do not import goods’.37 Bernatchez acknowledges pride in Ex Machina helping collaborators develop their own work and careers through their relationship with the company, and Québec. He cites the career of awardwinning Japanese lighting designer Sonoyo Nishikawa, who lit Ota, and who has subsequently worked around the world. At the same time, Bernatchez says, ‘part of her living [still] comes from collaborations with people all over Québec’. Nishikawa met Lepage in 1991, while placed at London’s National Theatre. His reputation then, she says, was as the ‘young Peter Brook’.38 She saw Lepage both perform Needles and Opium (1991) and direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1992). A  working relationship developed that led to Nishikawa joining Ex Machina in 1993 – before that name had even been settled on. Contracted for three years to work as a lighting designer, Nishikawa arrived in Québec City for rehearsals of what was to become Ota. She spoke working English, and only some French (she was also the one Japanese person working on the show) but, she says, a greater obstacle in this period was the rehearsal venue – a third-floor nightclub above a Jac and Gil tabagie on Place d’Youville. The ceiling was far too low to hang lanterns – although the only lights available were some free-standing floor lamps. The situation was highly stressful, and Bernatchez notes that ‘[t]‌he reason why we have la Caserne is that Robert told me  – “this cannot go on any more” ’. These disadvantages ultimately led to Lepage making a public call for help in locating a base in Québec City (see Introduction).39 Regardless of these difficulties, Nishikawa recounts that the devising process was greatly rewarding:  the informality and democratic feel of Ex Machina was positive, and afforded her a much greater creative contribution as a designer than she had been accustomed to in Japan. Whereas Nishikawa’s previous experience of lighting for directors typically reflected their desire to illuminate the actor, it soon became clear to her that, in Lepage’s work, the decisive difference was that the actor would be part of an overall stage picture. Lepage, she says, is often very exact in the image he seeks to create. From him she learned the importance of developing theatrical imagery by using light not to reveal, but to hide. Nishikawa now sees herself as much as an artistic engineer as a lighting designer. The result of Ex Machina’s very first workshop was shared with the public at the Conservatoire where Lepage had trained. Nishikawa says that she was aware that the work was raw, compared to her experience of working

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in Japanese theatre. She travelled with Ota for its first performances at the Edinburgh International Festival, in August 1994. In Edinburgh mythology at least, the production acquired an immediate, legendary status. Ota was clearly hindered in its preparation by working conditions, and was received by some as less of a work-in-progress – and by others as unfit for consumption. Telling the story causes emotions to arise for Nishikawa. She recalls how, at that point in time, the piece was divided into three acts; the final section of the piece had not been made, and had to be improvised live, in front of the audience, by the actors. Nishikawa and other members of the technical team also had to improvise; Act Three had no lighting plan, and therefore no cues. Lepage stood in the wings directing the actors from offstage during the performance, and there were multiple mishaps. Marie Brassard, costumed in full kimono to play Nozomi’s mother-in-law, ended a scene powerfully – striding to upstage centre and confidently sliding apart the rice paper screen doors set there – only to find her exit blocked by a large mirror which had been put in position too soon. Almost any other alternative exit would have revealed the mistake; Nishikawa recalls with delight, however, the panache which Brassard showed in turning to face the audience – and exiting through the auditorium as if repelled. Variations of finesse within the work led to mixed reviews. Alison McAlpine notes the resentment of ‘a critical and audience contingent’ in Edinburgh,40 but Nishikawa also relays how director Steven Daldry received the piece with great positivity on opening night  – and Ota would go on to a successful world tour. Nevertheless, both Ota and Elsinore (1995; see Chapter  2)  – in essence, Ex Machina’s flagship productions  – would come in for considerable flak. In retrospect, it’s hard to say that Ex Machina got off to the best start in life. I asked Lepage if these productions represented a difficult birth for Ex Machina: The chances are you will not have immediate critical success because critics in general have a certain grid of analysis that they want to apply to everything . . . but they’re rarely confronted with stuff where they don’t know the rules. When we were doing Seven Streams at Edinburgh, we had that really tough opening . . . but I remember that in the Festival, to my tastes, it was the best thing playing. It doesn’t mean that Elsinore, and all these things, weren’t full of rich things that came out – and there’s a lot of stuff we tried that we did later on, inspired by these things. I never took critics for granted, I never expected them to like what I do. We never navigated on critical success, you know? We always did what we thought we should be doing. If the audience

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hadn’t been there – we would do these things that were attempts that didn’t necessarily come to fruition – but we had a crowd for it. They were popular successes. So even if it was a flawed opening . . . as long as there’s an audience for it, as long as you really, really are trying to put your finger on something that’s interesting, and new, and ahead of the curve. When that’s there. . . When you have both a critical failure and a popular failure – then it’s really a train wreck. But when there is something there . . .41

Ultimately, Ota’s long-term significance for Ex Machina lies primarily in its establishment of core working practices – and aesthetics. Critically speaking, however, it would establish debates about Lepage’s work (see Chapter 3) with similarly long-term impacts.

Counterpoint: A Dream Play As Ota developed, Lepage was directing parallel projects which would establish other, important trends for Ex Machina. In 1995, Elsinore would be Lepage’s first solo performance for the company  – but before then he would direct Strindberg’s A Dream Play (1994) at the Kungliga Dramatiska in Stockholm. This latter production is noteworthy because it established a working relationship between Lepage and Peder Bjurman, who would eventually collaborate regularly as an Ex Machina dramaturg – most regularly on Lepage solos. The standard production model of Dream Play also gave Lepage an illuminating counterpoint to Ex Machina’s newly established way of working. Indeed, the counterpoint of Dream Play gave him ‘the opportunity to explore and better understand my own way of working’.42 It became clear that directing gigs would take Lepage away from Québec for extended periods of time, and consequently slow down work at la Caserne. Moreover, Bernatchez says, ‘Robert didn’t want to adapt himself to, and his creativity to, the way shows are developed in those institutions’. Bernatchez also identifies ‘an extra problem’: He would come back afterwards, we would do our theatre productions, we would try to tour them – and we’d end up being told ‘We don’t want your Robert Lepage staging, we already have our own Robert Lepage staging – we bought the show from the National Theatre of Stockholm’. So we were shooting ourselves in the foot. With Robert working elsewhere, it was interfering with our own touring.43

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Additionally, Lepage was compelled to direct Dream Play under the standard industry model of a short rehearsal period, leading directly to a production run. Although the production was a success, like Ota, its significance is as a major signpost towards evolution in practice. Dream Play established an important partnership with Bjurman, who would again work with Lepage in Stockholm on La Celestina (1998) – but this time the project would be a co-production with Ex Machina. He would then act as dramaturg on Lepage’s solos The Far Side of the Moon (2000), The Andersen Project (2005) and 887 (2015), and on the Playing Cards series (2011–14). Consequently, he is well positioned to describe Lepage’s favoured circumstances of work: In the circumstances of the system you have to condition everything, you have to decide everything in advance, so it’s actually countercreative – you don’t create while you’re working, you create beforehand, and you make a list of things that you want to happen. Then you tell the actors things that you already know  – it’s already preconceived, already mediated one way or another. So you’re only instructing them. He stopped working with other theatre companies after Stockholm – the national theatres, the major institutions. He doesn’t like the system. Even though we adapted it to his conditions – for example for Celestina, we rehearsed in Québec, and then came back and worked on the piece here, in Stockholm – he doesn’t enjoy it as much. He does it with the operas and the circus pieces because he knows that’s the way the system works, but if he can choose to develop a new piece of work it has to happen in his house, with his conditions, with his crew, and costs and everything that goes with it.44

The major point of reaction to note here is the insistence on co-production with Ex Machina as a condition of nearly all Lepage projects. This may not seem noteworthy; however, when we consider that these partners will eventually include cultural and economic powerhouses like New  York’s Metropolitan Opera and Cirque Du Soleil, we should recognize that this is a confident, powerful and centralizing gesture. Ultimately, projects like Dream Play are significant in moving Ex Machina’s company practice towards a radically different model of theatre-making. Equally importantly, as this model interacts with industry, it serves to place pressure on orthodox methods, concepts and boundaries of theatrical creation – and thus act as an agent of gradual change. Dream Play is also notable as Lepage’s first use of a rotating cross-section cube design – a scenographic device that would subsequently be deployed in

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1984 (2005), the revival of Needles and Opium, and the Hamlet Collage (both 2014). In later iterations of Carl Fillion’s design, three sides of a cube are retained – creating almost a catcher’s mitt for the performer, or performers – while the other three sides are removed. In Dream Play, physical interaction with this mobile architectural form would create a concrete narrative of mental flux; in 1984, it would symbolize the torture that Winston Smith experiences in room 101. Rotating the cube (in combination with the use of flying harnesses) demands the interaction of body and technology. The design rejoins narrative with space, in the locus of characters’ symbolic relationships with an architectural device. The revival of Needles represents a peak in terms of both this device, and Lepage’s architectural aesthetic. Needles combined the rotating cube with video-mapped projection on each side of the cube, embedding characters in the city spaces of its narrative – Paris and New York. This meant that the production continuously presented the performer’s bodily experience of space, and the interaction between character and environment. At the same time, the spatial, energetic gesture of the design presents architecture as active by showing the actions of social spaces upon characters – for example, the repressive effect of New  York upon Miles Davis. More prosaically, this patenteux-like design solves the problem of depicting multiple architectural locations, without having to rely on set scenery  – which is both visually problematic and expensive to take on tour. It also positively complicates the idea of projection  – making it environmental and interactive with the body – rather than static and pictorial. Although none of these pieces appear specifically Québecois in terms of content, we should recall that it is the form of Ex Machina’s work, rather than its content, which awards it cultural specificity. Form here is always a solution to a problem, and an emanation of Québec’s culture of patentage.

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2

Making concrete narratives

As Ota’s world tour ran down, The Geometry of Miracles (1998; henceforth Geometry) was created to take its position on the ‘spiral’ (see Introduction). Ota’s ensemble would dissolve, with only Marie Brassard continuing to Geometry as a performer, although technical roles saw greater continuity. Lepage’s next solo, Elsinore (1995), however, would overlap with Ota’s tour up to 1997 – solo and collaborative creations being sufficiently different to not interfere with each other’s box office. Ota, Geometry and Elsinore would each receive mixed reviews on their travels – and there would be more controversy in Edinburgh  – but these are nevertheless crucial productions for Ex Machina. Through case studies of these works, we see the company exploring further the principles that underpin their subsequent work – contradiction, patentage, architectural aesthetics and concrete narrative. These explorations begin to generate an exciting new language of performance – but they also bring Ex Machina into critical debates concerned with problematizing how we read the live body on the technological stage.

Ground work: The Geometry of Miracles Geometry was performed on a rectangular, sand-covered surface – quoting the image of the Zen garden, just as Ota had. The sand floor in Geometry, however, progressed this, and triggered a more substantial interaction between body and design. This scenography blends Lepage’s ‘Japanese imagination’ with a playfulness derived from Lecoq. Just as the raking of sand in a Japanese garden produces symbolic floor patterns, Geometry’s floor was marked by the play of the performers  – and animated objects like Lloyd Wright’s drafting table crossing over it. The floor becomes a concrete locus that is emblematic of both impermanence and theatrical labour. In performance, the continuity of this emblem provided an anchor for meanings that became joined to the space, regardless of narrative shifts in terms of time and place. By bringing protagonists and their arguments into contact with a physically interactive space, a process of conceptual

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appreciation is triggered for spectators  – with renowned American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and spiritualist George Gurdjieff ’s respective expertise in architecture and esoteric thought emerging through interactions between theatrical space, dialogue, action and the body. Geometry begins this process of conceptual development by immediately launching the scientific and the spiritual into contradiction – giving the piece momentum, as well as structure. Lloyd Wright is visited by Beelzebub  – a naked, blue-lit and grimbling demon  – who tests Wright’s claim to be the world’s greatest living architect. This is validated not in speech, but by Wright’s ability to draw a three-dimensional form with a single line – a spiral. The spiral is an important locus for the spiritual and the scientific, not least because Lloyd Wright’s most striking designs  – including New  York’s Guggenheim Museum – rely on this. Having wagered his soul on his reputation and won, Lloyd Wright is empowered to once more reinvent his architectural style, this time in response to mid-twentieth-century events. The memory of this blue devil echoes throughout the account of Lloyd Wright’s life and work that follows, because Beelzebub and Gurdjieff are doubled by the same actor. Beelzebub represents Gurdjieff ’s alter ego (featuring prominently in his books), and his supernaturalism similarly disrupts Lloyd Wright’s scientific rationalism. Indeed, Beelzebub returns in person towards the end of the piece, where the concept of the grand design – the architecture of the cosmos – is considered. Beelzebub need only reveal the supernatural basis of miracles to take Lloyd Wright’s soul from him. Although his exposition earns the prize, its length is such that Lloyd Wright dies in the hearing of it, and his soul passes before Beelzebub can claim it. Between these bookends, Geometry was divided into themes described by geometric shapes  – circles, squares, triangles, spirals  – with the lives of Lloyd Wright and Gurdjieff triggering multiple narratives as time progressed. Ex Machina describes these images and interactions as serving to develop a web of ideas ‘where connections were established between mathematics, architecture and the human body’.1 While developing such a web occurs across the length of Ex Machina performances, we should note the imperative it imposes; concepts must be launched into action from the outset, if understanding is to develop across the fullest possible duration. The starting image of an architect at his drafting table confounding Beelzebub launches Geometry’s core concepts – and contradiction – through the idea of architectural form. Lloyd Wright’s architecture and Gurdjieff ’s spirituality are brought into play through their contest. After all, an architect and a devil would see the meaning of a spiral quite differently. Concepts need to be brought to life in this way – as open, contested, containing their own contradiction even – and here crucially, as embedded in characters.

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This process of giving flesh to ideas is one we can describe as conceptual animation. The imperatives of such a process, it should be noted, build a distancing effect into characterization. Ex Machina audiences trace more than just character narratives; they trace the evolution of a set of ideas – reflecting Lepage’s injunction that theatre ‘must speak to the spectator’s intelligence’.2 In his solo work, Lepage invariably starts this process of animating ideas by declaring the concerns and contradictions of the piece, in direct address to the audience. Collaborative creations begin with similar forms of declaration, which Lepage says allow spectators to ‘sink into the proposition’.3 This, then, is an important aspect of performance style in Ex Machina’s theatre. The actor must understand the importance of making an effective proposition, and of bringing ideas to life through their characterization – though it must be said that this process does not rely solely on performers. Lepage regularly uses objects to animate concepts. Michael J.  Hood’s analysis is useful in recognizing this; Lloyd Wright’s drafting table is put to multiple uses – a bed, a piano, a car – and then, he writes, In a particularly beautiful moment, the ink from one of Wright’s drawings, running off the paper on the drafting board, is in the rain that accompanies his funeral, [taking] us from the tangibility of being to nothingness in a matter of seconds. The finality is startling. The connection between the fleeting nature of the creative impulse, its products, and life itself is reinforced and given immense power.4

Quickly, then, we can see how Ex Machina’s work demands modes of performance capable of interacting with the meanings of scenography. The Ex Machina collaborator must be able to coherently blend hyperrealism, gestic acting and physical theatre in their performance. Subsequently, I refer to this synthesis of modes and principles as scenographic acting, and use it along with proposition and conceptual animation as key terms through which to describe the style and practices needed to render concrete narratives.5

Concrete poetry Geometry’s denouement presents Lloyd Wright as a deceased and omnipresent figure  – eavesdropping upon four conversations in four different train ­ carriages. The piece ends unpredictably, when the ensemble come out of character, playfully dancing to disco as themselves, before switching equally abruptly to a stylized presentation of Gurdjieff ’s spiritual études. Hood characterizes this as ‘at once unsettling and somehow a perfect indication that

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the ideas of these two remarkable men are and will remain fresh, available, and challenging’.6 It is a bold moment of contradiction – layering the multiple temporalities of Lloyd Wright’s architectural school, Gurdjieff ’s students and Lepage’s company into a compound space. Through rehearsal observation, Hood reveals how intricately ideas and characters are intertwined here, while shedding light on the demands of Ex Machina’s collaborative context; he notes ‘the incredibly rich preparation [the] company has undertaken. Because they invent all that they do, and much of what they say, their sense of the reality of their characters must be extremely secure. At any one moment they may find themselves involved in an improvisation that absolutely demands their total commitment and a depth of knowledge seldom otherwise encountered’.7 As early as 1998, then, Ex Machina were committed to an improvisational process blended with rigourous dramaturgical research. This is noteworthy because it complicates the emphasis Lepage often places on the role of intuition in his creative process, and which the RSVP method foregrounds. Given the demands of conceptual animation on actors, we should not find it surprising that Ex Machina collaborators have significant dramaturgical responsibility. Difficulties that arose in the process of creating Geometry indeed came from complications around responsibility, in terms of moving from research to performance. In Chapters  8 and 9, I  use my own, more recent observations to account for the ways in which such research becomes the images, objects and events of performance. But that is not to say that this is a dominantly intellectual process. Geometry and Elsinore both typify one of Lepage’s motifs, albeit in different ways; ‘Every actor has to have a physical challenge to meet’, he says.8 Unsurprisingly, Ex Machina describes Geometry as calling ‘for a particular physicality’ and the ‘embodiment of abstract ideas’  – a synthesis ultimately accomplished through blending ‘Gurdjieff dances and Meyerhold movement sequences’.9 Given Geometry’s conceptual range, and the physical challenge set by its sand floor, it is unsurprising that Lepage chose to work with a group of dancers on the piece. This goes beyond a formalist quest, however. The search here is for concrete poetry – forms capable of expressing concepts metaphorically through the interaction of body and scenography. This is exemplified in Geometry’s staging of the car accident in which Lloyd Wright’s stepdaughter, Svetlana Peters, dies. The incident itself is played in flashback across the upstage, the news having been received in the scene before. She begins the flashback stage left, working at Lloyd Wright’s drafting table, before transforming desk and chair  – largely by miming a steering wheel – into the bonnet and driver’s seat of her car. The ensemble is concurrently engaged in a dance class on the other side of the stage. To the general observer, it might appear as if the group is practising some form of

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Tai Chi, but the gentle choreography is Meyerhold’s biomechanics played to resemble Gurdjieff ’s sacred dance. As the ensemble travel in slow motion towards Peters, the forward movement of the car is established. There is no dialogue, but the effect is supported by music and coloured light. As the dancers reach the table, they slowly tumble over it. Simultaneously, Peters dives forward  – equally slowly  – indicating being thrown through the windscreen as she crashes – and transforming the ensemble into a metaphor of the river the car plunges into. The moment is one of physical description and contradiction. Bodies are not rivers, and tables are not cars, but such concrete poetry allows the moment to acquire a tragic beauty. The problem of depicting an event that could not be staged naturalistically is solved through the interaction of body, space and object. Solutions like this represent the culture of patentage at work – demanding scenographic acting in order to bring space and story together – and to make the narrative event concrete.

Making narrative concrete: Elsinore Elsinore (1995) was Lepage’s response to – rather than a staging of – Hamlet. The production was a career-changing moment, causing Lepage to give up acting.10 Lepage had regularly explored material from this canonical text, using extracts from it in Polygraph (1987), delivering a speech from it in Jesus of Montréal (1989) and again extracting material for Alanienouidet (1992)  – causing Ric Knowles to wonder what ‘makes Lepage return to it so obsessively?’11 Lepage’s relationship with the play had reached boiling point, perhaps, and he desired a full-scale production. Marianne Ackerman, Lepage’s co-writer on Alanienouidet, says that Lepage became committed to ‘the idea that Hamlet’s gravedigger’s scene should be performed on or near the climax’ of the piece – though this demanded considerable reworking at a late stage.12 Ex Machina’s 2014 Hamlet Collage represents another return, but this pattern of cycling back to a point of interest to upgrade a prior response was clearly typical to Lepage’s pattern of creativity prior to the company’s formation. In 1995, Elsinore would demand scenographic solutions to the problem of playing the whole text solo. These solutions altered the status of the work – problematically for some – and led to the concrete narrative Elsinore, rather than a straight rendering of Hamlet. In Elsinore’s solutions, we might recognize an extension of Ota’s play with Japan’s sliding doors, but the roots of its design reach back to Needles (1991) and Vinci (1986). Elsinore was driven by the imperatives of creating effective solo performance. These include a need for variation in patterns of entrance and exit. Little is more banal than watching an actor playing one character exit

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

the stage, to re-enter from the same position as another character. In Vinci and Needles this was addressed through the deployment of a panel centre stage, which could also act as a projection screen. This effectively meant that the door to the offstage was placed centre stage, facilitating greater fluidity in transitions between sections, and also increasing visual variety. In 1986, this panel was relatively static, but by 1991, it was revolving on a horizontal axis, and could move vertically up and down. By the time we reach Elsinore in 1995 – via the rotating cube stage of Dream Play of 1994 – the lightweight panel had evolved into a mobile stage platform with industrial strength. Working as set designer to deliver Lepage’s vision, Carl Fillion would create two rigid supporting columns to reinforce a rectangular platform, capable not only of rotation and lift but also of bearing a performer’s weight safely. Furthermore, the sturdiness of Elsinore’s platform allowed weight-bearing objects (such as chairs) to be screwed on, while removable sections provided for even greater variety in entrance and exit. Québec’s culture of patentage is clearly visible in these increasingly inventive – and architectural – solutions to the problems of solo theatrical space. Elsinore’s scenography, like Geometry’s, presented a space with distinct physical challenges for the actor  – in addition to the already substantial challenges of delivering blank verse, and playing every character. Lepage’s continuous negotiation of Elsinore’s mobile platform produced  – and maintained – a spatial metaphor of the tests that Hamlet faced in attaining revenge for the murder of his father. This was a Hamlet vividly drawn through embodied negotiation with his environment, as much as through the written text. Elsinore thus developed the principle of contradiction, by presenting the organic, human body in relation to an automated, technological environment. It would, therefore, represent Lepage’s architectural aesthetic writ large – a staging of place not as a location, but as what Mike Crang calls ‘space as action’.13 In this performative architecture, Lepage is never fully alone; the space is imbued with such a power of gesture that it truly is another character. This unity of space and story re-creates the play as a concrete narrative  – demonstrating the power of architectural aesthetics to productively challenge the status of a canonical text. As it carved ever and ever greater complexity into the space through the action of metaphor, Elsinore established itself as Ex Machina’s first fully realized concrete narrative. Negative critiques undoubtedly stemmed in part from reviewers’ unwillingness to read the action of space as a signifier of meaning equal to the text. Where one spectator might recognize in the physical work required in Elsinore a metaphor of struggle against an oppressive world, another might be tired by this continuous shifting in the space. Certainly, as we shall see, some critical commentary saw the design as dominating  – and even diminishing  – the human, rather than recognizing that Elsinore staged a

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combative dialectic between individual and environment. Andy Lavender’s analysis is sharp in its recognition of this dialectic, showing how Elsinore’s movement ‘between different locations, different chronological moments, and even different qualities of time’ created a ‘representational flux’ that is ‘able to transform and combine multiple images without breaking the flow of dramatic action’.14 Such compounding of time and space is central in the creation of concrete narrative, as it imbues the space itself with signification. Steve Dixon describes the expressive potential of these spatial and temporal shifts, which can be ‘softened and aestheticised’, or brought into play at ‘thrilling speed’.15 While concrete narratives give solidity to story by merging it with spatial expression, the fluid exchange of elements this relies on also creates the cinematic feel of Ex Machina’s theatre. Indeed, we might think of concrete narrative as a genre characterized by bringing the fluid temporal properties of cinematic narrative into live performance. On stage, such fluidity depends upon what Keir Elam calls ‘transcodification’, namely, the ‘inter-changeability of stage elements [and] the reciprocal substitution of sign-systems or codes’.16 Transcodification helps us to understand concrete narrative, but it is also an important idea in conceptualizing scenographic acting – providing a term to describe how performer and design mutually exchange and create meaning through their physical interaction. The body, therefore, is at the centre of concrete narratives – especially Elsinore – which, driven as it is by the technologies of performance, contains an intrinsic emblem of the contradictions and tensions between body and technology.

Scenographic acting and the body politic Lepage’s understanding of Lecoq underpins his willingness to explore the body through design – and design through the body. Lecoq even urged the ‘future scenographer’ of Hamlet to recognize that ‘the space itself ’ must ‘hold the density of the drama’, within ‘a dynamic construction where the actors can play with the space’.17 Ex Machina’s architectural aesthetic is exemplified by dynamic constructions capable of interacting with the performer. Dixon says that ‘[r]‌eflecting the technological zeitgeist and utilising the latest tools and techniques is a conscious strategy by Lepage’ intended ‘to re-ignite theatre for a new generation of audiences’.18 This positions him on ‘the developmental continuum of scenographic practices’  – Appia, Craig, Svoboda  – which Lepage brings ‘innovatively and distinctively into the digital age’.19 These trajectories have led to the deployment of dynamic architectural forms or actions in Ex Machina’s theatre, as a locus point where performer and technology can meet.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

The interaction of technology and performer constructs a discourse of the body – which can often be fraught. Sylvie Bissonette cites Lepage’s remark that ‘I tell stories with machines. The actor is him/herself a machine. I know that some actors don’t like that we refer to them as machines, but in theatre it is something like this’.20 Elsinore’s ‘images of bodies in technology’, she writes, demonstrate that ‘our relationship to technology and scientific knowledge influences our definition of humanness and contributes to how we define our place in the world’.21 Scenographic acting, then, is more than just a formal element within an overall architectural aesthetic. It simultaneously engages Ex Machina’s work in ethical questions surrounding technology, the body and ‘humanness’. Understanding Lepage’s approach to body is important, therefore, and recognizable through his Lecoq training. David Bradby demonstrates that Lecoq’s theatrical roots included performances and training activities as part of the ‘cultural work of the Resistance in the last year of the German Occupation of France’.22 During this period of work in rural France, Lecoq developed a belief in popular forms such as commedia dell’ arte; indeed, Bradby writes, ‘its roots in a popular, working-class culture, transcending national and cultural boundaries’ excited him greatly. Lecoq ultimately saw the actor’s body as a political instrument, and ‘social distinctions between people in society’ as a means of ‘regimenting and denying the fundamental freedom of the body’ – a freedom of paramount importance in post-occupation France.23 These are different backdrops; nevertheless, the heightened tension around questions of Québec’s right to self-determination – explored in Lepage’s autobiographical solo show, 887 – helps explain this affinity with Lecoq. Indeed, freedom of the body underpins Ex Machina’s theatre – in concrete narratives like Elsinore, the physical negotiation of environment can appear as a struggle, at times – but the possibility of movement shows the possibility of resistance. However, such a politics of the body can go unrecognized, if the ideological action of space is not factored into our responses. Dundjerović argues that ‘Lepage works from intuition’,24 and not ‘towards a deliberate set of socially or politically charged goals’.25 He describes Lepage’s approach to space in formal terms, as ‘spatial textuality’, and the ‘next development following écriture scénique’.26 Concrete narrative differs significantly from Dundjerović’s idea of spatial textuality, however, in arguing that social and political meanings are connected in the architectural, spatial metaphors Lepage creates. As a use of space, scenographic acting is therefore both a formal and an ideological component of Ex Machina’s theatre. Expectedly, such an important element of practice was not formed solely at the Conservatoire. Before Lepage trained, ‘a shift occurred in Québec’s dramaturgy’; according to Bernard Lavoie, while collective and improvisational work

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dominated 1970s Québec theatre, a recognition of ‘specialised fields in play production’ saw a return to prominence of ‘the director-scenographer attitude towards creation’, which he writes was ‘beneficial for Québec drama’s maturation’.27 Acknowledging this surge of revitalization in Québécois theatre is important, not only to understand the wave Lepage rode to prominence, but also the support it offered for blurring the roles of director, scenographer and actor. Equally important is Lepage’s conscious choice to explore the ‘politics of the body’. Speaking in 1992, Lepage contextualized this emphasis against the backdrop of what ‘was happening in Montreal and Québec City’ in the 1970s: [P]‌eople turned to non-verbal theatre to try and get other messages across. Politics was so present in Canadian life in the 70s that a lot of the creative work in Canada was based only on politics of the mind, not politics of the body, of emotion, of relationships. I  think an artist sometimes has to put words aside, to explore these types of politics.28

In Elsinore, the political dimension of Hamlet would, unsurprisingly, be resituated within interactions between body and space. Lepage says he ‘completely evacuated’ Hamlet of its political dimension because ‘it didn’t fit’ with his vision of the play, but we should also note that he refers to Elsinore as a ‘Hamlet-game’.29 Part of that game was playing all the roles, and therefore, across gender. Sylvie Bissonette argues that while ‘the sacrifice of the political plot’ leads to a narrower focus on subjectivity, Lepage’s ‘cross-gendered performance . . . deserves substantial analysis’.30 When Hamlet and Ophelia share a costume, Elsinore explores ‘sexual duality’ and ‘the modification of gender roles across eras’  – challenging audience expectations by foregrounding ‘gender constructions’, and causing the piece ‘to reveal its discursive potential’ to argue ‘that sexual roles are linked to cultural conventions rather than to natural states’.31 Elsinore was not politically abstinent; rather, its politics were relocated into the physical freedom expressed by play between actor and environment. We can, therefore, recognize the importance of scenographic acting in Elsinore’s ‘politics of the body’. And it is important to do so; such politics ultimately evolve to occupy more and more of Ex Machina’s foreground.

Concrete narratives: Sublime effects Ex Machina’s work often uses the challenge of vertical space to explore the politics of the body. Lecoq’s influence is felt again; for him, verticality

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

is one of the energetic trajectories giving dramatic genres their particular qualities. Lecoq graduates Giovanni Fusetti and Suzy Wilson relay Lecoq’s emphasis on the lines and trajectories of space:  the horizontal, the vertical and the diagonal. These lines define the three-dimensional space which is reality . . . we can take these three lines and start to play with them. If it is the vertical which dominates, we come into a space where the relationship between the low and the high becomes fundamental. This is the space, for instance, of Greek tragedy, where the protagonist has to deal with destiny, with fate and gods, while he is on the ground.32

Ex Machina’s use of verticality stems in part from Lecoq’s spatial philosophy, but given the intimacy of story and space in concrete narratives, we must explore Lepage’s distinctive deployment of the vertical. Virginie Magnat reports Lepage’s belief that ‘artistic practice could create inner unconscious poetic connections with the impalpable’– connecting ‘the low and the high’.33 For Lepage, this is a metaphorical process: Metaphorical storytelling is when you’ve seen a piece of theatre and you say, ‘There was this thing going on, but at the same time there was another level that’s going on, then there’s this other level and things seem to be connected in a vertical way: things are piled up.’ Something like Needles and Opium, for example, has layers of stories that are connecting. The action that you see is that connection, and the connection is a vertical one.34

Lepage’s concept of verticality therefore reflects, but also extends, Lecoq’s ideas. To the conjoining of space and narrative, Lepage adds the verticality of layer upon layer of metaphor. The action of creating these layers of meaning is what generates a ‘passage sequence’ (see Introduction) – a journey through the conceptual architecture of performance – which, Lepage says, can put the ‘audience in contact with the gods’.35 Verticality in this context is a strategy which brings politics into performance through the physical engagement of actor and design, and also a spatial metaphor describing tangible and intangible strategies through which concrete narratives can produce sublime effects. This brings us closer to understanding the discursive production of the body in Ex Machina performances. Although often virtuosic, this is more properly a questing body, a body-in-motion, simultaneously producing and testing the demands of a concrete narrative that brings the human

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into contact  – and contradiction  – with technology. This body is restless, transforming, lacking stasis, belonging to environments designed to generate physical challenge. Despite the political potential of this body to show the possibility of change, verticality entails physical risk in performance, and this also stages the body as spectacle. Seeking depth through the spectacle of the body might ironically produce shallowness by overshadowing the carefully crafted spatial metaphors that scenographic acting can trigger – a side effect that may have underpinned some responses to Elsinore. Unsurprisingly, the condition of the body has long been contested in Lepage’s work. Writing about Polygraph (1987) in 1990, Michael J.  Sidnell identifies Lepage’s ‘usages of instruments in the manipulation and expression of the body’ as both ‘intense and problematic’; when Lepage uses ‘the body as mere thing’ we apprehend the ‘sense of terror’ that ‘underlies the artistry, boldness and exuberance’ of his work, and recognize its location ‘in the inescapable materiality of the actor and person’.36 Dundjerović also recognizes this tension, describing Lepage’s approach to design as a techno en scène – a positive ‘symbiosis of technology with the performer’s live action’37 – while acknowledging Patrice Pavis’s conclusion that ‘technology destroyed the live body’ in Zulu Time (1999).38 Greg Giesekam sees both sides of the argument in his discussion of Elsinore’s hydraulic scenography, noting the tension between Lepage’s ‘mastery of the set and his subjection to it’. But, he reminds us positively, ‘when walls and floors dissolve . . . in tandem with the existential instabilities’ of characters, meaningful metaphors can be created.39 Paul Rae uses Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘world-alienation’ to critique Far Side of the Moon (2000): ‘[W]‌hat is lost by world-alienation’, he writes, ‘is an experience of worldliness, without which humankind is at a loss to act in and upon the world in a meaningful way’.40 Rae argues that Far Side’s use of mirrors leaves its main character alienated from his world, presenting ‘persuasive psycho-drama and impressive showmanship at the expense of a properly cosmopolitan expression of the world’.41 Dixon comments positively on ‘the suspension metaphor’ used in Lepage performances – images that challenge gravity and ‘appear to suspend time and space’ through verticality – but he argues that such ‘[e]xtratemporal sensations’ are ‘profound and mythic’, and pleasurable.42 With this debate in mind, I ask Lepage what kind of landscape he thinks his work creates for the human body, and how technology might interfere in communion with audiences. ‘Technology’, he replies, is at the service of communion – if it’s well used, and if it’s part of the poetry. Some people are so flabbergasted by a new thing on stage – or just the bare use of technology – that it distracts them. Eventually you

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina get over it. That’s why I don’t listen to critics who say ‘Oh, of course, Mr Technology!’ I’m not Mr Technology. I’m not interested in technology – it happens to be in the rehearsal room – it’s just new paintbrushes, and you use it to paint in a different way. So I don’t think it’s disruptive to communion. If it’s ever an obstruction, or if it’s just a showcase for a gadget, I  will take that criticism  – but I  don’t think that’s what we’re doing. Whatever you do on stage has to be the echo or prolongation of the human body, whether it’s the set design, technology, sound or whatever. So a door is a frame that is made according to an average human body – it’s the same thing in theatre – theatre has to reflect the physical reality of the characters, of the actors. If you’re going to be in a world where the body doesn’t move in the same way, and the vocabulary of the body is going to be different – then the props, the light and the set have to be the extension of that idea. Even if you’re static, and you’re just standing there speaking, whatever idea you put on stage to support that has to be an extension from it.43

From Lepage’s perspective, therefore, the human body is neither overshadowed, nor presented as spectacle. This statement is of critical importance going forward; the human body is intended as the defining principle and measure of every element in Ex Machina’s theatre. Reading Elsinore on these terms enables us to recognize that it presents Elsinore not only as an experiment in form but also as a home and seat of power. Lepage’s solo Hamlet experiences bodily this unstable architecture – and through his bodily experience of instability, the audience may understand Denmark’s social and political decay.

Critical condition Like Ota, neither Geometry nor Elsinore would get off to a flying start. The fallout was such that Dundjerović believes the critics ‘closed down the tour of Elsinore before its time’.44 Christopher Innes described Elsinore’s ‘dependence on machinery’ as a ‘straitjacket’, and the piece as ‘little more than a display of technological virtuosity’.45 Elsinore received unambiguously hostile notices when Ex Machina ‘had to cancel or delay performances in Chicago and Toronto’, and – worst – ‘the entire run of performances at the 50th Edinburgh Festival was cancelled on account of technical malfunction’.46 Geometry, James Bunzli writes, fared little better:  ‘Critics found the show rambling, lacking in forward motion, indifferently acted, and poorly written’.47 Hood argues it gave criticism a chance to ‘participate in the birth of a work of

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art’ – but Ex Machina’s invitation ‘to a new criticism and to a new theatre’ would be, sometimes impolitely, declined.48 It is telling that these events are still remarked upon today. The context here is the UK premiere of 887 in 2015:  ‘It’s 20  years since [Lepage] was last part of the Edinburgh line-up, with his one-man staging of Hamlet, Elsinore  – strange for a mainstay of the international festival circuit. The year before had proved controversial: a work-in-progress of The Seven Streams wasn’t billed as such and audiences weren’t best pleased.’49 Neither was Lepage; ‘I had only agreed to show a work in progress’, he says.50 Given the substantial criticisms Ex Machina faced in response to their earliest work, we might legitimately ask how the company survived, when each of its first three tours appeared to start so dreadfully. There is, simply, a large enough audience who find the living quality of even Ex Machina’s most radically unfinished works to be far more exciting and engaging than the overproduced, risk-free and inconsequential work that dominates the world of commercial theatre. Lepage unwisely placed himself under excessive pressure in this period, not only undertaking several collaborations in Japan – including The Damnation of Faust (1999) – and work on La Celestine (1998) for Stockholm (see Chapter  3), but also directing four films.51 He acknowledges that he made his own hell; in the 1990s, he says, ‘I spread myself too thinly and everything came out half baked’.52 Moreover, and in the midst of all, Lepage experienced a major bereavement in the loss of his mother. The insanity of the time is captured in Digging for Miracles – a television documentary tracking Geometry’s development.53 One section shows that Lepage has distributed a pre-written script to the ensemble – in advance of meeting in Glasgow to rehearse-in Tony Guilfoyle, who has joined to play Frank Lloyd Wright. Company member Tea Alagic complains to Lepage, but he explains that he has to make decisions in difficult circumstances. Lepage becomes tetchy when he realizes that she has not learned the script in preparation, and rehearsal is affected. Alagic is subsequently interviewed in a taxi. She was expecting further collaboration she says, so calling the work collaborative is a ‘trick’ with words; it is only collaborative, she says, ‘because he needs ideas’.54 Lepage would not, I think, deny that he seeks ideas from his collaborators  – but, with time short, and enduring bereavement, prescribing a textual solution does not seem unreasonable. Geometry’s London programme credits the work as ‘conceived by Robert Lepage and Ex Machina’, listing the ensemble as writers, but the piece as ‘Written and directed by’ Lepage.55 Lepage’s authorial status signposts later developments, but at this stage in time, these experiences clearly indicate a steep learning curve for both artistic director and company.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Form as cultural expression Despite its difficult birth, with la Caserne up and running (from 1997) the requisite support systems were in place for Ex Machina to counter setbacks, and grow. The work would be criticized, but sustained by popular acclaim, and Richard Eyre would soon remark (in 2001)  that ‘Whenever anybody says to me that “Theatre is dead”, I always think “Well you’ve obviously not seen a show of Robert Lepage’s” ’.56 Over the years to come, the company’s work would respond to critical themes established at this time. But it is important to note that, despite high-profile difficulties, the works discussed thus far confirm the principles upon which Ex Machina was established. The principle of customization according to needs demands finding a hybrid form for a specific function  – and each of Ota, Elsinore and Geometry accomplishes this. These experiments with concrete narrative thus embed the culturally specific principle of patentage, and its emphasis on discovering new forms, into Ex Machina. Unsurprisingly, the company emerges from its birth in the mid-1990s with a mission statement driven by a commitment to being a multidisciplinary company bringing together actors, writers, set designers, technicians, opera singers, puppeteers, computer graphic designers, video artists, contortionists and musicians . . . New artistic forms will surely emerge from these gatherings. Ex Machina wants to rise to the challenge and become a laboratory, an incubator for a form of theatre that will reach and touch audiences from this new millennium.57

Ultimately, Ex Machina stems from Lepage’s belief that ‘theatre is a place of form’ – which he expressed publicly at least as early as 1992.58 Speaking in 2001, Lepage reiterated his ‘passion for form’: I’ve always believed in form a lot, that form is the message . . . to quote one of my compatriots, ‘the medium is the message’. In the sense that poetry is about that, it’s about finding meaning in something that doesn’t have a meaning, or the other way round . . . We impose form upon ourselves to help us squeeze meaning out of what we do . . . it all starts with my passion for form, this is an idea, this is nice, this looks kind of sharp – you play around with it.59

Lepage knows the shallowness of aestheticism, saying, ‘If we have nothing to say, the form remains simply the form’,60 and few would say audiences should not consider content. It is, however, to say that one of the contents

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of theatre is form. Form is both a means through which to communicate, but it is also a subject for investigation. Arnold Aronson makes an acute observation: ‘Theatre . . . is shaped not by specific technological developments, but through transformations in consciousness and modes of perception which may, however, be significantly affected by technology. This is the key to understanding the relationship between theatre and technology.’61 Ex Machina’s use of technology to generate new forms, therefore, goes beyond a blunt attempt to remain contemporary; rather, it reflects an acknowledgement that contemporary audiences are changing in ways that theatre must address if it is renewed itself, yet again. This renewal is the driving force behind Ex Machina’s experiment across disciplines, and at its heart is the Québecois principle of patentage. These distinctions clarify our appreciation of Ex Machina’s process, and the interaction between theatrical form and technology embedded within it. Through ‘geo-poetry’, we have already noted how embodied research and rigourous dramaturgical preparation are significant features of this process. With our understanding of concrete narrative in place, we can position three-dimensional work on the problem of form as central in our understanding of Ex Machina’s process. Making theatre, Lepage says, requires both freedom and orchestration  – because the walls between departments ‘should be down’ and ‘everything has to happen at the same time’.62 These mixtures of practices ultimately come to inform and support Ex Machina’s mixtures of cultures. Lepage positions this pluralism at the centre of Ex Machina’s praxis. Speaking at CUNY in 2016, he states that the company’s work is ‘not multimedia, but pluridisciplinary’.63 This is a crucial distinction. In an interview,64 I  asked him to confirm if this was an intentional use of terms in describing his practice. ‘Yeah’, he replied, ‘in French we do it more spontaneously, but un lieu pluridisciplinaire is a place where many disciplines come and do their thing.’ Indeed, he says, Ex Machina prefer un lieu pluridisciplinaire to describe their work ‘instead of multimedia’, because ‘multimedia is one thing with many, many different languages within it’ and ‘that’s not necessarily our goal’. Will this emphasis continue when Ex Machina moves from la Caserne, I ask. Lepage replies that ‘there are many many different disciplines represented within the programme of the Diamant’ – which ‘might mean that sometimes there is a project where there’s all the disciplines reunited, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the productions are multimedia, or multidisciplinary’. Given the emphasis on architecture I  am highlighting in Lepage’s aesthetic, I’m not surprised that he conceives of both process and performance as a meeting place, but his rebuttal of notions that Ex Machina’s work is multimedia, or multidisciplinary, requires further

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

attention. A  plural process plays an important part in the identification of new forms and functions. This is what I  mean by three-dimensional work  – a plural process must address creative problems from every available disciplinary angle, and those disciplines meet in the creative solution. This is not necessarily a question of integrating those disciplines. However, Aristita L.  Albacan argues that Lepage offers precisely ‘an intermedial integration of other media into performance’.65 Through her contrasting interpretation of his practice as being focused on media ‘integration’  – and Lepage’s interpretation, that disciplines are ‘reunited’ but are not integrated into ‘one thing’, the notion of Ex Machina as un lieu pluridisciplinaire comes into focus. The emphasis of this term is on retaining the contradictory imperatives of different disciplines, and not on compressing them into a blended form.

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Critical themes

Ex Machina’s first five years would be akin to a rollercoaster. They would also be ironic; as the company advanced artistically and enjoyed popular success, their work was met negatively by critics, and with mishaps on tour. Their artistic director was spread thin, but solo performance, devised work, opera, classical text, international collaboration and interdisciplinary engagement with technology would nevertheless be embedded as key categories of performance practice. Needles and Opium continued to tour, until 1999  – potentially counterbalancing some of the possible reputational losses that early works risked.1 This first phase of development generates patterns of reading around questions explored in the second part of this chapter. Although Ota, Elsinore and Geometry each had their own politics, Lepage’s public backing for the ‘yes’ vote in the Québec sovereignty referendum of 1995 forms a backdrop for readings that emerged. Here was a Québecois director, who had established a company in Québec, with local, provincial and federal government support – weighing in to one of Canada’s most divisive political debates. Unsurprisingly, the political dimension of Ex Machina’s work would receive enhanced attention, and be crucial in establishing discourses around their practice. First, though, I  explore two significant international collaborations  – Hector Berlioz’s opera, The Damnation of Faust (Festival Saito Kinen, Matsumoto, 1999) and Fernando De Rojas’s 1499 play, La Celestine (Kungliga Dramatisksa, Stockholm 1998).2 Celestine saw Lepage collaborate again with dramaturg Peder Bjurman, but this would be a co-production between Ex Machina and Kungliga Dramatisksa  – and a change in economic model, therefore. Both productions would be significant, Celestine (henceforth) for its politics and lead character, and Faust (henceforth) for bringing body and technology closer together while taking architectural aesthetics to the next level.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Evolution Although the pieces discussed thus far tend to draw critical focus, accounting for lesser-known works by Ex Machina can be vital in appreciating evolutionary trends, such as increasing engagement with music theatre. The gap between Lepage directing Erwartung and Bluebeard’s Castle for the Canadian Opera Company (Toronto, 1992), and Ex Machina’s co-production of Faust (1999) might be imagined as a hiatus – with Faust effectively rebooting a dormant opera career. However, Lepage committedly developed his musical range and interests during this period  – through Michael Nyman’s Tempest song cycle, Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs (1994), Gustav Mahler’s song cycle on child mortality, Kindertotenlieder (1998) and 3-D ‘musical drama’ Jean-Sans-Nom (1999).3 Importantly, Lepage would collaborate with opera singer Rebecca Blankenship on Kindertotenlieder (and later on Lipsynch) – having already worked with her on Erwartung. This pattern foreshadows several major opera engagements in the new millennium. Lepage would continue to upgrade initial responses to a number of works. He had directed Shakespeare’s Le Songe d’Une Nuit d’Été in Montréal, for the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in 1988, for London’s National Theatre in 1992 and – most relevant here – for Le Théâtre du Trident, in Québec City, in 1995. At the time of this third Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lepage reflected that [a]‌ mongst Shakespeare’s comedies, it’s my favourite. Although it’s often presented as faeries and lights, it’s a piece that because of its themes, and despite its humour, is very dark. It talks of finding love, sexuality, and beauty, but also the cruelty of fate, emotional betrayal and ugliness. It’s remarkable that it matches up the heart of a comedy with some extremely painful elements. When I  presented the piece in London, I  foregrounded the darkness, in the south of France, the pain  – and here I  have attempted to create an equilibrium between these contradictions.4

This favourite comedy is an instance of upgraded response, and perhaps it is the presence of contradiction in certain Shakespearean texts, which causes Lepage to return to them repeatedly.5 Multiple versions of The Tempest  – including two during the period under discussion, at the Tokyo Globe (1994), and at Trident (1998) – would be upcoming, but critical responses to Elsinore may have contributed to a slowing of engagement with such drama. Certainly, Ex Machina did not keep pace with Lepage’s trajectory in this area from the early 1990s.

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Le Songe also brought Lepage into collaboration with circus artist Angela Laurier, who had performed in Cirque Du Soleil’s earliest works. Laurier collaborated with Lepage in London in 1992, playing the role of Puck, using her skills as a contortionist to create the character. She reprised the role for Lepage in Québec in 1995, and he would again work with a contortionist – Jinny Jacinto – on Zulu Time (1999). Similarly, the acrobats who performed in Faust were choreographed by ‘Alain Gautier from Cirque Du Soleil’.6 Lepage would not develop a full-scale circus project with Cirque Du Soleil until 2000, but we can see a relationship developing here. Circus and music theatre would offer Ex Machina substantial opportunities for co-production in the 2000s, and onwards, while Shakespearean engagements would thin out. This apparent divergence in the company’s evolution does not reveal a change of direction as much as it reflects economic lessons emerging from the experience of Zulu Time (see Chapter 4).

Turning point: The importance of Celestine Lepage returned to the Kungliga in Stockholm in 1998  – reprising his collaboration with dramaturg Peder Bjurman – on Celestine. From Celestine onwards, Bjurman would work as a freelance dramaturg with Lepage, in Québec. De Rojas’s text was translated by Adam Nashman, who would later collaborate as a script consultant with Lepage and Bjurman on The Far Side of the Moon (2000). Ex Machina co-produced Celestine again, in Ysarca, Spain, in 2004. Lepage learned Spanish while working in Las Vegas prior to the project, in preparation to direct.7 Through this second version, Lepage would encounter the actress Nuria Garcia. Melissa Poll critiques Hispanic actress Garcia’s casting ‘as a maid and prostitute in Lipsynch [2007]’ as ‘similarly problematic’ to ‘representations of other minority groups’8 in Ex Machina’s work – to which difficulty we might add that Garcia here played Areusa, one of Celestine’s prostitutes, and would subsequently create another sex-worker role in Playing Cards: Spades (2012). Typically, Lepage undertook research into the ‘geo-poetry’ of Salamanca in preparation for Celestine – via a ‘pilgrimage’ to Rojas’s hometown – which would eventually lead to a partnership with the Festival Internacional de las Artes de Castilla y Leon, and staging The Blue Dragon there, in 2008.9 The Renaissance Spain of Celestine was crucial in forming Lepage’s increasing interest in the Arab world, Bjurman says  – becoming explicit in Playing Cards: Hearts (2013) and L’Amour de Loin (2015).10 Celestine was a play that opened many doors, then – consolidating or generating significant creative partnerships and themes. Despite multiple invitations from international

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

festivals, it was not economically viable to take the Stockholm staging on tour – although it did enjoy a substantial run (12 August–13 October). This Celestine had seen Lepage advance the architectural aesthetics of Elsinore by using two rotating panels at either end of a traverse. The doubled weight of the equipment significantly increased transport costs; worse, on-stage water usage had caused production equipment to rot while in storage, adding further, prohibitive replacement costs.11 The mistake would not be made twice, however, and the Spanish version would most definitely tour – being performed ninety-six times between 2004 and 2006, in Spain, Italy and the Canary Islands. Lepage first encountered Celestine in his second year at the Conservatoire, when he acted in a graduate presentation with a guest director from Argentina. Lepage’s role was small, but he says the play struck him then as remarkable.12 His programme note for the Spanish Celestine describes his subsequent engagement: ‘About 10 years ago, when I was Artistic Director of the National Arts Centre in Ottowa, I asked Michel Garneau – Québec’s greatest poet – to adapt Rojas’ very human tragicomedy.’13 However, Lepage says he did not direct Garneau’s version in the end.14 ‘Only later’, he writes, would ‘I have the opportunity to co-produce his version in Spain’.15 Where Garneau was ‘one of the pioneers of defending the French language’, now that French is ‘protected and saved’ in Québec, Lepage says his generation are ‘not shy to speak English’.16 Garneau famously translated Macbeth (1978), ‘two years before the [1980] referendum on Québec sovereignty’, in a gesture that, according to scholar Leanore Lieblein, asserted that ‘Québécois was not a dialect, not a jargon, but a language. And language was at the heart of Québécois cultural and national identity’.17 Lepage would reprise Garneau’s 1978 gesture by staging the writer’s Shakespeare Cycle at the NAC in 1992 – three years before the 1995 referendum on Québec sovereignty – with both voicing support for independence publicly in 1995. That such projects act as markers in Québec’s political history is possibly unsurprising, but it is the political possibilities of text that should concern us here. Celestine ultimately illustrates Lepage’s greater confidence in dealing explicitly with the materials of society, culture and history. While these performances were not given in Québec, any Lepage-Garneau staging offers a powerful emblem to the sovereignty movement, lending cultural legitimacy to this political effort. Garneau, Lepage says, ‘doesn’t just translate’ but tries to reproduce the experience of listening . . . he tries to recreate the experience. And that’s why his translation of Macbeth is the best translation in French ever, of any Shakespearean text. It’s this archaic French, and it’s the same effort, and the same kind of work as when an

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English-speaking person tries to speak Elizabethan English. And that’s what he tried to do with La Celestina.18

Garneau’s writing clearly appeals to Lepage. But Lepage’s rarely acknowledged passion for text and language is also noteworthy, indicating a desire to extend the politics of the body towards the politics of language and text. Garneau’s text had already been ‘re-translated into Spanish’ and ‘[w]‌e did this whole kind of Québecois intervention’, he says.19 Lepage’s programme note is revealing. Garneau’s version ‘allows us the distance and freedom to give new vitality to the original text’, he writes, but ‘[w]e’re not disempowering a great classic, but finding the work’s contemporary resonance’20 – here, an avowedly political resonance. This extension of political field was matched in Stockholm via crosscultural meetings between Lepage, Bjurman and Arabic artists, through which they realized ‘how connected Spain was to the Arab world at that time’. Lepage says that Rojas’s life in Salamanca placed him at the intersection of Christianity, Islam and Judaism – just as the New World was discovered, and European drama was reformulating itself. When Ex Machina subsequently began ‘touring a lot in Spain’, the connections and interest were in place, and Lepage’s suggestion of Celestine as a co-production went forward quickly.21

Class, contradiction and the anti-hero Bjurman believes the class politics of Celestine are what makes it appeal to Lepage.22 Published in 1499 in the ‘twilight’ between the medieval and Renaissance worlds, Celestine’s narrative supports this.23 The eponymous Celestine is an elderly procurer, who assists a young gentleman, Melibea, in pursuing Calixto – the virginal daughter of the nobleman Pleberio. With the help of her prostitutes, and by corrupting Calixto’s servants, Celestine creates the opportunity for Melibea and Calixto to consummate a relationship outside of marriage. However, Melibea dies in a fall, and by the play’s end, Celestine too is dead, and Calixto – after confessing to her father from the window of a tower – throws herself to her death at his feet. The text weaves relationships of power between servants and masters into a poetic tale of doomed love. Set on a traverse, with automated panels at both ends, the Stockholm production used verticality to stage Celestine as a concrete narrative. The panels generated a series of architectural metaphors, revealing a world rigidly structured by class hierarchies. The production physicalized contradiction via the anachronism of combining period costume and digital technology. The

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panels could rotate forward 180 degrees to show a reversed side – partially describing walls, streets, interiors and so on – while facilitating stage traffic. Additionally, this rotation could be stopped in different positions to make the panels jut out over the traverse. As with Elsinore, the panels included removable sections which were filled with architectural features such as doors and windows, or kept empty to give shape to backlighting and floor spill. The design offered innovative solutions to the problems of scenic description, while bringing fluidity to the stage. These potentials are illustrated by the scene after Melibea and Calixto make love. One panel is rotated forward, and lies on a horizontal plane. A section is removed from the middle, and through this a set of steps reaches from ceiling to floor, at an angle of about 45 degrees. Lit from behind and above, when the characters are on the steps below the level of the panel, the extra contrast created by the shadow around the figures gives them additional brightness through chiaroscuro. The steps serve to remind us of vertical hierarchies. Calixto sits with Melibea standing a few steps below – between her thighs and facing her. Wrapping her legs around him, she tempts him to stay longer. Eventually, he turns around – still between her thighs, but now facing out. She releases him, and he slides ungraciously to the bottom of the steps in a moment of bathos, combining humour with an image of rebirth through sexual love. The darker undertone is the foreshadowing of death that this ‘fall’ hints at, as the consequence of erotic transgression. The use of verticality in such metaphors – symbolizing attempts to climb socially, or falling from grace  – reconnects narrative and space in the locus of active architecture. Indeed, Calixto’s suicide leap from the tower was achieved by the backward rotation of a panel away from the performer as she was lowered to the floor in a flying harness. Consequently, the social critique of Celestine resided in the action of space in the Stockholm staging. But clear textual references to class and society also appeal to Lepage, Bjurman says.24 In Act One, Celestine tells Parmeno not to rely . . . on the vain promises of masters, who suck away the substance of their servants with hollow-hearted and idle promises, as the horse-leeches suck blood; and in the end fall off from them, wrong them, grow forgetful of their good services, and deny them any recompense or reward at all . . . Every one of them is wholly now for himself, and makes the best he can of his servant’s service, serving his turn as he finds it may stand with his private interest and profit.25

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Although themes of exploitation occur across Lepage’s oeuvre, after Celestine, political issues and class awareness become increasingly explicit. Celestine is also important for Lepage because she exemplifies the principle of contradiction within character. She is old, yet filled with lust for life:  physically decayed, yet still sensuous; attacks exploitative masters, yet exploits her own employees. Lepage denies that he consciously selects rebellious characters. They’re not ‘rebels or revolutionaries’, he says – ‘they’re antiheroes’: For example in The Andersen Project [2005], the main character is an albino. So he’s not made like other people, he suffers – there’s something missing  – so he has to compensate. It was connected to Andersen himself – he was an odd character and suffered for that. But actually – like in The Ugly Duckling – Andersen discovered he was actually a swan. So that’s what happens to these heroes  – they are nonconformist, but not by choice, but because society said  – ‘You’re not one of us’. And then – okay – ‘So if I’m not one of us, then I’m special’ – and it’s how you interpret your loneliness, or your uniqueness.26

Contradiction is central to many of Lepage’s main characters. Hamlet, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gurdjieff, Celestine and Faust are all figures from this period whose dislocation from social norms generates a narrative of antagonism or resistance to hegemony. The anti-hero may not be a radical figure, but its contradictions help to add political shape to concrete narratives.

The Damnation of Faust in Japan With the Stockholm Celestine completed, Ex Machina would co-produce Hector Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust (1846) with the 1999 Festival Saito Kinen (Matsumoto, Japan). Between 1994 and 1999 Ex Machina had found their ‘most dedicated audiences in Britain and Japan’,27 so the economic rationale is clear. The appeal of Faust itself lies in the opportunities it offers for patentage. Reviewing the Paris opening (2001), David Stevens remarked this is ‘no traditional opera’; indeed, the ‘drama is built into the music more than into events that are presented with little in the way of narrative sequence’.28 Berlioz indeed strays far from Goethe’s dramatic form – generating creative problems that require innovative solutions. The challenges of staging Berlioz’s libretto would, as elsewhere, be accomplished by interweaving narrative and space. This relied upon a deceptively simple geometric design, consisting of a square wall inset with

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sixteen shallow, square boxes, forming a grid pattern. The symmetry of the design makes an architectural gesture of unrelenting order – almost brutalist in style – standing in counterbalance to the chaos of Faust’s personal narrative. The resources on offer in Japan thus enabled new levels of exploration into concrete narrative. Positioned downstage, this large structure put pressure on the thin lip of forestage remaining. The design could receive front and back projections – acting as both screen, and sixteen micro stages. Lepage described the wall as a ‘kind of portal’, where the theatricalities ‘of opera and the cinematic world’ meet. Opera is a ‘mother art’, he says, because it welcomes different disciplines; Faust’s design expressed their contradicting imperatives by catching ‘three-dimensional real-life performers’ in ‘a sandwich of cinematic realities’. Technology here was placed ‘at the service of the central thing – which is the humanity of the larger-than-life voice’.29 Lepage’s description formulates the interaction of the human and technology as producing a composite representation – an interdisciplinary ‘sandwich’ of contradiction – stabilized by the design’s absolute ordering of space. Faust, then, would also enable new levels of expression in architectural aesthetics. Faust was Ex Machina’s first opera co-production, and hugely successful. Subsequently, it would be bought by the Opéra de Paris Bastille (presented 2001, 2004 and 2006),30 later shown at New  York’s Metropolitan Opera (2008 and 2009)  and in Québec (2013). Presenting the work in New  York cleverly prepared opera audiences there for Ex Machina’s style, and generated anticipation in the run-up to a new Ring Cycle. Lepage’s Ring would launch in September 2010, but it was created ‘over an almost three-year period’31 – work was, therefore, well underway before Faust was restaged in New York. In bringing Faust to the Metropolitan Opera, Lepage would call again on Sonoyo Nishikawa. The first version relied on what Nishikawa calls heavyweight lighting and projection technology, but restaging it meant keeping pace with developments in digital technology. Indeed, Lepage commissioned Nishikawa precisely to upgrade the piece.32 She reflects that, in all of Ex Machina’s work, spatial configurations and/or design elements (such as mirrors) present creative problems in designing light; Faust would be no exception.33 According to Ex Machina, the upgrade used ‘a fully vertical set design with a scaffold divided into 24 panels . . . rising four levels high’. It also used ‘mobile screens and mirror cubes’, and ‘interactive video’  – triggered by music, movement or voice. Lepage says that this triggering of imagery in response to ‘texture, register or timbre’ put voice ‘at the heart of the piece’.34 Body would also be placed into dialectics with technology. The use of vertical space in the design brought dynamic energy to the body, with performers frequently required to fly or work acrobatically. Tellingly, the Metropolitan

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Opera advertised Faust under the banner ‘High-tech circus meets grand opera’.35 Faust also represents another level of exploration in scenographic acting. The architectural action of the design brought performers’ bodies into energetic forms of contact with the space, while simultaneously providing solid ground for Faust’s narrative of descent into hell. This can be illustrated through what Stevens calls ‘The Ride to the Abyss Scene’. This was ‘given a hectic, headlong urgency that matches the music by gradually multiplying images of Faust and Mephistopheles astride galloping horses’.36 A performer in each panel, sitting astride a bannister, mimed the actions of riding while the image of a horse was projected ‘beneath’ them. Fouquet writes that the performer framed like this is ‘one part’ of the overall scene – ‘a physical form revealed by the light, a sound form, moving and changing’, and performing on ‘a total set’37 that resembles ‘a wall of screens’.38 Fouquet reminds us that the piece was ‘created in Tokyo’, where Ex Machina were ‘freer to delve into’ complexity,39 but we should also remember that advances like this cost money typically available only in the high finance world of opera. Nevertheless, both cultural and economic factors clearly enable Lepage to extend the boundaries of scenographic acting here. As architectural designs develop their scope, scenographic acting develops to match the challenges they offer – and vice versa; the more physically adept the performer, the more ambitious the design can be. This is an important dynamic to recognize, as such experiences undoubtedly feed Ex Machina’s mission to explore new possibilities for theatre. At the start of this chapter, I  described 1994–9 as rollercoaster years for Ex Machina. Indeed, the company had to survive without a permanent building until 1997, would experience technical setbacks on the road and its flagship performances would be misunderstood by critics. Lepage would experience personal tragedy, and his work was affected by overcommitment. Nevertheless, the practices embedded or developed in these years would largely flourish in the years to come. Critical themes would also take root. But Ex Machina’s work was not, generally, offered the critical charity a new company might be given. Rather, its performances were somewhat read as continuing Lepage’s project as if he had not broken stride. Yet, as we saw with Ota, Ex Machina represented a new way of working for Lepage. Critical touchstones established in these years do not always reflect the significant change of context Ex Machina represented, nor the rapid evolution of practice that it facilitated. It is therefore important, at the end of accounting for this first phase of the company’s development, to consider established critical themes.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Process, collaboration, authorship and directing In the mid-1990s, Lepage corresponded with writer Rémy Charest to produce a book-length reflection on practice, Connecting Flights (1995; English version, 1997). Clearly timed to support Ex Machina’s launch, this stimulated commentary by giving significant expression to Lepagean principles. In 2000, Joseph I.  Donohoe Jr and Jane Koustas’s Theater Sans Frontières: Essays on the Dramatic Universe of Robert Lepage would follow this with a major collection of essays offering a spectrum of critical response. As the title indicates, this consolidation of discourse focused heavily on Lepage  – but Ex Machina had been producing work for six years at the time of publication. Speculatively speaking, Lepage’s namebranding may have been accentuated in marketing early productions, and criticism perhaps was still dealing with the baggage of Lepage’s pre–Ex Machina career. Either way, the change of ground was not sufficiently addressed here  – pointing criticism in one direction, at precisely the moment Ex Machina started taking Lepage in another. Unsurprisingly, two subsequent books based on Lepage’s perspective – Ex Machina (2007; English version, 2009) and Stéphan Bureau Rencontre Robert Lepage (2008)  – have attempted to bring Ex Machina into the conversation. But in 1995, Connecting Flights mystified as much as clarified: ‘Chaos’, Lepage would write, ‘is necessary. If there is only order and rigour in a project, the outcome will be nothing but order and rigour. But it’s out of chaos that the cosmos is born  – the order of things, yes, but a living, organic, changing one. This is where true creation lies’.40 An intriguing but imprecise description begs its own clarification; powered by high-profile problems, such as those experienced at Edinburgh, criticism consequently paid much attention to conceptualizing – and dramatizing – Lepage’s methodology. Michael Hood’s chapter on Geometry’s difficulties, for instance (in Theater Sans Frontières), frames Lepage’s process theatrically – as ‘Witnessing Chaos’.41 The dominant perception of process, nevertheless, still rests on terms Lepage encountered via Jacques Lessard in the 1980s. Like Lepage, Lessard left Québec in 1978 to undertake fresh training. Disillusioned with models ‘for creative processes based solely on spontaneity as a guide to artistic process . . . [he] left Québec to study with Anna Halprin at the San Francisco Dancers Workshop’. When Lessard returned in 1980 he had adapted the RSVP Cycles into a devising methodology, and subsequently formed Théâtre Repère.42 Although Lessard resumed Conservatoire teaching, and introduced the Repère Cycles to the curriculum, this took place after Lepage’s graduation. The crucial point here is that Lepage never studied the Cycles formally, and,

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as previously demonstrated, had substantially formed as an artist before he would encounter them at Repère. Dundjerović’s The Theatricality of Robert Lepage (2007), links Lepage to the RSVP – using the terms of the Cycles in chapter titles and throughout. Dundjerović discusses works from ‘1985 to 1999’,43 offering case studies of Ex Machina’s work grounded in the rollercoaster years, but also folds The Andersen Project (2005) into this lexicon.44 In 2010, Dundjerović wrote that ‘[a]‌t the centre of Lepage’s creative process [is] a combination of the RSVP cycles and Alain Knapp’s actor-author approach’.45 Yet in 1995 – just as Ex Machina launched  – Lepage was already announcing that the Cycles were not entirely relevant; Ex Machina would be ‘using parts of the method’, but they wouldn’t be ‘strangled by the rules’. Lepage used the system ‘a bit by accident’, he says, and ‘never really respected everything’.46 Company handbook Ex Machina (2007; English translation, 2009)  shows clearly the great importance of Lecoq and that as early as his ‘first projects’ – pre–Ex Machina – Lepage was ‘confronted with the limitations of ’ the cycles, which he saw as ‘a restrictive dogma rather than an organic tool adaptable to the demands of each piece’.47 In 2016, I  asked Lepage whether RSVP remains operative. ‘I don’t refer to RSVP anymore’, he says: ‘What we inherited from that method was basically the two ideas – the first letter which is R, which is for Resource, and the last letter which is P, which is Performance. It’s very important that we’re still writing while performing.’48 There are three points to be made in assessing how ‘central’ remnants of the Cycles are in understanding collaboration. First, choosing materials to work from is a fairly definitive feature of devising as a whole, and, as such, not a particularly special feature of any methodology. Second, apart from his work pre–Ex Machina, Lepage begins with ‘geo-poetry’, and embodied interaction with a culture. The idea of Resources does not account for the directorial lead Lepage takes by first bringing his own embodied experience into collaboration. This, indeed, constitutes a first, definitive stage in his process – generally prior to any rehearsal-room interaction with collaborators or Resources per se. Third, the practice of collaborators ‘writing while performing’ is one Lepage established through touring, rather than through training. After all, Lepage toured his Repère projects much more than Lessard could his (see Introduction). Moreover, the idea of ‘writing while performing’ does not capture the complexities of using touring to write, which, as the subsequent discussion of this chapter demonstrates, is shaped by material and ideological factors as much as it is by aesthetics. Capturing Ex Machina’s evolving process is difficult, and understanding how they collaborate consequently remains a live question. In 2008, Lepage described Ex Machina’s still ‘evolving artistic process’ as being like a tree – but

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focused on the ‘growth happening underground, in that unseen network of roots digging erratically yet so expertly that it can hold, sustain and nurture the whole’.49 Lepage will never reduce his practice to an empirical framework, but these remarks do reflect the enhanced role that rigourous dramaturgical research has in Ex Machina’s collaborative practice. Similarly, ‘geo-poetry’, embodied research, the conscious application of narrative frameworks – and particularly changes in the structural organization of collaborative work  – are all factors in this ‘evolving artistic process’ which ask us to complicate our thinking. The Cycles lent terms – to Lepage and scholars alike – at a time when a need for terms was pressing, but those terms no longer account for this collaborative context, if, indeed, they ever did. Ex Machina’s collaboratively devised pieces invariably begin performance with the projection of a film-style credit sequence explicitly acknowledging the co-authored status of the work. Nevertheless, Lepage’s name, predictably, overshadows the name of Ex Machina when the company tours:  Lepage established a high profile long before Ex Machina, and it is hard to deny the logic of a company marketing strategy that capitalizes on his name-brand; Ex Machina does not have a permanent ensemble of performers, and this fluidity means ‘Lepage’ provides creative continuity – and draws audiences. Lepage occupies the foreground in the company’s public identity, and while that is a compromise between artistic and economic imperatives, it does not define actual practice. Perhaps responding to misunderstandings of Lepage’s role, the company now begins work by providing new partners with a copy of Ex Machina (2007)  – effectively a company guidebook. As we have seen, the terms of the Cycles do not offer a clear enough picture of process, and thus cannot communicate the principles underlying Ex Machina’s work. If we read Ex Machina collaborations on such terms we might expect an idyllic creative democracy. However, while Lepage undoubtedly seeks to ensure his co-authors are recognized, and was surely one of the first directors to invite technical collaborators to take curtain calls, he functions with the authority of a director-within-devising. We should also register the economic terms upon which collaborators’ work is rewarded by Ex Machina. I asked Bernatchez about pay, conditions and contracts. Actors, he says, are paid ‘three or four times above’ the standardized rate, and are actually contracted as writers. Accordingly, he says, they ‘split authors’ royalties with Robert’. Technicians, similarly, are paid well above the going rate. Enhanced pay rates are necessary to compensate collaborators for ‘long hours and difficult challenges’  – and stress. Ex Machina operates at high altitude. Sometimes, Bernatchez says, their shows open ‘in very high visibility contexts’. The work demands ‘input from all

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the people in the rehearsal room’, and collaborators can find this stressful if they are unused to creative responsibility.50 Stamping Ex Machina’s outputs with Lepage’s name is a commercial strategy which elides collaboration to a degree, but the material recognition and reward of labour described here at least attempts to counterbalance this. Therefore, when we read Ex Machina’s process through the terms of the Cycles, we inaccurately problematize Lepage’s role. The presumed ideal democracy of RSVP becomes a framework for evaluation – but one that does not really apply, given the distance Lepage puts between himself and the Cycles. My own argument that Lepage’s process is authorial was published as criticism; in recognizing rather that ‘Lepage’s creative process’ does not remain ‘rooted in this methodology’, and that Lepage does not lay claim to the principles of the Cycles, that argument is obsolete.51 Lepage has an authorial role, but this is problematic only if he denies it – and he doesn’t. However, as noted, Lepage’s discourse around his practice can be vague. Prior to his 1995 remarks distancing Ex Machina from the Cycles, that discourse led Christie Carson to ask how his process can be intuitive, spontaneous and ‘create a truly collaborative dialogue’ when ‘Lepage retain[s]‌ the role of director and therefore ultimate creative control’?52 In her reading of Tectonic Plates (1988–91), Lepage’s Scottish collaborators were not able to work intuitively or spontaneously because they ‘had to accept an imposed vision of Scottishness’53: [W]‌hile discussions were open there was a strict creative framework within which they had to work to produce a performance. Because the show had already been produced in three different versions before coming to Glasgow, many of the piece’s themes, characters and images had already been established. While Lepage reworked the entire show to incorporate the Scottish actors their input into the thematic dialogue was limited by the structure which had already been created. The first restriction the Scots had to deal with was the imposition of a Québec vision of a Highland goddess . . . which [they] had no choice but to accept.54

As Carson shows, the Scottish actors had less opportunity because of the position of the work on its tour. With the work leaning towards completion, less artistic choice was on offer. The critical theme was established; Jen Harvie would later show these questions remained live, writing in 2002 that while it is ‘possible to see Lepage as insistent on a democratic dispersal of authorial power in his productions’, it is also possible to see him in receipt of ‘much of the authority’, and ‘much of the credit’ for collaboration.55

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Lepage’s work across theatre-making roles serves to positively blur traditional distinctions, for example, between director and designer, but this also complicates how we read questions of process, authorship and directing. In discussing Lepage’s work, Peter Gabriel remarks that ‘[a]‌n artist is now much more seen as a connector of things, a person who scans the enormous field of possible places for artistic attention and says “What I’m going to do is draw your attention to this sequence of things” ’.56 Indeed, Bernatchez, describes Lepage in rehearsal as a ‘traffic cop’.57 Lepage’s remarks on relationships of power within creative practice are revealing. In conversation with Virginie Magnat, Lepage talked about experiencing ‘the challenges inherent in collaborative theatre-making early in his career’, and of his realization that art was not democratic, for whenever collective work was modelled after the democratic process too many compromises had to be made for it to become truly compelling . . . Lepage stressed the importance of finding a balance between the figure of the authoritarian director that prevailed in Europe and the type of politically committed collective work that took a reactionary stance against this patriarchal model . . . [and] he made it clear that collaborative undertakings were not immune from authoritarianism.58

Similarly, while working on A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1992, Lepage acknowledged to Carson that he balanced the authority of the director with the democracy of collaboration. He starts with ‘some specific ideas’, but tries to get the idea across that [the actors are] going to be doing it. After a couple of weeks of rehearsal now, they get the idea that they have to invent if the show’s going to look like something that they have done. If they don’t invent in time, I have loads of tricks up my sleeve and I’ll correct it, but I’m not trying to be clever.59

We should again note the dynamic between creative and material practice. Lepage openly acknowledges he imposes creative solutions when time runs short. Lepage’s use of directorial status is perhaps most visible when he works actively with material on tour. Nishikawa recalls how Lepage would check in with the tour of Ota periodically, and shake up the material – usually at a point when the show had settled into a comfortable rhythm – and such visits produced trepidation, and demanded reworking. Nishikawa and her assistant Christian Gagnon, for example, had to reprogramme lighting for the whole

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(five hour) show after Lepage visited the production in Vienna in 1995.60 Lepage is not frightened to put on the director’s hat and make demands of his collaborators from a centralized position of creative power. At the same time, Lepage rejects the idea that Ex Machina’s collaborations are ‘falsely collective’ – acknowledging that although the work bears his ‘signature’, he remains ‘very much conscious of how theatre is a collective experience’, and that any of his collaborators ‘will tell you how genuine’ the collaboration is.61

Cultural difference, cultural specificity Since his training, Lepage has been committed to an intercultural theatre – which inevitably raises the problematics of representing other cultures. Neither Dragons’ Trilogy (1985) nor Ota (1994)  – even though directly depicting Chinese and Japanese ethnicities  – would cast performers from such backgrounds. The problem of white actors playing Asian (or other ethnicities) is distilled by Carmen Fishwick; it ‘perpetuates the idea that minorities should be silent, fetishised, and spoken about only by the dominant ethnicity: the idea that we don’t, and perhaps should never, have a voice of our own’.62 While Lepage has sought to address these issues in subsequent work with some success, two recent Ex Machina productions – SLĀV and Kanata – hit the rocks in July 2018 after being strongly challenged for exclusionary casting practices. These events, and the debates ensuing from them, occurred too late for anything other than mention in this volume, which had already entered production. However, this is not new critical territory; both Ota and the Trilogy stand as precursors to the problem. Harvie shows how both productions exhibit a problematic Orientalism. These are works that use ‘the East . . . as a vehicle for Western fantasies, denying the East’s own autonomy and self-determination’ – but at the same time ‘work to critique, and even to intervene in, Orientalism’s discursive and performative practices of oppression’. In positive terms, they ‘demonstrate and promote cross-cultural understanding’63; negatively, though, these works neglect to explore differences ‘of power . . . between cultures’.64 Despite these very real critical difficulties, the opportunities Ex Machina had in the 1990s show that Ota’s mode of interculturalism was at that time broadly acceptable in Japan. The case now would likely be very different. Nishikawa (the production’s only Japanese collaborator) remembers Ota’s treatment of Japan positively.65 The Western gaze – which she acknowledges as present in the work – caused her to look again at her own culture, and to see beauty once more in what had become mundane. A cleansing of eyesight is, she believes, typical of Lepage’s work, which is somewhat Brechtian in

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

its action of refreshing a known subject. In recalling the production, she does not debate the problematic of casting Québecois actors as Japanese; rather, she notes the difficulty that occidental actors had in reproducing habitual movements produced by Japan’s material environment. Marie Brassard, for example, used a fan with much greater rapidity than would be usual. Nishikawa suggested replacing the movement entirely by using the sleeve of a kimono to create the breeze required. Although Japanese culture was central to Ota, Nishikawa never felt positioned as a token cultural or historical consultant, but her understanding of cultural details – such as the sleight of hand required to close paper screen doors gracefully – meant she was empowered to contribute beyond her role as lighting designer, which was a positive aspect of the experience for her. Nevertheless, as Harvie writes, Ota remains critically problematic because it does not produce ‘a thoroughgoing critique of representational practices’66 – such as the whitecasting of ethnic roles. Further tensions exist regarding representations of Canadian and Québecois identity in Ex Machina’s work. Lepage’s use of multiple languages emerges directly from a cultural context where multiple languages are in operation, in what is ostensibly one nation. And, as Jane Koustas argues, his work has ‘enacted new identity models linked to language and nation’.67 Jeanne Bovet argues that, in this work, multilingualism is ‘the symbol of a conflict between identity and universality’.68 To find oneself either unable to comprehend dialogue in scenes where surtitles are not provided, or being placed in the position of comprehension, draws the spectator into that conflict. To be fluent in English and French is perhaps not so rare, but Lepage’s recent work (specifically his dialogue in Mandarin in The Blue Dragon) is still capable of creating challenges for spectators. Although this aspect of Lepage’s work is less pronounced in recent solo works (Lepage performed Andersen in separate English and French versions), Lipsynch began in Polish, with the delivery of Gorecki’s Symfonia Pieśni Załosnych, and proceeded in its second scene through French, English and German.69 Language, then, operates as both text and dramatic device – and simultaneously as a focusing lens in switching between local and global contexts. Indeed, Sherry Simon writes, ‘aspects of local culture do feature’ but Lepage’s work is ‘related only contingently to Québec’.70 For example, rather than staging Canada, or China, Lepage says ‘a large part of The Dragons’ Trilogy deals with my mother and the women of her generation’.71 It is this fluidity of language and deracination from local context that allows this work to travel, doing so by making the work readable globally. As noted, Fricker cites Lonergan in accounting for how this freedom of movement is facilitated, particularly the ‘abrogation from theatre of

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localising references that might impede audiences’ appreciation of the action’, and ‘the creation of works which can be received reflexively, that is, which “. . . attempt to make themselves sufficiently open to interpretation to be understood in different ways by different audiences” ’.72 Speaking at CUNY in 2016, Lepage described the profoundly emotional reception of the Trilogy (2003 version) in Poland. Set on a traverse, a scene where soldiers crush a collection of shoes was seen as emblematic of Polish history – specifically, of being attacked on two fronts. Tellingly, this links to how narrative builds in his work through creating connections and listening, which in turn produces a build-up of emotion. This progression, Lepage says, must be emotionally ‘sparse’ in order to make space for audiences to place their own emotions into the work. Lepage’s description is remarkably close to Lonergan’s idea of ‘reflexive availability’.73 There is a freedom in this which allows Lepage’s work to travel; however, this positive feature casts its own shadow. Such ‘reflexive availability’74 requires an open text, what Patrice Pavis calls a ‘a tissue of blank spaces, of interstices to be filled’,75 or what Richard Schechner calls ‘a latticelike structure in which highly organised actions exist side-by-side with more open structures’.76 Reflexive availability operates as a double dramaturgy of actions and structures which will be present, and of blank spaces allowing multiple interpretations. Ric Knowles’s 2004 analysis of Lepage’s work highlights how these blank spaces create critical difficulty, alongside aesthetic opportunity. Companies like Ex Machina can work ‘as guerillas’77 in the international marketplace, resisting problematic cultural generalization, and disrupting the ‘predictability of the industrial model of theatrical production’.78 This is particularly the case when Ex Machina begins collaborating with global organizations like Cirque Du Soleil, and major institutions like the Metropolitan Opera. I asked Lepage if he felt that such collaborations make demands on partners to reconsider their working practices. In considering Ex Machina’s potential to create change, Lepage again roots his approach in his training – and thus reveals a lesser-known influence. While studying at the Conservatoire in the 1970s, Lepage challenged Québec’s leading experimental theatre director, Jean-Pierre Ronfard, on why he was focusing on works like Don Quixote at high-status theatres like Théâtre du Nouveau Monde (TNM, Montréal), and less on experiment. Ronfard, Lepage recalls, said, ‘Yes  – but what is the use of [experiment] if you don’t try and bring it into the mainstream?’79 Lepage now believes that experiment must enter the mainstream, and that audiences will recognize that while it’s not ‘what they are used to seeing, it’s something that sheds more light on something than usual’. The art of theatre, Lepage reflects, is ‘very experimental, very daring’, but ‘for survival reasons’ has become

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

‘institutionalized’. Western theatre has ‘created this amazing system that uses the money wisely’, and, he says, ‘I’m not denouncing that’, but ‘there has to be a bit more variety’. Lepage’s formative encounter with Ronfard highlights the futility of experimenting in a vacuum, and underpins Ex Machina’s practice of co-production as a way of introducing experiments into the mainstream – without leaving important partnerships behind. One ‘way of changing the system is by co-producing’, Lepage says; this allows Ex Machina to ‘put our hand inside the system’. And then we put it back into the envelope. That’s the idea. The idea is not to denounce or undo. We benefit from these structures that already exist, who have money, who have expertise on a lot of things. We are not renouncing, or accusing, or saying ‘They are the problem’. We know that within those structures there are tonnes of people who want to do things differently. What they have created comes from the good intention of trying to make art survive. But art evolves, and society evolves. People want to change. So we’ve created this thing on the side. We’re not working the way we are working for crass reasons. If you want to collaborate with us, it means working this way. So we are imposing that, but we’re not on a crusade.80

Lepage circumscribes the radical potential of Ex Machina’s model of practice, limiting it to a positive, evolutionary influence. And yet the Canadian Opera Company, Cirque Du Soleil, Canadian National Ballet, Metropolitan, Théâtre du Soleil and the Stratford Festival have each worked with Ex Machina since 2009. These are significant arts organizations, each of whom are opening up to Ex Machina’s alternative model, and, potentially, to change. Lepage seems particularly pleased to be working with the Stratford Festival, in Ontario. Probably the ‘biggest theatre company’ in Canada in terms of scale, finance and expertise on tap, the festival is bound in tradition, so, Lepage says, ‘they are trying to invite people into their system’. Collaborations have been discussed for many years, but harmonizing Stratford’s repertoire structure and Ex Machina’s approach has made it ‘impossible to collaborate’. However, ‘now we’ve found a way to enter that system’, Lepage says  – by undertaking long-term economic preparation and rehearsal scheduling, working with actors in Québec City in advance of working at the festival itself, and then presenting ‘something that is a bit unusual, but that fits’.81 Over time, the bulk of Ex Machina’s income has been increasingly derived from collaboration with international partners. Perhaps surprisingly, out of Ex Machina’s annual budget ‘which ranges from C$8 million-C$18 million’,

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Bernatchez tells me as little as ‘10% is government subsidies’, and sometimes this has been as low as ‘4–6%’; and ‘that’s the smallest proportion in the country’.82 Ten per cent of C$18 million is still a lot of money, but Ex Machina may yet be an evolutionary signpost towards re-imagining how theatre is financed and made. However, Knowles argues that constant touring comes with the risk ‘of losing touch with place’, and a consequent loss of ‘cultural specificity’ for performers and audiences.83 Fricker’s analysis of The Andersen Project (2005) shows that deracination is a conscious process, in line with the dynamics of globalization. The piece, she writes, was altered by Lepage ‘in order to make it work across different markets’, and to ‘draw audiences in via the production’s theatricality and its broadly accessible humanist themes . . . [avoiding] alienating or offending audiences by not coming down on any one side’.84 The flipside of the open text, therefore, can be what Knowles critiques as Lepage’s ‘modernist shrug’; a lack of cultural specificity that plays its part in displacing ‘creative responsibilities for meaning production onto audiences’.85 But it is not only on the stage that perceptions of weak cultural specificity trouble Lepagean aesthetics; Ex Machina itself would receive related criticism during its launch phase. Writing in 1999, Jen Harvie and Erin Hurley challenged Ex Machina’s potential claims on the cultural ground of Québec. They argued that the provincial government of Québec sought ‘to integrate Lepage into Québec’ by financially supporting the company through grants for La Caserne. The ‘physical and historical bonds’ this created produced ‘ideological bonds and artistic associations between Lepage and the Québec nation’. However, these investments in promoting Québecois identity ‘are jeopardised by Ex Machina’s financial and geographical migration in pursuit of ever greater and wider sources of funding, and evermore elite contexts of production’. Ex Machina, they conclude, does not promote ‘Québecois cultural nationalism’, but rather ‘a Western metropolitan elitism in pursuit of major and diverse commercial investment’.86 Ironically (as subsequent discussions of Zulu Time [1999] reveal) Lepage and Ex Machina were engaged in what was intended to be their most direct alignment with Québec’s national interest, at just the moment these critiques were made. Finally, as already demonstrated, the relationship between the body and technology can produce divided critical responses, and Ex Machina’s theatre in this period reflects this. I  will not, therefore, rehearse this greatly here, but we should note that this element of practice produces widely ranging responses  – from Fouquet’s remark that Lepage’s automated scenography makes his characters appear as if they are ‘toys of the gods’87 to Peter Brook’s remark that in Ota

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina Robert Lepage and his collaborators . . . seek to create a theatre where the terrifying and incomprehensible reality of our time is inseparably linked to the insignificant details of our everyday lives – details that are so important to us, so trivial for others. For this, they are experimenting with a theatrical language where today’s technology can both serve and sustain the humanity of a live performance.88

These remarks encapsulate almost opposite views, reading Lepage’s work negatively  – as subjecting the body to technology  – or positively  – with ‘humanity’ sustained and served through interactions with technology. Giesekam notes more strident critiques  – including charges of ‘formalist exercises’, and descriptions of Lepage himself as ‘a gadget-obsessed purveyor of empty spectacle’, whose performances can be ‘emotionally cold’.89 He also records that Ota was problematized as formalistic in ‘aestheticising’ the traumas underpinning its narrative.90 Previously I have argued the ‘uncanny theatricality’91 produced through the interaction of body and technology – including ‘animated scenography, doubling of roles, use of the body as an object, and reconfiguration of onstage/ offstage relationships’92 emphasized strangeness at the expense of political meaning. However, after interviewing Lepage on the subject of body and technology in 2016 (see Chapter 2) my perspective has changed somewhat. Lib Taylor argues that uncanny theatricality is related to the idea of Brechtian de-familiarization, and ‘theatrical versions of this Freudian makingstrange’ – such as Ex Machina’s – may ‘impel political and rational effects’.93 This is possible, Taylor suggests, because the un-homely is very much ‘our experience of contemporary living’.94 Technology in Ex Machina’s work is a significant factor in imbuing performers’ bodies with mobility and agency, in response to often alienating environments like cities.95 Consequently, I now believe that Ex Machina’s theatre fulfils the potential Taylor describes for an un-homely theatre to connect ‘the personal to the political, and the experiential to the social’.96 We do not, as Jacques Rancière argues, need to place aesthetics and politics into an ‘absurd schema’ that sets them in contrast; art can ‘represent and reconfigure’ relationships of ‘doing, making, being, seeing, and saying’. An uncanny theatricality can, in principle at least, change how we see things by redrawing ‘the landscape of the visible’ – enabling us to perceive and address realities that might otherwise be hidden from us.97 In concluding here, it is worth recalling that these years were ones Lepage describes as his all-time low  – and as ‘a period of despair’.98 Ex Machina would move on from the difficulties of the rollercoaster years; it remains to be seen if critical themes established in this period of crisis followed suit.

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Part Two

Choosing all directions (2000–8) Introduction This section of the book investigates a period which offered better stability, on the whole, but also a diversification of creative interests demonstrating that Lepage and Ex Machina were far from resting on their laurels. The works explored in this section – including Zulu Time, The Dragons’ Trilogy, Métissages, The Far Side of the Moon, La Casa Azul, KÀ, The Busker’s Opera, Eonnagata, The Image Mill, 1984, The Rake’s Progress, Lipsynch and The Blue Dragon – show much more than just increased productivity. At this point in time, the company began to discover its own agenda, outside of the initial push that Lepage’s aesthetic principles had given it. The dynamic interaction between Robert Lepage/Ex Machina developed significantly, therefore, becoming more productive. Moreover, several innovative explorations of theatrical space would be presented at this time – to be matched with a deepening sense of social and political engagement. A new description of Ex Machina’s practice begins to arise from these productions. Indeed, Chapter 4, ‘Upgrades’, identifies a turning point in the evolution of Ex Machina – a development due to changes both in Ex Machina personnel, and a deeper sense of how architecture can connect narrative and space. At the same time, it appears that some of that development in Ex Machina’s practice is the result of a conscious revision, in response to critique. The revised Dragons’ Trilogy and Métissages, in particular, see the company engaging with questions of representation, and working more specifically with questions relating to the local context of Québec itself. Notwithstanding, the almost opposite experiences of Zulu Time and The Far Side of the Moon would show the principle of contradiction very much ongoing, and in action. These works – regardless of major differences – are both shown here to deepen

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

the company’s practical principles, while extending their commitment to developing new narrative conventions. Consequently, Chapter  5, ‘Québec stories’, explores this commitment further, using a range of case studies to shed light on Ex Machina’s deepening linkage between narrative and cultural expression. In addition to the cultural specificity that Ex Machina finds in their patenteux-like mode of working, we begin to consider here how experiments with narrative might be pragmatic – for instance, introducing a three-handed collaborative structure onto the roster  – or more grandly, might become a symbol for Québecois cultural identity. In this chapter, Lepage’s creation of KÀ for Cirque Du Soleil raises a number of critical questions, relating to narrative, architectural aesthetics, authorship and co-production as a collaborative context. Crucially, the case studies explored here show how Ex Machina’s collaborative context changes to emphasize narrative, structure and the writing of theatre – and to ask if the company are writing Québec into, and through, their narratives. The company’s search for new narrative forms sees the idea of concrete narrative extended in new, vital ways. Chapter 6, ‘New ways’, reflects on the later stages of Ex Machina’s phase of diversification. In this chapter, the development of important new projects in Québec itself are juxtaposed with the touring of high-profile opera work, and the high-profile co-production partnership with New  York’s Metropolitan Opera that emerged at this time. New ways of working are seen to stem here not only from architectural aesthetics, but also from developments in co-producing partnerships and changes in Ex Machina’s collaborative context. But this is also a phase of reflection. During this period, Ex Machina would celebrate its first decade – a time span within which new and major developments laid the ground work for the company’s full maturity to emerge. New and exciting descriptions of the company’s creative process would arise at this time. Some trajectories develop here – but others are laid to rest.

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Upgrades

The next phase of Ex Machina’s development was fertile, but encompassed both triumph and disaster, while ushering in changes to its collaborative context. Creative partnerships with Peder Bjurman and Jean-Sébastien Côté, for instance, led to major changes. The Far Side of the Moon (2000) originated in a pitch by Bjurman, and he would persuade Lepage to abandon his retirement from acting. Côté’s arrival would transform Lepage’s use of sound and music  – and Côté would revise the 2003 Trilogy’s soundtrack, enabling it to respond practically to critiques of Orientalism noted previously. These ‘upgrades’, as Lepage calls them, are part of the company’s ecology, but, he says, Ex Machina is ‘not recycling with the goal of doing the same thing again – [but] recycling with the goal of pushing the idea further, now that we have the means to push it further’.1 Côté’s arrival, alongside other developments, offered just such means. The practicalities of la Caserne as a mothership would also be definitive. The international success of Far Side meant Lepage spent significant time away from Québec in this period; consequently, Ex Machina could not put a new ensemble creation on the spiral. Time pressures, then, led to the 2003 revival and upgrade of The Dragons’ Trilogy, which mapped Lepage’s practice of revisiting previous interpretations of texts, onto devised pieces, for the first time. With the exception of La Casa Azul (2001; see Chapter 5), this would be the only work developed at la Caserne between 2000 and 2003; Métissages (2000) would be installed at the Musée de la Civilisation in Québec City, and Lepage would work away on KÀ (2004), including a long stint in Las Vegas. In this chapter, I  explore the creative and structural evolution of Ex Machina through these works. Métissages presented a performative museum installation, and a vital space for Lepage to reflect at a crucial moment – simultaneously adding yet more energy to the political impulses of Ex Machina’s praxis. It would also intensify Ex Machina’s relationship with Québec itself, perhaps in response to critical themes discussed in the previous chapter. Far Side (2000) synthesized narrative and space so closely in an architectural locus as to exemplify architectural aesthetics and concrete narrative. Zulu Time (1999) extended Ex Machina’s experiments with

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

technology and the body, but it would also be critically and commercially problematic – and even disastrous.

Zulu Time: Q for Québec On one hand, Zulu Time represents a radical attempt to define the quintessential twenty-first-century art form. According to Don Shewey, it weds ‘media technology with theatrical narrative, unfolds on a giant scaffold structure in the middle of the auditorium with walkways that move horizontally and vertically [and] features, among other things, six robot monsters, upside-down tango dancers, a DJ spinning discs, and a Peruvian contortionist borrowed from Cirque Du Soleil’.2 On the other hand, Zulu Time is Ex Machina’s most retrograde work, using blackface to represent a Zulu character, and, as Karen Fricker correctly notes, thus being negatively connected to troubling racist stereotypes.3 The contradiction at the heart of Zulu Time is that of body and technology – but another is its simultaneous offering of futuristic and regressive gestures. Like Ex Machina’s Faust, Zulu Time relied on a large scaffold structure, but here the bare metal would be presented with automated sections moving and working as bridges. The design therefore gave shape to the narrative, producing a concrete narrative, but this was more sequence than story – being structured around the twenty-six-word, alphabetical code used to standardize communications ‘between air traffic and ground control’.4 These layers of story worked with the design to form a passage sequence for spectators reflecting the complex architectural actions of an airport. Airports exemplify the power of space to elicit distinctive physical actions from people in response. They reflect architect Bernard Tschumi’s principle that architecture should be the creation of a ‘spatial discourse associated with time, action and movement’, and that – because such architecture is defined by interaction – there can be ‘no place without event’.5 The relationship between Zulu Time’s scenography and its performers, then, can be read as a metaphor – of the events that real airport spaces enact upon us. Scenographic acting, therefore, is central to Zulu Time’s ‘spatial discourse’ – with performers’ bodies journeying through the architecture of performance, to unveil the performativity of airport architecture. This would be Ex Machina’s boldest foray into ‘entertainment architecture’ to date.6 Whereas directors ‘do’ directing, architects ‘do’ architecting. In moving the idea over to consider Ex Machina as architects of performance, I am drawing on the ideas of Alberto Pérez-Gómez. He reiterates the distinction between the dominant idea of ‘architecture as drawing’, and the older architectural

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method of constructing models to reveal the depths ‘of the building to come’, alongside ‘its meaning and emotional effect’.7 Ex Machina’s Zulu Time collaborators were set the deliberate challenge of ‘dramatic construction’ by Lepage  – through the inclusion of people ‘from other disciplines’, and with the intention of showing ‘the world is shrinking’ as a result of ‘civil aviation and new communication technology’.8 This process of construction, and production of a discourse about space and technology, constitutes an architecting of performance. The depths, meaning and emotional effects of airport space were rendered through a deliberate construction. We might consider the architecting of performance as a term limited to this production. However, the principle of pre-construction modelling is present in all of Ex Machina’s work, through work-in-progress presentations signposting the performance ‘to come’. These performances are more than instances of work in progress, they are actually models for subsequent performances – and so on, until completion. Most Ex Machina performances have precisely the status of ‘model’. Over time, the construction of actual preperformance models becomes part of Ex Machina’s practice – especially in opera productions. Opera designs in particular need testing – using weightequivalent stand-ins – as star vocalists have extremely limited availability. Zulu Time’s architecting of performance drew collaborators into the demands of creative problem-solving, causing them to work as patenteux. Video designer Kurt Hentschlager of Granular Synthesis developed new technologies capable of playing ‘with video the same way musicians play with audio’. Similarly, Lepage’s aim ‘was to work with artists [like Hentschlager] who are interested in squeezing the soul of technology’, and connect poetics, dramaturgy and emotion ‘with the new tools’.9 Hentschlager revelled in Lepage’s intention to explore ‘the physical impact of technology on the individual’. Zulu Time, wrote Shewey, attracted ‘a dozen producers’, including ‘festivals in Madrid, Montréal, Goteberg, Sweden and Matsumoto’.10 The production had a bright future. The first version was performed in 1999, at Zürich’s Theatre Spektakel, and then at Paris’s Festival d’Automne. In 1999, Lepage was also enlisted as General Commissioner for Le Printemps du Québec en France – a major event ‘showcasing Quebec’s cultural and artistic output in Paris’.11 Ex Machina, then, were delivering Faust and developing Zulu Time – at the same time as Lepage was connecting to his context by working as a cultural representative for Québec. Lepage reflected on this learning curve. ‘I’ve worked a lot in opera the last couple of years’, he remarked, [a]‌nd I’ve learned that opera today is this mundane, corporate event about people who have money and status. The artists who participate

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina are fantastic, talented, amazing, stimulating, but there’s something about opera that is perceived the wrong way. Up until the middle of the 20th century, opera was the big multimedia mother art. It was the place where architecture met literature, music, choreography, you name it . . . But over time, it stopped inviting others in. So what is the art of the beginning of the 21st-century that is the convergence point of all these disciplines? That’s what we’re trying to do with Zulu Time.12

In 2001, Ex Machina were scheduled to present Zulu Time at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan (21 September–9 October)  – an expensive, fashionable venue hosting events from ‘rock concerts to gay circuit parties [to] tattoo conventions’.13 Lepage’s commitments would again cross over, due to his membership ‘of the promotional committee for Québec-New York 2001’ – effectively transferring the intention of Le Printemps by showcasing Québec in New  York. Given his role as Commissioner in Paris, Lepage’s selection as a promoter is unsurprising; after all, Convergence describes Lepage as ‘one of the pillars of Québec culture [and] a name that opens doors in the United States and Europe’. Zulu Time’s leap into the twentyfirst century was intended as the centrepiece of Québec-New York 2001, and would have been the first time the piece had been presented ‘in its entirety and in order’.14 Simultaneously, it would have demonstrated Ex Machina’s ‘Québecois cultural nationalism’ strongly – not long after Lepage had been critiqued for lack in this area by Harvie and Hurley (see Chapter 3).15 Michel Letourneau was commissioner for the showcase. Québec-New York 2001, Letourneau says, consciously reflected Québec’s government ‘trying to update its international image, specifically vis-a-vis New York’. Speaking to Convergence, Letourneau referred to New  York State as ‘the 7th biggest trading partner of Québec, representing $12 billion in trade’. Many ‘important personalities’ – including Lepage – were selected for ‘promotional assistance’ and ‘to revitalise Québec’s image’, as ‘young and modern’ – and Zulu Time was undoubtedly folded into these aims. Letourneau says promoters were selected specifically ‘to enrich the programme and to be spokespeople for Québec’.16 Convergence describes the scale of the programme: Crowds passing through the neighbourhood of the World Financial Centre will witness the Québec presentation from September 13 to October 7:  multimedia tourism displays, technological exhibitions organised with the collaboration of the Technological Art Society and a multitude of shows make up a portion of this event. 29 different projects and 200 artists will be free during Québec’s autumn in the Big Apple.17

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Not only that, but Zulu Time would be ‘the centrepiece of Québec-New York 2001’, wrote Shewey for the New York Times.18 However, against a backdrop of the mass murder of civilians by terrorists in hijacked aeroplanes, and about to present a piece which was originally subtitled A Cabaret for Airports19 – including material directly treating aviation terrorism  – Ex Machina cancelled the New York run. Zulu Time was intended to signpost a new artistic territory, and bring Québecois internationalism and art together, but Bernatchez’s account of events post 9/11 shows the stark situation Ex Machina suddenly faced. The cancellation ‘caused a huge loss’, he says. The Roseland Ballroom had been paid ‘in 3 instalments of $100,000’ – and Bernatchez had just made the last payment in person on 10 September. On the afternoon of 11 September, he telephoned the venue: I said  – ‘Listen, I  don’t think there will be any show taking place in New York over the next weeks, months. We’re striking tomorrow – and we’ll be out in 3 days. You have already received $200,000, would you mind giving me back the cheque I gave you yesterday? I’m sure it’s still in the draw.’ And he said ‘I’m sorry Michel, business is business.’ That, plus whatever costs we had invested to have the show run in New York – all of that was lost.20

In normal circumstances, Ex Machina would have been finished. Unlike other non-profits, Bernatchez remarks, Ex Machina had not followed the ‘morally questionable strategy’ of developing multiple ‘legal entities’  – merchandising divisions, screen divisions and so on – to hold onto profits through ‘private companies’, while covering losses ‘through public grants’. However, he says, ‘since Peter Gabriel was a co-investor’, they had ‘created a private company’ this time. This built ‘a firewall’ between Ex Machina and Zulu Time’s losses – which ran to $700,000. Zulu Time would experience catastrophe as well, when performer Jeff Hall fell from a height in an accident, and was almost killed. Bernatchez says Hall has ‘been affected permanently, but he’s an extraordinary guy, who rebuilt his body and his professional life’. Indeed, Michael Crabb writes, Hall’s ‘back muscles remain paralyzed and he has no feeling below the waist’, yet he learned to walk again, and choreographed Lepage’s second Cirque du Soleil show, Totem (2010).21 Entertainment architecture brings spectacle  – and performer risk. Even with every possible step taken to ensure safety, it is in the nature of accidents that they will happen. We should never cease to question whether these risks for the sake of entertainment are ethical, given the potentially extreme consequences when things go wrong in theatre.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Zulu Time met with strident criticism. Pat Donnelly cites reviewer Robert Lévesque’s blunt declaration of ‘Lepage’s artistic demise’ in March 2000; Zulu Time, Lévesque wrote, is ‘the nadir of Lepage’s theatrical career’, and Far Side is Lepage ‘disintegrating as he multiplies[;]‌the winds of success blow too violently at his back, grace is lost in jetlag, and, like his work, it has been reduced to an agenda. His works, which were already mannered, quickly become formulaic, to the point that I only see the mechanics’.22 Far Side would soon become an apogee in Lepage’s career, and on that front time would prove Lévesque mistaken. But Zulu Time was undeniably an all-time low. It could have been the ‘show that breaks the populist barrier and moves Lepage out of art-house theatre into the kind of attendance numbers racked up by the Cirque Du Soleil’, wrote Donnelly. Instead, it was the ‘direct cause of Ex Machina’s deficit’ – the first time the company had been in the red – being their ‘most expensive production to date, with an estimated tab of $900,000’.23 Zulu Time, suggested Donnelly, revealed Ex Machina’s ‘special fragility’. Although they have ‘one of the largest budgets of any Québec theatre company’, government support represents ‘a smaller percentage of its revenues’; it doesn’t own la Caserne, and therefore has higher operating costs in terms of ‘mortgage, upkeep and taxes’. Facing a deficit of $487,000, Bernatchez was forced to apply to ‘the Québec government’s new foundation to aid deficit- plagued arts organizations, Le Fond de Stabilisation’. Provincial aid to the tune of $190,000, alongside strong advanced sales for Far Side’s European tour, prevented crisis from developing into collapse.24

Upgrading the Trilogy The original Trilogy was made in November 1985, at l’Implanthéâtre de Québec (Théâtre Périscope, 1990 onwards). It would play there again (May 1986), subsequently at the Toronto World Stage Festival (June 1986), before touring Canada (1987). From 1988, with the support of producer Michael Morris and Cultural Industry, the Trilogy would be seen as far afield as Australia – touring internationally until 1992. The breakthrough energy of the piece established Lepage internationally with remarkable speed. It ‘took the world of theatre by surprise’, Dundjerović says: but it ‘was seen as Lepage’s directorial success’,25 launching him as an ‘international director’ with a distinctive vocabulary.26 The Trilogy was groundbreaking artistically, but innovation alone does not fully explain why certain dramatic works achieve prominence. Innovation must be recognizable as such, if it is to move from the margins. The Trilogy was laudable as an innovation because it encapsulated what Don Rubin

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described in 1979 as the freedom of ‘a “new consciousness” in Canada about its theatre, “an easing of the nationalist battle lines and a new willingness and interest in linking with the rest of the world” ’.27 Renate Usmiani argues that these nationalist ‘battle lines’ were reflected in Québécois theatre of the time through three specific conflicts; conflict ‘over a dramatic idiom’, conflict ‘over the proper role and function of theatre in society’ and conflict ‘over theatrical form’.28 In 1985, Lepage met these tensions head-on. The Trilogy presented the idiom of multiple-language theatre, as well as a strong physical stage language; it made a purposeful engagement with issues of Canadian/Québécois identity, and it was an exciting experiment with theatrical form. The Trilogy was also refreshingly female, with Jean Casault originally accompanying Lepage as the only other male collaborator, in a female-to-male ratio of four to two.29 Trilogy collaborators Marie Brassard, Marie Gignac, Marie Michaud and Lorraine Côté had all attended the Conservatoire. Brassard notes that the production was, simply, in ‘continuity with our training. We had the right tools. We were not afraid’.30 Cometh the hour, cometh the ensemble. The 2003 Trilogy would be distant from these contexts, and such momentum, however. Kate Taylor’s review for Toronto’s Globe and Mail suggests its form remained innovative, while its content faded:  ‘With the benefit of hindsight . . . it’s easy enough to see the limits of this style. It is a theatre of coincidences rather than narrative, figures rather than characters and symbols rather than themes [nevertheless] . . . proof of this revival’s ultimate success is that . . . its theatrical ideas still feel brilliantly fresh’.31 Unsurprisingly, the programme for the London run cited only the latter part of Taylor’s remarks. Revisiting Jill MacDougall’s 1988 review of the original Trilogy reminds us of the pleasures of its content. There is, she wrote, ‘no centre to orient one’s attention. There are only paths that run parallel or cross each other . . . an incredible network of human beings, geography, and objects’.32 In 1988, this ‘incredible network’ could reveal our profound interconnectedness, but in 2003 could appear superficial. Lepage’s description of the Trilogy as a ‘master narrative’ for Ex Machina compels us to address charges of narrative superficiality.33 Lepage’s perspective is that the piece acquires narrative breadth and depth through detail. Most of the Trilogy ‘is based on real facts’, he says: for example, the ‘Japanese girl in the art gallery in the last section’ was based on someone the company knew ‘very well’. Through the details, he says, a bigger picture emerges of the relationship between Canadian and Asian cultures.34 This expansion from the microcosm to the macrocosm is certainly a defining feature of Lepage’s narrative style, pre–Ex Machina. It is possible the Trilogy was revived too soon; explorations by the company into story structure post-2003, alongside experiments with concrete narrative, may have brought substance to narrative coincidence.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Equally, however, the revival may have been precisely what stimulated those explorations and experiments  – by reminding Lepage of his earlier experiments with narrative form. The Trilogy expands westwards across Canada’s Chinatowns, beginning in 1930s Québec during a period of economic migration – proceeding to midtwentieth-century Toronto and the horrors of war  – before concluding in affluent 1980s Vancouver. Karen Fricker describes the revival as addressing ‘the insights and critiques of reviewers’, showing Lepage’s ‘awareness of the commentary’ around the work since the original production.35 Unsurprisingly, there are concrete examples of conscious upgrading, although, as Fricker notes, it may be that revisions created new ‘representational problems’, as much as solved old ones. Originally presented by its six writers, the 2003 version would have a larger budget and could expand the cast to eight performers (four male and four female). This extra capacity reduced the need for doubling, and the white-casting of minority ethnic roles could be avoided. Emily Shelton, a performer with triple citizenship (US, Japanese and Canadian), would play the aforementioned Japanese artist, Yukali.36 Although Shelton would play multiple nationalities, this element of upgrade addressed some elements of the production’s noted Orientalism (see Chapter  3), as would a revised soundtrack by Jean-Sébastien Côté. An original score by Robert Caux was one of the first Trilogy’s strengths. However, Côté remarks, between 1985 and 2003, the advent of the internet and the opening of China had changed people’s perceptions of Chinese culture considerably. Côté was charged by Lepage to upgrade the material to reflect new awareness, for example, by relying less on traditional Chinese string instruments – sounds that had suddenly become clichés.37 Reviews from the Perth Festival in 2006 suggest the upgrade was successful. Victoria Laurie foregrounded ‘Six Hours of Cross-Cultural Magic’, suggesting the connection of microcosm and macrocosm was far from superficial; ‘The Trilogy’s final scenes draw together the threads’, she writes, ‘the yin-yang way things connect, intellect with emotion, science with art, male with female. Pierre and his Oriental lover combine his star-inspired installation with her dragon paintings: the entire universe in a small room’.38 Robin Usher’s review for The Age foregrounded themes of gender, equality, class, globalization and migrant integration: ‘The most enduring theme of the play is the plight of women before the increased availability of contraception. It concludes in the 1980s with its only equal relationship – that between a French-Canadian gallery owner and a Japanese immigrant artist  – symbolising new-found equality under the influences of globalisation between China, Japan and the West’.39 The upgraded Trilogy offered greater intercultural sensitivity,

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perhaps, and – given these contrasting reviews – potentially greater openness to interpretation. Ex Machina’s collaborative context is led by Lepage’s ability to make connections between ideas. These ideas build into relationships of such complexity that the work feels self-generating. If we ‘respect the basic material’, Lepage says, the form of the work will eventually emerge, seemingly from itself. Speaking at CUNY in 2016, he explains this is because the ideas he connects into narratives are formed by the ‘combination of everybody’s experiences and sensibilities’, and he works to find ‘lines’ between international collaborators.40 The ideology of Ex Machina’s process lies in its dispersing of control over perspective between international collaborators. Lepage retains the authority to bring perspectives together, but the controlling power of single-point perspective is split up enough to stimulate research and experiment until collaborators achieve collectivism. While connections between performers may not be visible in performance, it is perhaps these bonds – as much as narrative connections – that bring life to the events Ex Machina stages. Both Lepage’s architecting of performance in process – and the distinctive architectures of performance generated by that process – can be read as hopeful emblems of convergence across cultures. This is a key note in evaluating Ex Machina’s praxis and is expanded later in this chapter.

The importance of Métissages In the period under discussion, Ex Machina’s most experimental work would take place beyond the theatre. Métissages was a multimedia art installation project in partnership with the Museum of Civilisation in Québec City – a stone’s throw from la Caserne  – running for seventeen months from May 2000. Lepage was invited to lead the exhibition, he says, ‘as a privileged witness to the phenomenon of cultural globalization’. To his surprise, the topic of métissage, mixing, or crossbreeding was to lead me far beyond cultural considerations toward an understanding of this phenomenon as involved in the very fibre of our identity. All my travels, my far-away projects, every attempt to flee my origins finally brought me back to the place I started, now transformed but still itself. This very tug of war between the notion of authenticity and our invented notion of purity is what this exhibition is all about.41

Indeed, Ex Machina’s website states Métissages’ aim as confronting

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina each audience member with the fact that purity as such does not exist, that each of us is a half-breed, a place where powers meet, forces of fusion and other perhaps salutary forces seeking to dislocate and break apart. And if cross-breed, half-breed, mongrel, and miscegenation all have pejorative connotations, the exhibition designers have sought to twist that perception, to create a sense of unbalance in the audience in which curiosity can grow and draw them into an odyssey that, as it did for Ulysses, will become a search for self.42

Despite its avowedly politicized intentions, Métissages is probably Ex Machina’s most critically neglected project. Lepage’s account of the installation is worth quoting in full – given the paucity of concrete information available: It was divided in two. There was a cultural side which was a kind of ziggurat, with all these little windows. There would be a famous Québec soap opera dubbed in Japanese, so people would see the stars they know speaking Japanese as if this was exported to Japan. And then you’d have a famous Japanese TV show that was dubbed in Québecois, and these would be side-by-side. So I kind of do all these different things, kind of mind games where people would see how culturally it’s all kind of – and touching on every subject matter. On the other side it was the exact same shape but reversed – this side was like an anatomical theatre, and more about crossbreeding in the physical sense. We had a real pig heart, and a real human heart next to each other – same size, same shape, it’s exactly the same thing. Next to that we had human and pig eyes – of course they were very different – ears, very different. You had all these things about how these two species were completely different, but they had the same heart. And there’s this whole dilemma about – let’s say you need a new heart. There is a waiting list, and you’re not even sure you’re going to get a compatible heart. But you could take a pig’s heart and it would work. But there’s this thing about being crossbred with an animal and having the heart of a pig. So what they do is that they use pig heart valves, but that’s as far as they’ll go. And people had to guess if it was the heart of a pig or a human being. And it opened this whole thing about – Where is the soul? People still think the heart – some people say ‘No, it’s the brain’ – the Egyptians thought it was the liver. So there’s all these ideas about is there a soul, and if so where is it? Where is it located? So you’d go up one side or the other, and at the top you’d walk into this little round shaped room where there was the kind of heart shaped Jacuzzi that you find in love hotels, and a camera, because people get – you know. And you’d have a projection on the foam of the Jacuzzi of how the egg is

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attacked by the sperm. So there was this idea that people would go up by two different ways, and meet up in that place.43

The concrete narrative of the installation is noteworthy. First, the contradictions of cultural and biological métissages are given material expression. Second, architectural aesthetics are at work here, possibly stemming from Lepage’s engagement with Frank Lloyd Wright’s work. Lloyd Wright’s design for the Guggenheim Museum in New York – which features in Geometry – ‘was seen as an inverted ziggurat’.44 Third, this is a distinctive use of verticality; the ziggurat is a specific architecture that once acted ‘as a link between heaven and earth’.45 Finally, the different passage sequences created by the two parts of the installation facilitated a bodily experience of contradiction for visitors – who would be brought together physically in the top room, but could also be experiencing entirely different meanings. This encapsulates the political principle of the work. Lepage says he was always interested that métissage  – we’re all kind of crossbreeding ideas and encouraged to be open in this new world order – but the actual French word indicates that is a bad thing. In French we say il est métis. A black person who has a child with a white woman, they would create a métis. So I got interested in the political aspect of that. Where are we crossbreeding? Culturally? Physically? There are these things that we’re not talking about, that we should be talking about.46

Through Métissages, we can see the principle of contradiction evolving to support a deeper exploration of cultural difference, which nevertheless produces a concrete narrative, and remains grounded in the interactions of bodies with architectural forms. The lesson of Métissages is that contradiction need not operate solely on stage, but could also act as the sociopolitical principle informing Ex Machina’s mission. The project is, therefore, a crucial step in forming Ex Machina’s praxis – demonstrating again the necessity of reading the actions of space in identifying the ideological expression of this practice. Métissages also produced lessons on spectatorship, didacticism and the transferability of methods across different working contexts. Although a significant divergence from theatrical performance, it is revealing that Lepage describes Métissages as ‘a real Ex Machina experience’: What I liked about the exhibition is that suddenly I was doing one of my regular shows, it was like doing a big six-hour show, basically  – sitting with a group of people, talking about this thing where I don’t

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina have the vaguest idea where we’re going. And what I also liked about it was that it was more participatory. It was the exact same thing, but people visit your ideas instead of sitting in front of them. I try to trigger the questions, but I honestly don’t have answers. Good for you if you have a position. So then what you’re doing is propaganda, you’re selling, you’re arguing for your position, and you have the right to do it, it’s just that I’m more interested by artists who don’t necessarily tell me their position They tell me, ‘This is what the problem is’, and you go – ‘Good lord, what do I feel about it? And what can I do about it? And what does my neighbour think about it?’ I’m more interested in that experience.47

Métissages was installed at the Museum of Civilisation in Québec City in 2000, after which, Pat Donnelly wrote in the Gazette, Lepage took ‘a threemonth sabbatical’ which would be ‘his first real vacation in 10 years’.48 Out of curiosity, I asked Lepage what he got up to in those months. His answer – and look of horror – is revealing. ‘I never would have taken a day off ’, he insists, ‘a couple of projects cancelled at the last minute, and a movie. It all happened at the same time, it created this three-month gap’.49 ‘I don’t think it was a turning point’, he reflects, but the involuntary hiatus provided timely opportunities: I travelled. I remember going to Iceland. Spent a lot of time reading and seeing other people’s shows and feeling very comfortable not doing anything for the first time in my life. In a musical score, there are silences that are essential if you want to restart the melody again. And I  guess the 90s were so busy, I  was doing so many things, so I  never had a silence for things to kind of echo back into position, so it certainly changed a lot of stuff. Something was more . . . And I remember writing – I remember going to Las Vegas – I did a road trip with a couple of friends of mine, went on a two-week road trip in the desert. And I remember writing a journal, I’d never written a journal before, and what I liked about writing a journal – it only lasted six months – was that I had the impression of hearing my voice again, as if I  had lost my voice because I  was involved in so many things. And I remember taking a decision from then, and I came back to Ex Machina, and I said ‘From now on, if we’re going to be working with another company it has to be a co-production.’ And it came from that silence, it came from that writing down of stuff, and suddenly, going ‘My God, I have a voice’.50

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Making The Far Side of the Moon Although Lepage’s travels brought him into contact with ‘geo-poetry’ that directly fed later works – Iceland, The Ring Cycle (2010); Las Vegas, Spades (2011); and the desert pilgrimage, Hearts (2013)  – the major regenerating factor in this period is Lepage’s first devised collaboration with dramaturg Peder Bjurman – The Far Side of the Moon (2000). Bjurman had pitched the original idea to Lepage – on ‘a piece of paper’, he says – proposing to explore the ancient ‘idea of the moon as a mirror, a reflective surface that makes us look at ourselves from another position’. Crucially, it was Bjurman, Lepage says, who ‘convinced me to come back to acting’. Having turned his back on performing, Lepage was loathe to start work on a European tour; ‘I wasn’t looking forward to that’, he reflects. However, the ‘tour completely woke me up’, he says; ‘I rediscovered the work, and I rediscovered audiences, and I rediscovered there were actually people who actually liked and identified with what I was doing’.51 So who didn’t like what Lepage was doing? ‘I’d been convinced by critics that I was not an actor’, he remembers, and ‘for them that’s mainly because of Elsinore’.52 Fricker writes that, in 2001, Lepage ‘banned journalists from a press conference’ aimed at promoting Far Side in Montréal. The ‘critics to whom he had refused entry started to raise a public fuss’, to which Lepage responded by cancelling the press conference, and saying that ‘he did not need the press to sell his shows’.53 I asked Lepage about the incident, and if he still reads his reviews. ‘I do’, he says, even if I don’t always agree, I do read it, and I try to see if it’s right, and I try to correct, and that should be part of the dialogue, and it should influence the work, and I’m all for that. But we’re allowed to not invite the press – we’re allowed to say, ‘No, I’m not giving interviews’ – you’re allowed to say ‘I’m giving an interview to you, but not to you’  – but people don’t dare because . . . I’ll be here all day if I  speak about my relationship with the press!54

Regardless of tensions, Far Side – which started life under the astrological working title The 12th House  – garnered ‘rave reviews’ in September 2000 at the Henson International puppet Theatre Festival in New  York.55 In 2001, it would win the Paul Hébert Award for Best Actor, and sweep the board in London – winning the Time Out award for Best Play, the Evening Standard award for Best Play, the Barclay’s theatre award for Best Touring Production and the Critics Circle theatre award for Best Director. Far Side

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

was still winning awards six years later, receiving the award for Best Foreign Production at Russia’s Golden Mask Festival in April 2007.56 It would become Ex Machina’s most performed work – approaching 500 performances, before it was revived (2017) – and undoubtedly a major factor in Lepage’s receipt of the Canadian Governor General’s 2009 Performing Arts Award for ‘outstanding contribution to the cultural life of the country’.57 Far Side would also be a much-needed financial success. Bernatchez explains that Lepage’s one-man shows are financially successful for two reasons. Robert is on stage for a certain amount of time before being replaced, that’s very attractive to presenters. They’re one-man shows, so the whole crew is about ten people. I couldn’t believe it, the first time he told me he wanted to do a one-man show. The ones I  saw from him 15  years ago – the crew was about three people – now we need a small army of 10 people, plus three, four, five, six locals during performances. But still that’s less than any other project we do.58

Given its success, Lepage’s rationale for upgrading the piece is noteworthy. In 2012, he stepped in to cover a week-long run in Vancouver, finding that the ‘whole space race – the USSR versus America – that just years ago was still in our mythology’ was ‘completely absent – it didn’t resonate at all’: The audiences I was talking to – it was pre-history for them. The power of the show used to be this extraordinary balance between the big ‘H’ of History and the small ‘h’ of history. People followed this space race thing  – and at the same time there was this trivial family story they identified with. So it had a delicate balance, and people were moved on every front. But then – because of this capital H thing – the audience in Vancouver didn’t seem to have the references. It’s like talking about the Second World War after the Gulf War – and everything.59

As with the Trilogy revival, we see how the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm  – which Ex Machina narratives rely on  – is sensitive to contextual change. The first phase in developing Bjurman’s idea was research. Buzz Aldrin’s book on life post-lunar landing was significant, leading to contact with Aldrin himself – whose offer to perform in the project himself was politely declined. Lepage tells me that he researched ‘why we went to the moon’. It ‘wasn’t to discover the moon’, he says, but ‘to have a vantage point to look at ourselves’. He discovered that in 1969 people ‘were much more moved

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by the first Earth rise they saw’ than they were by the lunar landing itself. This struck a chord with Bjurman’s idea. ‘We’re not interested in another world’, Lepage realized; ‘we are interested in another world if it looks like us’ – and ‘that’s how the prologue was written’.60 The first phase of practical work must ‘start with chaos’, Lepage says. I ask him to unpack this. Chaos at the beginning means starting with ‘a mishmash of stuff that you don’t really know anything about’ because ‘there’s no need to explore something you’ve already found and already know’. Through experiment, he tells me, ‘one of these things will be more eloquent than another, and you’ll start to discard stuff you don’t need’. Lepage illustrates this by discussing the mirrored wall running the width of the stage in Far Side’s design. He had sawed a number of symmetrical objects in two, and put them on the mirror to create ‘the illusion that it is lost in space’. He had placed himself ‘against the mirror so you would see half of my body’ to create the illusion of floating in space. Although ‘these ideas ended up in Eonnagata [2008]’, we ‘were doing all the wrong things,’ he remarks.61 Frustrated, Lepage contemplated rejecting the mirror. But that emotion would lead to a crucial breakthrough. ‘It was a tough show for me psychologically’, Lepage states: I was indulging in stuff I’d never done before, and a lot of things I was against. I  was going  – ‘Why am I  doing this? This is tacky. This is melodramatic’. And I hated my show. We had a couple of weeks ahead of us – and I was going, ‘I can’t, this is shit, it’s horrible’. And I remember coming back home and being really, really depressed. And I remember my boyfriend Kevin saying ‘That’s because you’re a vain person. It’s all vanity’ – because he’s Buddhist, and vanity makes you suffer. And he was talking about vanity, and vanity, and vanity. And then I went – ‘That’s what the show is about, it’s about vanity, and that’s why the mirror is there’. And suddenly that idea of vanity just glued everything thematically in the show. It’s why there was one brother who is so vain, and another brother who goes to the gym and looks at himself in the mirror. It solved so many things that whatever we did with the mirror, whatever its use, it carried within it the theme of vanity. And suddenly the mirror started to be more eloquent, and started to give its fruits.62

Bjurman describes how Far Side’s narrative gravitated towards the story of the brothers, and the ‘auto-fiction’ of Lepage’s ‘personal story’; Lepage had recently lost his mother, and that ‘subject matter came into the rehearsal room more and more, and became part of the story’. The transformation of what Bjurman admits was an ‘intellectual and abstract’ proposal, into ‘a

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smaller and more personal project’ changed Far Side significantly, but the ideas of self-reflection ‘were all kept in one way or another’.63 Bjurman’s collaboration on Far Side is an important moment in the evolution of Ex Machina’s structure. While he plays down his credit as project originator, the success of the project leads to further collaborations, and the increasing focus on narrative he brings to the table should not be underestimated. Moreover, Bjurman is a remarkably rigourous dramaturg, and research preparation becomes even more accentuated in Ex Machina’s process. Additionally, the practice of directly pitching ideas to Lepage increases and develops, sharing leadership and creative responsibility across collaboration. Lepage had previously worked successfully with a number of dramaturgs, but Bjurman’s influence would be transformative. Jean-Sébastien Côté also cemented his collaborative relationship with Lepage through Far Side. Côté worked on Far Side, he says, as ‘a soundman’, rather than as a composer. Lepage had commissioned an original score from Laurie Anderson, but she was unavailable to collaborate in Québec, so Ex Machina were looking for someone who could edit, adapt and sequence the material during rehearsals. ‘So that’s how I got in’, Côté tells me. Previously, much of Lepage’s work was accompanied by live music. Côté’s work on Far Side would show Lepage the potential of improvising with ‘pro tools’ to gather music ‘and play around with it to fit [the] show’. Côté instinctively selected John Coltrane’s Naima (1959) to underscore one of the puppet sequences in the play, for instance. Its mood ‘works with the heart’, he says, and ‘era wise it works’ – but ‘the sound was too nice’. He reworked the track, adding a layer of ‘record scratches’ and ‘huge delay to make it dreamy – and then it worked’. Almost like a costume, the sound needed to be distressed to create both a time-shift on stage, and support the interaction of the live body and the puppet object. Such patentage ‘defined our relationship’ from the beginning, Côté reflects; ‘I don’t know if Robert wanted to change his way of working, if it’s a conscious decision, or if it’s just the way it evolved. But that’s the way our relationship started’ – and again, this relationship would be transformative.

Dramatic devices and the architecture of convergence Reading the structure, devices and techniques of Far Side helps in identifying key elements of Ex Machina’s praxis. This is a concrete narrative that builds powerful convergences of themes and meanings in layers, creating an extended passage sequence for audiences, and illustrating many principles of architectural aesthetics. The first of these strategies to recall is the

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proposition – crucial in floating the core contradiction for audiences, and in animating concepts. Discussing Far Side in 2001, Lepage stated his preference for work which ‘starts slowly’, giving audiences time to ‘sink into the proposition’. Theatre, he says, must ‘welcome people at their rhythm’ and invite spectators ‘into your way of telling a story’. This also explains why Lepage begins as himself when solo; ‘there has to be non-acting’ in order to allow the spectator to share story. ‘I don’t act’, he says  – ‘there’s no acting before maybe the fourth, fifth scene’ – instead, he spends ‘time explaining things’. Eventually, a moment comes to ‘convey an emotion or an idea’.64 These remarks show Lepage tentatively outlining structural preferences in narrative. By the time of Ex Machina (2007), the proposition is described as ‘omnipresent in the works of the company’ – functioning ‘to superimpose an intimate and mundane frame over major historical events’.65 The proposition is a particular type of narrative convention – a kind of prologue characterized as non-mimetic, slow in pace, and stating contradictions so as to bring key concepts to life. These principles – and Bjurman’s original pitch – are evident in Far Side’s opening proposition: [I]‌n the 20th century, the first Soviet space probe circled the moon and sent back images of its hidden face . . . People were astounded to discover that the moon had a second face, one that was much more scored and battered . . . Some NASA scientists called it ‘the disfigured side of the moon’. That irony on the part of the Americans, however, was perhaps due to the fact that the prominent features on the dark side of the moon were named after Soviet cosmonauts, poets and inventors. Tonight’s performance is inspired to some extent by the competition between these two peoples, acting as a touchstone for this tale of two brothers, each of whom constantly sees in the other’s gaze a mirror reflecting his own wounds and his own vanity.66

The proposition also gives crucial direction to characterization. Acting is instantly framed as acting, rather than as a representation. Starting as oneself declares that character will be a function of the performance, rather than a mimetic presence. Indeed, we can think of character as a receptive practice in Lepage’s work – causing the spectator a problem of meaning, which draws her into particular ways of reading performance. For the original Trilogy, Lepage developed Pierre Lamontagne,67 a character deliberately constructed as

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina an artist[,]‌which allows us to place him almost anywhere, in almost any circumstances. He is a very flexible, very mobile character – a blank character, in a way. He provides the link between the story and the audience. His naive approach towards the events he encounters reflects the spectator’s position . . . through his curiosity and the discoveries he makes, such a character becomes a doorway or, better yet, a key for the audience, who therefore identify more easily with him and can use him to gain access to the play’s core.68

Character in Far Side is also a partnership between actor and spectator and a crucial invitation through the ‘doorway’ and into the passage sequence of the performance. This is particularly the case in Lepage’s solo work, where the doubling of roles – in this case, the bereaved brothers Phillippe and André – further highlights character as a function, rather than as a real presence. The contradictions and concepts initiated in the proposition are layered onto objects in Far Side, in particular the door of a washing machine that is set into the back wall. The process begins immediately after the proposition; Phillippe is washing clothes, but then, unexpectedly, he is sucked through the door of the machine. This theatrical surprise initiates Far Side’s convention of object-motivated action – although ideas that are subsequently attached to the door are more often than not projected onto it. A goldfish bowl, the earth from space, and a clock all appear within its circle. Inscribed on the same object, these concepts – spaceships, the rotation of the earth, our measurement of time, the goldfish swimming – are made to overlap. Layering ideas onto the same object invites us to make connections between those ideas, which become more and more complex over the course of the performance. The spectator interprets this growing network of meanings, constructing their own passage sequence through the journey of the performance. In Far Side, this process of layering reaches a number of peaks. One of them centres around Phillippe’s research, stemming from his failed PhD project. To his delight, he has been invited to Russia to give a lecture, but, confused by the time difference, he arrives late, and finds only an empty conference hall. He has travelled thousands of miles just to miss his one moment of recognition. At this point, the door of the washing machine at the back of the space has a clock face projected on it. In his speech, Phillippe compares human existence to that of a fish’s, suggesting that we go round in circles, under the delusion that we will find new vistas. He proposes building a tower looking out into space on the far side of the moon, negating the narcissism of space travel by forcing us to look out into the void. And he compares the moon to a parent, protecting us, but simultaneously harming us by blocking the void from view, but which nevertheless is the antidote to

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humanity’s narcissism. As he speaks about humanity living under illusions of freedom – we are like the goldfish in its bowl – the clock disappears, replaced by an image of a goldfish. Each inscription of a concept upon the door builds towards the completion of an analogy between Phillippe’s personal story, the human condition and the space race. This convergence of ideas results in a surplus of meaning that connects microcosm and macrocosm, producing distinctive results. Such peaks of meaning reflect the feeling of a ‘universe in a small room’ described by Laurie in the Trilogy.69 Although these are not traditional narrative climaxes, they occupy similar positions towards the end of performances. Lepage remarks that his intention when devising is ‘to find a subject that has a multitude of possibilities that can be divided into different avenues all converging into one point [and] [t]hat was the case with The Dragons’ Trilogy’.70 We can understand these peaks of meaning as points of convergence, producing distinctive affective responses, and set in a position similar to that of conventional dramatic crisis. As with the proposition, convergence sees Lepage further acknowledge structural preferences for narrative. This is crucial, because such structures heavily influence audience responses, and make demands on dramaturgy in order to be realized. One way to appreciate this is by considering Lepage’s approach to language. ‘I have an idea’, he says. I say it in a language that people don’t understand so they’re interested to know what it’s all about. I say it again, but in another language they don’t understand. But they understand a little more of it. They start to build up the show with me. It’s very active. It’s like saying the same thing over and over again, but with different images. People associate words and senses and objects and imagery. They associate all of that on the same idea, the same theme.71

This packing of meanings into images, characters or objects during performance constitutes a process of semiotic condensation.72 When this accumulation of meanings reaches saturation point it becomes overwhelming and affective. By this I mean such depth of meaning produces an empathic response because we comprehend and feel an emotional reality. Far Side concludes with one such moment. A  wall of mirrors faces the auditorium, set at the correct angle to reflect whatever is on the floor of the stage out towards the audience. Phillippe is on the floor, ‘sitting’ on one of a row of tipped over chairs. In the mirror, it appears as if he is sitting ordinarily. On the stage, he is on his back, on a chair laid flat, head pointing towards the audience. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata plays and Lepage rolls slowly

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

across the floor  – making Phillippe appear weightless in the mirror, as if floating in space. We see both actor and character, simultaneously – Lepage’s physical labour in using every muscle to create flowing movement, and Phillippe’s passage through bereavement, gathered into a final poetic image of weightlessness. Phillippe may be adrift or free; lost or released; orphaned or authenticated – and so on. The range of potential meanings is multiplied by the contradictions presented by three-dimensional and two-dimensional bodies. Such contradictions create what David George calls ‘a relational axis’. They ‘establish simultaneously both the identity and the difference of the two terms’, but also generate a ‘third element  – the relational axis itself  – [which] can either collapse the two into identity or create out of difference a third state’.73 By bringing contradictions into play and stimulating the spectator to make connections between ideas, such narratives offer the challenge of relating seemingly unrelatable ideas, events or people. The dramaturgical function of building meanings up to saturation point is thematic consolidation – the generation of a moment where the connections join to resolve the narrative. These are akin to dramatic climaxes; on Lepage’s terms, they are climaxes of convergence – more than just a dramatic event, these are moments where microcosm and macrocosm meet and become visible. These processes give narrative shape to Far Side – forming what we might call its architecture of convergence. The climax of convergence can produce a distinctive form of cathartic response. As noted earlier, this relies on a dispersal of the controlling power of single-point perspective. This is an affect characterized by profound empathy, producing deep intellectual and emotional appreciation of differences between ourselves and others. When that affect does not arise, convergence merely produces Taylor’s ‘theatre of coincidences’.74 Lepage’s narrative style is now so close to being its own genre, perhaps, that it generates disappointment if it does not meet its own conventions. Although the structures, devices and techniques of this narrative style are latent, or developed, in previous works, the success of Far Side suggests that they are pressed into service here in a particularly effective fashion. The key difference, I suggest, is that in this instance these principles are brought into close harmony with architectural aesthetics. The design of the piece was a stage-width frame which rotated to show its reversed side, to which different surfaces could be bolted  – walls, chalkboards, mirrors, sliding doors and so on. At the beginning of the piece, Phillippe is apparently laundering his dead mother’s clothes, prior to donation. Later, he is seen discussing the theme of vanity in relation to the idea of building a space elevator tall enough to reach into space  – a radically alternative

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option to the narcissism of rocket-propelled space travel. Later, he is seen periodically taking the elevator to his mother’s apartment, where he brings her to life through the personal effects she has left behind. All of the spaces he enters act upon him to produce certain kinds of behaviour; this is a world of active architecture. The ending returns Phillippe to the launderette in the basement of his mother’s apartment block, as we have seen. Looking down on him from above, it is as if the verticality of the narrative reflects the verticality of the building, and has produced  the velocity Phillippe needs to ascend each level and reach zero gravity. The  architectural gesture of the scenography is that of physical ascent. The building itself has become the space elevator, and Phillippe’s stages of grief have become the stages of his very own launch into space  – the microcosm and the macrocosm are joined. As an open character, the audience accompanies him on this extended passage sequence upwards – supported by numerous puppets and objects – until various relational axes have built up to create convergence. Despite its eclectic dramaturgy, this unity of metaphorical and actual architecture is a key factor in creating a concrete narrative of remarkable richness.

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Québec stories

Having established convergence as a decisive principle of narrative style, Lepage would begin leading Ex Machina to search for a distinctly Québecois narrative form. Leanore Liebling discusses Michel Bélair’s 1973 account of the ‘nouveau théâtre Québécois’, and its potential as a ‘site of cultural affirmation’. This is embodied in playwright Claude Levac’s assertion that the emergence of a specifically Québecois narrative structure would affirm that Québec was a country, and not a province; ‘When Québec playwrights have found an armature, a theatrical structure that is our very own and the equal of our collective dorsal spine, we will not only have found an authentic dramaturgy which is our own, but also a country’.1 Lepage, perhaps, did not consciously set out to find ‘a country’, but the distinctive architecture of convergence in Ex Machina’s work, and the patentage present in concrete narrative, suggest these international collaborations may produce Québec stories. Unsurprisingly, the mid-2000s saw Ex Machina deepening its practice by marrying narrative experiment with interest in contemporary sociopolitical themes. Lepage says, ‘What we do is theatre. But we are incredibly influenced by film narrative. Because that’s the narrative people know about’.2 Bjurman would return to Ex Machina for The Andersen Project (2005), activating the decisive influence of film narrative yet further. Andersen was prescient regarding racial unrest in France, concluding with Parisien rioting – just as violent divisions emerged in the city. The Busker’s Opera (2004) and La Casa Azul (2001) explored ideas informed by revolutionary politics;  Eonnagata (2009) took as its central character a gender-fluid spy who had undermined Russian and British governments in the eighteenth century; and even KÀ (2004)  – a fantasy narrative written by Lepage for Cirque du Soleil’s family market – uses coup and counter-coup as its story arc. Collaborative partnerships with Québecois or Francophone artists would expand in this period. KÀ would be Cirque’s first foray into narrative circus, and would extend architectural aesthetics significantly. Eonnagata was a similarly highprofile collaboration, with star dancers from France and Canada, Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant. La Casa Azul was Québecois actor Sophie Faucher’s first play, and Lepage would direct her in the production.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Art and politics: La Casa Azul and The Busker’s Opera As a biographical narrative of an anti-hero  – the iconic Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo (1907–54) – La Casa Azul is a distinctively Ex Machina project. Lepage, typically, began by discovering the ‘geo-poetry’ of Kahlo’s ‘blue house’ and Mexico City. When Faucher proposed her thirty-minute radio play as a basis for collaboration Lepage readily recognized the potential for a ‘real collaboration . . . [allowing] for a marriage of our different interests and of language and image’.3 However, whereas dispersal of perspective typically flavours Ex Machina narratives with contradiction, Azul is more greatly enclosed in single-point perspective. Kahlo suffered polio as a child, and in ‘Scene 3:  The Bath #I’, she recounts the ‘collision between a bus and tram’ which left her in constant pain: The shock threw us out through the front of the bus, and the hand rail on the tram went . . . through my left thigh and came out through my vagina . . . That was the day I became a woman: fucked by a tramline. It’s a terrible thing to learn about life in a flash, to be shown the world by lightning. I’ve got used to living in pain now, to my life being clear as ice; but it was like suddenly knowing everything, everything, in seconds.4

These intense memories of suffering fold Azul into Kahlo’s viewpoint, and – somewhat paradoxically given its precise detail – the piece lacked nuance. The problematic relationship of Kahlo and the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera brought some tension to the piece. ‘You’ve got so many notches on your brush I’m surprised it can still fucking paint’, says Kahlo after Rivera beds her sister: ‘me giving one to some bitch means about as much as me taking a piss’, he retorts.5 However, while tension was established between characters, contradiction was not. This might have produced a more inflected narrative, but the centrality of Kahlo’s perspective meant Rivera’s misogyny painted him into a corner as a two-dimensional, sex-addicted villain. The contradictions within Kahlo herself may have been thought to provide sufficient dramatic energy. Like Celestine, Kahlo is a female anti-hero character built on contradiction. Her suffering, Lepage says, ‘expressed itself in work that was sensual and alive. She was a person who had a huge appetite for life and was full of joy. She wasn’t a fragile flower. She was a big, vulgar woman with missing teeth who smoked and drank, had affairs – including one with Trotsky  – and gobbled up life’.6 For Lepage, Azul is ‘very much a passion play’ connected to ‘the Buddhist idea that in pain you can find beauty’. Kahlo, he says, ‘was the incarnation of the idea that out of pain can come

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positive energy’, and he wanted to try ‘to show that on stage’. Pain and art ‘go together’, he says; ‘you can’t separate them’.7 Indeed, early performances were billed as Apassionada (Montréal and Madrid), although the piece is listed as La Casa Azul on Ex Machina’s website. The contradiction of pain and beauty helped build Kahlo as a character – but this was not enough to create the scope and complexity of engagement of Ex Machina’s other biographical narratives. One factor contributing to Azul’s lack of nuance was its design. Carl Fillion worked cleverly with the potentials of a gauze screen across the proscenium, throughout. Sonoyo Nishikawa designed the lighting. The gauze required a repositioning of the side-stage legs, which produced difficulties in lighting as it increased the number of shadow casting objects beneath the rig. Nishikawa notes a characteristic experience of working with Ex Machina is that their choice of spatial configuration invariably produces new, and rewarding, challenges in designing light.8 Both Fillion and Nishikawa would need to provide innovative solutions to creative problems in the mode of patenteux. Together, gauze and lighting supported many visually striking effects and transitions, and stood as a metaphor of looking back through the mists of time. This idea of going beyond the veil of death was built through semiotic condensation, with costumes and objects acquiring layers of significance. Faucher opened and closed Azul as a tourist visiting Kahlo’s house  – transforming into the character through make-up  – and relinquishing her at the end by shedding her costume. Through her artefacts  – her diary, a photograph, her paintbox – she brings Kahlo back from the dead. A ritual sense of Día de los Muertos further permeates the work because Kahlo regularly interacts with a character representing death – La Pelona. Although the architecture of convergence was present, the gauze created too much distance between stage and spectator, diminishing the empathetic response Azul hinted at. Notwithstanding, the intersecting lives of Kahlo, Rivera and Leon Trotsky served to pose complex questions regarding the relationship between art and politics. ‘Art is Propaganda!!!’ Rivera declares – ‘The question is; propaganda for what?’9 For Kahlo, art is propaganda for Marxism. ‘All my life, I  have lived to serve the Revolution’, she says  – sheltering Trotsky from Stalin, and putting pressure on Mexico’s president to ‘grant him asylum’. Through Trotsky, Kahlo declares, she ‘came to love The People’.10 Later, when Rivera paints a mural in the Rockefeller Centre (1933), and includes ‘a portrait of Lenin’ without consultation, he is paid off, and the mural destroyed.11 Lyn Gardner suggests that Kahlo represents for Lepage the ‘pain and suffering’ of the Mexican people, and a woman who ‘effectively turned herself into a flag’.12 The vulnerability of artists and their work in the face of ideological hostility

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is an important political theme explored here – although this fragility pales against the historical fact of Trotsky’s brutal assassination. Between 2001 and 2003, Azul made a significant tour of Europe and the United States, and was presented in Mexico City and Guanajuato towards the end of its run.13 Azul is a major bridge into the Hispanic world, therefore, and also a precursor to the restaging of La Celestine in Spain in 2004. Although its proposition concludes by saying that ‘the real revolution’ in Mexico took place in ‘The Art of Diego Rivera and of Frida Kahlo’ – indicating the prioritization of artistic questions over political ones – Azul nevertheless opened a space to explore art and suffering in relation to key political tensions of the twentieth century. These themes remain visible in Ex Machina’s reworking of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera as The Busker’s Opera (2004). Noteworthy in reflecting Lepage’s continued commitment to music theatre, Jean St-Hilaire describes Busker’s as ‘a Songspiel’ – a play where ‘all the action takes place in songs’ – a remarkable sixty-four in number.14 Busker’s transposed Gay’s characters and narrative from London’s eighteenth-century criminal substrata, ‘to the underworld of the music industry’ today:  ‘Somewhere between road trip and rock show, classical concert and the zydeco of the bayou, between the street musician and the sharks who seek to hold the keys to power, fame and fortune, the show concerns itself with the artistic freedom that remains after the steamroller of the music industry has driven by.’15 Although the role of the artist in society is somewhat hackneyed as a theme, Azul and Busker’s do present a more seasoned view of art, exploring artistic freedom in connection with the ideas of artistic exploitation. Notwithstanding, the political haunts these narratives, rather than being fully part of their fabric. Nevertheless, Stéphane Despatie’s analysis of Busker’s opening in Montréal cites its ‘festive atmosphere’ as ‘supporting a dramatic discourse able to carry forward a social critique’ – describing it as ‘a happy mixture of talent, substance and entertainment’.16 However much of a background presence it is, the political dimension of Ex Machina’s work clearly grows within these narratives.

Dance with three hands: Eonnagata Ex Machina deployed dance from the outset, using the Japanese dance form Butoh in Ota (1994), tap dance, folk dance and a blended form of ‘Gurdjieff dances and Meyerhold movement sequences’ in Geometry (1998), an upsidedown tango in Zulu Time (1999), stylization of Tai Chi in the Trilogy (2003) and trance in Andersen (2005). Indeed, Ex Machina states clearly that ‘Dance increasingly plays a significant role in the work of Ex Machina’.17 As

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previously noted, Lepage says that ‘[w]‌hatever you do on stage has to be the echo or prolongation of the human body’, and ‘[i]f you’re going to be in a world where . . . the vocabulary of the body is going to be different – then the props, the light and the set have to be the extension of that idea’.18 Dance is no exception. Indeed, for ‘dance’ we can read scenographic acting here; the use of the body to extend the vocabulary of performance through interactions with scenography is a crucial element in Lepage’s project to reinvigorate the theatre. This would be no less the case with Eonnagata (2009). The basic contradiction of the piece is the bringing together of a famous spy from eighteenth-century Europe – the Chevalier d’ Eon – and the onnagata codes of female impersonation in Kabuki – noted in Ex Machina as long-standing interests of Lepage’s.19 The working connection between these elements is the narrative of the Chevalier’s life. Although biologically male, the Chevalier regularly cross-dressed, and lived the later part of his/her life as a woman.20 By ‘starting a dance career at 50’, Birnie writes, Lepage would undergo his own transformation – losing ‘30 pounds in a year’ while working on the piece.21 Although Lepage had been sitting on the idea of working on the Chevalier, the piece was jointly conceived with Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant. Born in Paris and Ottawa, respectively, both had reached the very top in dance and choreography, but they were also unconventional and had themselves collaborated regularly since 2003. Lepage had met Guillem in 2006, when she approached him after a performance of Andersen at the Sydney Festival – ‘If by chance you need a dancer, I’m here’, she said.22 Lepage assumed ‘she wanted him to direct a project’, and committed to it; it was not until the point of no return had been reached, he says, that ‘Sylvie interrupted me and said you’ve got it wrong. Russell and I  want you to dance with us’.23 Maliphant brought with him the lighting designer Michael Hulls, who he had worked with since 1994, and Guillem brought fashion designer Alexander McQueen on board. Hulls’s lighting style matched up with Lepage’s expectation that technology would extend from the body, and this harmonized with architectural aesthetics. Judith Mackrell writes that Hulls ‘not only re-casts the stage with his own extraordinary architectural patterns of light, but seemingly redefines the dancer’s physical appearance’.24 McQueen’s ‘extraordinary fantasy of gender-bending, time-travelling costumes’ would similarly extend the gender-fluid body of the Chevalier into the design environment.25 Predictably, given Eonnagata’s high-profile collaborators, it received considerable press attention, and sold out its opening at Sadler’s Wells, London, in February 2009 (returning June 2009 and July 2010). Possibly in response to mixed reviews, the structure of later versions was changed to be more conventionally dramatic.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

The Chevalier’s biography provided structure and episodic progression. The production storyboard divides it into three phases, with Maliphant launching the ‘Gentleman’ Chevalier, Guillem developing the ‘Young Lady’ Chevalier and Lepage concluding the trajectory as the ‘Old Lady’ Chevalier.26 Eonnagata built towards convergence using images of the body formed in relation to multipurposed rectangular frames. Clearly defined area lighting  – movers projected geometric floor shapes which would frequently morph or shift  – acted as similar motivations for movement. The effects of these architectural gestures on the body were visible, generating a concrete narrative of forces marshalling the Chevalier’s gender fluidity. Concepts of gender-restricting frameworks converged in a solo danced by Lepage as the older Chevalier, in female period costume. This used a mirror as an object to pack meanings into. The mirror enabled the production of a conjoined image in which the Chevalier appeared both male and female, and the themes of the piece converged in the image. Semiotic condensation thus enabled the contradiction within the character  – identities both male and female  – to become visible in the work’s most distinctive moment. As Guardian dance critic Judith Mackrell wrote, ‘[S]‌parks of the performers’ individual greatness illuminate the action . . . in the last unravelling moments’; however Eonnagata ‘never quite added up to the sum of its stellar parts’.27 Eonnagata is nevertheless noteworthy in modelling a changing economy in collaboration through its two-year turnaround. The ground shifted, probably due to Lepage’s enhanced confidence in working directly on narrative. Indeed, Guillem describes how ‘working by instinct’ through improvisation ‘allowed ideas and images to develop by association’  – meaning that ‘right away Robert could see the story in what we were doing. He could build detail so that suddenly it would all start to make sense’. Furthermore, Mackrell describes how, as the piece was shaped for performance, ‘differences between the performers’ expectations and style started to form’. Lepage reflects on this positively:  ‘I’ve actually learned a lot about theatre from seeing the discipline of dance, the way it tells stories, the way it’s put together.’28 Lepage, then, would extend his vocabulary of performance through Eonnagata. ‘You forget what your craft is about’, Lepage tells me, ‘until you meet somebody who wants to work with you because they want to do what you do – for the reasons that you’ve forgotten were your reasons’. Guillem wanted ‘to tell a story’, but Lepage would need to respect Maliphant’s approach as well. ‘I’ve re-learned about my craft, but through Sylvie’, Lepage says: [W]‌e were always on the edge of the abstraction of contemporary dance – which is all about energy and all these other things – and this

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storytelling  – which usually goes through words and dialogue. And those weren’t always permitted. That, for me, redefined the parameters of what it is to tell a story on stage – because we were always kind of pushing it beyond the edge on one side, and beyond the other edge. We were always kind of navigating like that, and there’s a truth in that.29

Eonnagata, then, although not critically lauded, is a crucial staging post in the development of concrete narrative. Lepage says that it is ‘[i]‌n denying frameworks [that] we have developed our approach’.30 Yet Bunzli recognizes the ‘structural, thematic, scenographic, and aesthetic elements that have become touchstones for Lepage’,31 and Giesekam similarly notes ‘recurring character types, narrative patterns and thematic concerns’.32 Frameworks may be denied; but they can also be produced. The ideas of concrete narrative (which connects story and space through the action of the performer) and the architecture of convergence (which describes some of the structural preferences embedded in Ex Machina narratives) both show the company producing its own narrative frameworks. Another crucial aspect of structural preference is the alternation of naturalistic and nonnaturalistic elements. This allows space for different disciplines to enter the stage, even as it creates the problem of demanding fluid transitions between those disciplines. The ubiquitous presence of transitions in Ex Machina’s theatre thus places Québec’s culture of patentage – of customization driven by need – at the heart of these stories, and their creation. We might usefully recall Levac’s argument that discovering a Québecois ‘theatrical structure’ entails the realization of Québec as a nation through its culture.33 The architecture of convergence, the intimacy of story and space in concrete narratives and the pattern of transition between disciplines suggest that Ex Machina are working towards just this. The question of how far Ex Machina narratives are Québec narratives merits further investigation.

Narrative terms: The story of the story of the storyteller The Andersen Project (2005) is a useful lens in such exploration, and a story of no less than three storytellers – Hans Christian Andersen, lead character Frédéric and Lepage. Such a layered narrative reflects layers of process. Bjurman begins with heavy research, generating a patchwork of potential ideas.34 His role as dramaturg gives him more responsibility to handle ideas and historical events effectively – and a lot of homework. Such depth produces an excess of material, but this patchwork ‘creates a base layer underneath’ each project, he says. It’s an important point; Ex Machina’s

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collaborative process is grounded upon solid foundations  – spontaneity and intuition are the result of legwork. Rigourous dramaturgical research becomes the subtext of collaboration, and Bjurman says, apparently redundant ideas often resurface as a result. Bjurman and Lepage share similar dramatic eyesight, largely agreeing on what ideas to explore or reject. Collaborators pitch their ideas to Lepage throughout. Although this is emphasized more at the beginning, Bjurman co-wrote Andersen with Lepage and Marie Gignac, and he identifies the ongoing pitching of ideas as a key component in Ex Machina’s process. As the company’s way of working develops – and quickens – the practice of collaborationthrough-proposal increases in significance. Clearly, given he originated Far Side in a pitch, Bjurman is key in this. Bjurman shows how Lepage devolves responsibility to collaborators, in a process of continuous (work often continues through meals, he says) collective writing that continues even on tour. Bjurman’s focus on narrative, moreover, brings crucial energy to Ex Machina’s developing narrative style at this time. Andersen was indeed notable for its wit – ‘I wrote all the punchlines’, Bjurman says wryly – but it would be defined by solo performance. Playing multiple characters in solo pieces, Bjurman says, means that ‘we’re always stepping in and out of fiction, in one way or another’.35 Consequently, Bjurman and Lepage developed a vocabulary to describe ‘the different fictional layers’ of Lepage’s solo work. A ‘1D’ scene, Bjurman tells me, is ‘conference mode’. The proposition is made in this presentational, non-fiction mode of direct address. In ‘2D’, Lepage addresses spectators directly as if they are part of the fiction, or to create ‘a fictional space on stage’. ‘3D’ is a fictional dialogue with other ‘characters on stage’. This vocabulary of ‘different fictional layers’ builds variety and dimension, indicating how Lepage’s ‘Metaphorical storytelling’, where the ‘action that you see is . . . connection, and the connection is a vertical one’,36 might be rendered in practice. These vertical layers of the fictional and the real may also be part of the Québecois ‘theatrical structure’ Levac called for. These layers of narrative are built up in rehearsal. Discussing Andersen with its sound designer Jean-Sébastien Côté reveals both this and developments in collaboration. From Far Side to Andersen ‘was a huge step – night and day’, Côté says.37 Using Ableton Live for the first time enabled Côté to move away from samplers. While this choice puzzles other designers, Ableton gives him the ability to build layers of sound in rehearsal. When Lepage ‘improvises text, he likes to have an ambience’: So if he’s in a park – like in Andersen – he likes to hear the park. Okay, leaves and trees and stuff. With Far Side I would play some sound effects,

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until I decided what kind of sound I wanted, and then it’s fixed. With Ableton, I  can try lots of things while he’s doing it, and play around with it. And I layer stuff a lot – it’s rarely just one sound. The ability to layer stuff, even if it’s really, really simple – just traffic, or park sounds, birds – really makes a difference. And it started in Andersen. Of course the problem is when you build a park scene with 18 tracks, and you go to the next scene which has as many tracks – and you don’t have 16 outputs . . . so I’m constantly fighting with myself!

As Peter Petralia demonstrates, we locate ourselves in response to the ‘physical volume, proportion and depth’ communicated by a sound; ‘spatial sounds’  – such as those Côté describes above  – have ‘sculptural qualities’ which ‘become architectural’ if they convince us of a spatial reality.38 Sound, therefore, is not only crucial in process, but is deployed by Côté in keeping with architectural aesthetics. In some ways Andersen represents a turning point in practice  – but Côté’s remarks reveal both change, and continuity, while locating his work firmly in the mode of the patenteux. It’s easy to forget that ‘The Andersen Project’ sounds like a working title, suggesting work on a theme. We might fairly speculate that it was retained because the musical idea of theme and variation is reflected in the performance. Lepage was commissioned by the Hans Christian Andersen foundation to create a piece commemorating his birthday bi-centenary; Andersen’s main character, Frédéric, has received a parallel commission from the Paris Opéra for a piece based on Andersen’s The Dryad. The narrative thus builds vertically in layers. Stories of storytellers offer yet more layers – Lepage, Frédéric and Andersen – as do those of ‘unauthorized’ storytellers – specifically, a voiceless and faceless African immigrant to Paris, Rashid. The narrative also piles stories on stories, presenting two of Andersen’s fairy tales – The Dryad, and The Shadow. The intricate layers of Andersen produce notable complexity. Although similar in principle to Far Side  – beginning with the proposition, balancing layers of history and History, and structured in alternating styles  – Andersen’s meta-narratives, meta-theatricality and meta-characterization communicate a narrative so layered that we might think of it as more architected, than written. Andersen, as noted, begins with a proposition. Frédéric stands facing away from the actual audience, regarding an upstage screen, upon which the red and gold boxes of the Paris Opéra auditorium are back projected. His own face is projected over the image of the Opéra auditorium via a front-projected live feed. Lepage-Frédéric tells the imaginary Parisian spectators that Andersen is a replacement for their evening’s scheduled entertainment – initiating the meta-theatrical game of layers noted above. The proposition is immediately

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developed further when Lepage dons a hooded top, hiding his face completely, and taking on the role of Rashid. What appears to be a large flat screen rolls down stage, but in a coup de théâtre, Lepage jumps onto it, sticking like a fly to its surface. Using a large-scale infinity curve39 was Bjurman’s idea; he explains its purpose as enabling Lepage to step ‘inside’ a screen, and enter ‘the fictional frame of the piece’.40 Rashid then defaces a projected image of Andersen, adding horns, heart, penis and sunglasses with a spray can. This acts as a visual proposition, inviting us to consider how we approach Andersen as a cultural icon. The perceived shallowness of Andersen’s fairy tales and persona indeed comes under scrutiny, and the concept of revision is given animation in this iconoclastic moment. Lepage believes that this is ‘how best to tell [a]‌story’ – by immersing the spectator’s ‘every sense’ in ‘the show’s argument’, with the form itself becoming ‘an incarnation of the subject and themes’.41 In its opening, developing and closing strategies of narrative proposition, concept animation and convergence, Andersen is a typically Ex Machina narrative, and ultimately an anti-fairy-tale. This is a subversive narrative that inverts traditional, saccharine perceptions to present Andersen as an anti-hero. Given its subversions, reading Andersen against dominant narrative structures is revealing. It ends by reincorporating its opening image – with Frédéric reporting his own death to the Opéra, and revealing that the entire performance was a flashback. Frédéric was already dead at the beginning. The layers of the performance meet in a final convergence that  – given Frédéric’s tone – resigns, as much as resolves, the plot. The blending of live and recorded elements is of special note; Bjurman explains why they did not simply use a recording. Lepage, he says, hates everything that’s not live  – it’s connected to the idea of theatre, and how theatre works, and how you create theatre. It has to be live in the show  – if you know exactly how it’s going to work, it’s boring. It loses interest. It’s always a live feed, as much as possible. Theatre has to happen now – theatre always happens now. Even an image like the end of Andersen – which has recorded and live layers – the quality is that of a live transmission.

We can further explore these layers, and the structures they create, by reading them against conventional narrative structures. Elinor Fuchs uses this approach to develop a reading of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, positioning it against Aristotle’s sequencing of events in Greek tragedy – ‘reversal-recognition-suffering’. Godot is missing scenes of reversal and recognition, ‘yet their very absence gives shape and

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meaning to [its] dramatic narrative; their absence becomes [Godot’s] story itself ’.42 The authority of the Aristotelian pattern does not have to be accepted to be used as a counterpoint; it is, as Ronald Vince argues, an ‘academic construct’ as much as it is a ‘historical phenomenon’ – but it is a useful one.43 Traditional scenes of reversal are recognizable at the end of Andersen, when Frédéric inadvertently discovers documents showing he has been ‘flushed’ from the Paris Opéra, and when his best friend Didier gets together with his ex-girlfriend, Marie. The scene of suffering, however, is often repositioned in the before-time of Ex Machina narratives, somewhat changing the nature of dramatic climax in their work. Suffering incites the action, and ghosts the narrative with its shadow, for example, Frédéric’s relationship breakdown powers his decision to leave Québec for Paris. Convergence is similarly reconfigured, acting as a unique form of recognition scene  – unique because the recognition of converging meanings depends upon the audience, placing structural effectiveness in the hands of the spectator. These adjustments to suffering and recognition scenes show an interesting reconfiguration of conventional narrative structure. Reading Ex Machina narratives against classic plots is similarly revealing. David Carter describes the archetypal plot of the ‘eternal triangle’ as adding ‘depth and complication’ through the introduction of a ‘third party’.44 But here, the triangular pattern is reconfigured as a strategy to produce reflexivity by dispersing perspective across multiple narrative centres and characters. Frédéric, Lepage and Andersen himself constitute the core reflexive triad in Andersen, asking us to consider three stories of storytellers. Frédéric, Marie and Didier form a classic love triangle – which is conflict driven, but crucially remains offstage. Triadic patterns are ubiquitous in Ex Machina narratives – but they are usually layers that generate relational axes, more than they are direct representations of conflict. Another archetypal narrative structure that creates reflexivity is what Carter calls ‘the innocent abroad’. This archetype is ‘generally’ used as a ‘subplot’ in narratives – but here – and elsewhere – the journey of a naive character like Frédéric is promoted to form the narrative spine itself.45 This discussion goes some way to revealing the ways in which Ex Machina narratives are distinctive in their own right. They reconfigure structure, but retain crucial features like reversal scenes; they relegate plots of tension to the offstage, but bring subplot material to the centre. These stories evoke convention, therefore, but they do not always satisfy it  – indicating both their commitment to innovation, and explaining charges of narrative superficiality. Content, as well as form, is revealing. Ex Machina narratives often explore Québecois characters travelling in other countries, foregrounding

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relationships between migrants and host cultures. Such stories consequently plunge their characters  – and to some degree, their spectators  – into negotiating personal and cultural difference. Although a Québecois in Paris might not seem much of an outsider, we should remember that Frédéric is an albino, which, Lepage says, very much positions him as so.46 Moreover, it is not only Frédéric who travels to Paris but also Rashid. In the context of a solo show relying on doubling, Lepage had to play Rashid with his face hidden, and without dialogue. Although one might critique the production for silencing a migrant voice, the extent to which Rashid lacks voice suggests otherwise; exaggerating his silence serves to amplify the physical actions he must perform. These include spraying graffiti over Andersen’s picture, mopping up semen at the peepshow where he works, torching that peepshow  – causing Frédéric’s death  – and these are strong actions that work with his silence to form a subplot expressing his exclusion from society. Although a minor character, Rashid achieves complexity by completing a triad of migrants (along with Frédéric and Andersen) who each encounter Paris as a destabilizing, and even deathly, colonial centre. Rashid is an important aspect of narrative convergence, helping to bring multiple perspectives, depth and complexity to the story. In Andersen, then, we can read a deepening engagement with important contemporary questions like racial exclusion in multicultural societies.

KÀ: Entertainment architecture Lepage’s engagement with narrative is illustrated further by KÀ  – a collaboration as creator and Director for Québec’s Cirque du Soleil, on their first narrative circus. Opening for previews in Las Vegas in October 2004, and officially premiering on 3 February 2005, KÀ also represents Lepage’s most elaborate  – and expensive  – expression of architectural aesthetics. Lepage’s historical engagement with Cirque-trained performers has been noted; but, logistically speaking, KÀ is a Cirque production on a Cirque budget. Ex Machina was not a co-producer. However, I read KÀ as Cirque doing Lepage’s work, rather than Lepage doing Cirque’s, and I include it here, first, because it extends Lepagean architectural aesthetics into the realm of absolute entertainment and commerce, and second, because it influences Ex Machina’s subsequent work. With a design executed by Mark Fisher,47 KÀ’s moving stages – a.k.a., the Sand Cliff and Tatami decks – combine the 360-degree circular movement of the Dream Play cube stage, the multiple planes of Elsinore’s tilting platform, the verticality of Faust and the multiple playing areas of Japanese theatre. The

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KÀ forestage is bordered by a thin path – offering a stylized variation on the Kabuki hanamichi, and the potential for audience proximity. Cirque’s Senior Director for KÀ, Pierre Parisien, describes the impact of the design: What impresses people a lot is the fact that there is no stage. When they come in, there is an empty space. Robert developed the idea for KÀ knowing that he wanted to work with the void. And suddenly this monster appears. And it’s not just a stage that goes up and down, it’s also a stage that tilts, turns, goes up. Robert had that in mind  – to play with this idea of a void, and an empty space, and to have a stage that can be a mountain, can be a beach, can be anything – audiences have never seen that before. And I’m not sure that we’re going to see that again. Because doing KÀ in 2016 would cost double what it cost then.48

With KÀ, and through Cirque, architectural aesthetics arrive at what Ray Winkler of Fisher’s company Stufish calls ‘entertainment architecture’49  – architecture as spectacle. At this level of spectacle, depth of meaning plays second fiddle to entertainment. KÀ’s spectacular qualities are such that it required the remodelling of its venue  – the MGM Grand  – at a cost of $165  million. The Sand Cliff deck alone weighs 80,000 pounds, and the machinery required to lift and control it through 360-degree rotation and 0–100-degree tilt, a further 300,000 pounds. Moreover, the surface of the Sand Cliff has eighty holes for steel shafts, which poke through to provide handholds for acrobats, and create the illusion of arrows hitting their target.50 Only Cirque could marshal this level of finance, and complete such a project. Cirque’s Vegas residencies are always funded in partnership with cash-rich casinos, and KÀ emerged from ten years of joint venture – and earned trust. Their astronomical growth has been powered by these partnerships, and, Lori Wilson writes, they now reach ‘over 70 million spectators in 200 cities on five continents’.51 Considering this in tandem with their joint web announcement (with Grupo Vidanta) of their intention to launch their first theme park in 2018, Cirque are jockeying to become the Disney of the twenty-first century.52 But it is worth remembering that they emerged from relatively humble roots – coming to attention, Brad Auerbach notes, at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, by performing under a multicoloured tent ‘on a parking lot in little Tokyo’, as one of many ‘international cultural presentations on offer’.53 Although now totally transformed, Cirque’s origins mean they still pursue the kind of projects where financial risk would dissuade others. At the time of writing, KÀ has passed 4,000 performances, and plays to an average 85 per cent capacity 407 times a year.54 It has entered popular

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consciousness in the United States, featuring in America’s Got Talent, CSI and sporting events, and it even has its own graphic novel.55 But, Parisien says, it ‘was a huge risk’, because Cirque had no idea if there would be a Vegas audience for a narrative circus. But it is by taking risks, he says, that Cirque has played its part in transforming Las Vegas’s entertainment landscape. Tellingly, Jubilee, the last big ‘showgirl’ revue, closes while I  am in Vegas interviewing Parisien. ‘We did what we wanted to do’, he says, ‘the way we wanted to do it, we did it here, and we hoped that people would like it. And it worked. We found our audience, and people love the show’. The distinctive feature of KÀ is its interdisciplinary interaction between circus and theatre. This interaction is defined by embedding set pieces into a theatrical narrative to create a narrative circus. Lepage worked on KÀ over four years (2000–4), writing the narrative of the show independently, and collaborating in rehearsals to weave set piece circus acts into story events. Parisien tells me that all Cirque pieces have ‘the red thread’  – a thematic unity running through the show – but in KÀ the red thread is much stronger because of its narrative. Parisien tells me that Lepage developed this on paper, and in his mind, before we arrived in rehearsals. He was very well prepared when we started. For him it was important to have a story. A  show that will start Once upon a Time, and that will have an end. Of course there was also a lot of research and development done at the Cirque studio in Montréal, so Robert could continue to nourish his story.

Given that the process of creating KÀ begins with Lepage’s trip to Vegas in the silence of 2000, and occupies the years between his collaborations with Bjurman on Far Side and Andersen, this extensive work as an individual writer is noteworthy – serving to accentuate his focus on narrative still further. Equally noteworthy, after 2005, Lepage would bring Cirque’s practice of using a Director of Creation, alongside a Creative Director, into Ex Machina’s collaborative practice. In KÀ, this role was performed by Guy Caron. Although Lepage’s implementation of this role varies from Cirque’s, this direct influence is striking, and its impact reverberates to the present day. Director of Creation differs from the role of Assistant Director (here, Neilsen Vignola, in his first collaboration with Lepage); Parisien explains: It’s a notion that we have had at Cirque since the origins. The left-hand says, ‘This is what I want to do’, and the right-hand says, ‘Okay, let me see, and let me talk to the right people to make sure that will happen’. Because there’s a lot of people involved – hundreds of technicians, and creators, and assistants. It is unique to Cirque. And one of the roles of the Director

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of Creation will be to recommend artists to the Director and present the best ones. So Robert didn’t have to look at hundreds of DVDs – he just had to look at a handful.56

Writing the myth KÀ brought new practices, but also old habits. The Las Vegas show guide reduces KÀ to two familiar words – ‘Asian Influences’.57 The clearest visual emblem of KÀ’s Asian influences is its costume design. The costumes ‘draw upon an Asian historical influence which, combined with the designers background in fashion, dance and theater, create an entirely modern and unique look’58  – a typically hybrid Cirque style. The depth of abstraction regarding intercultural representation is further demonstrated by the interchangeability of male and female performers; the artists performing the lead roles of boy and girl twins alternate, for example. KÀ, then, is a fantasia – a mythic, abstract collage of Eastern cultures, and even gender – but while this blurring may deflect charges of appropriation, the production’s cultural literacy requires examination. In terms of casting, Parisien confirms that performers are not selected because of their ethnicity, or circus tradition, but on the basis of individual movement style and skill-set – and what these ‘can contribute to the show’. Noriko Takahashi – who plays the Chief Archer’s Daughter – is ethnically Japanese. But, Parisien says, Takahashi’s act has ‘nothing to do with being Japanese’. The role required excellence in baton, so they automatically looked ‘within the Japanese community’ as the strongest baton artists in the world come from Japan. However, while skill is a more primary concern than ethnic authenticity in casting, once she had been selected, KÀ would then use her culture – particularly its formality – to inform the characterization of the role. The process is similar with artists from around the globe. Creating cohesion, Parisien remarks, requires Cirque directors to mix ‘all those different people, all those different skills, all those different talents – into one thing’. Given the multiplicities of blending performance styles and performers, and Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and other ethnicities, it is unsurprising KÀ reaches for cohesion through cultural abstraction, rather than cultural specificity. In Takahashi’s case, this abstraction is achieved through heavily stylized hair, make-up and costume. Through such techniques, KÀ produces its own iconicity – sacrificing its relationship with the real to produce a forensic level of performance detail more akin to Eastern, than Western, theatre. Undoubtedly, much of that detail is borrowed, but, in positive terms, the achievement of KÀ is that it expresses

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its own imagined reality. Although grounded in the performers’ bodies, the reconstruction of the entire MGM Grand auditorium supports KÀ’s other world. The contradiction between ancient culture and futuristic technology is clear in the scenography of performance, and also in the metallic, spaceage bridges and balconies dominating the auditorium from on high. Directing the eye upwards, and from side to side, these architectural forms create downward pressure, creating the feeling of being at the bottom of a pit. The feeling is appropriate; much of the narrative centres on an explosives mine. The construction of the foyer area as a bespoke musical instrument – through which the audience enters both physically and sonically – further exemplifies KÀ’s attempts to bring the architectural gestures of the design directly to bear on spectators. Despite its world-building, Fricker notes KÀ’s ‘confusing dramaturgical codes’, and critiques the anonymity of Cirque performers.59 ‘Cirque’s productions’, she writes, ‘hide the identity of the artists so that the spectacle can continue independently’.60 Indeed, KÀ’s heavy make-up and reliance on a grummelot language do conceal the fourteen different nationalities represented. However, Cirque conceive the presentation of performers as icons, rather than individuals, as an ethical practice. Anonymity facilitates the regular rotation of roles within the piece, Parisien explains, which is necessary to give performers rests and understudies (and understudy understudies) essential practice. KÀ is ‘physically very demanding’, he says. The longest fall in the piece is 75 feet, which would be the equivalent of 407 bungee jumps a year if the role was designated to one performer only. Parisien also highlights how Cirque invests in performers’ personal and professional development. Cirque performers love being ‘surrounded by people who are different’, he tells me. Many undertook an additional ‘2 to 3 months’ of dance or acting training on top of their acrobatic preparation, giving them new ‘tools’, he says. ‘Many, many artists’, argues Parisien, want to transfer to KÀ, because – while iconicity obscures the positive internationalism of the company – ‘the totality’ of KÀ’s performers love the show ‘because they have characters’ and ‘a story to tell’. Notwithstanding, Fricker’s critique of Cirque anonymizing its performers highlights an area for them grow into.

Reading the circus Although KÀ has evolved since its opening, both away from and under Lepage’s guidance, Parisien says it remains faithful to his narrative. This is probably due to KÀ’s affinities with the terms of mythic narrative, as described by Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey (1998). Vogler created his

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screenwriting guidebook by drawing on the ‘psychology of Carl G. Jung and the mythic studies of Joseph Campbell’, ideas of which Lepage is well aware, if not directly, then certainly through his interactions with Bjurman.61 The narrative is one of Royal twins, male and female, whose ‘ordinary world’ is first set up and then destroyed when they witness their parents murdered at a pageant.62 They escape, but the ‘call to adventure’ – restoring their inheritance and punishing the murder  – cannot be refused. Their main ‘enemies’ are the Chief Archer of a tribe, loyal to an evil leader known as the Counsellor. The main subplot belongs to the Chief Archer’s daughter, whom he protects vindictively, but who has attracted the attention of the Counsellor’s son; this daughter will emerge as the love interest of the male twin. After escaping from the pageant, the twins are separated, creating parallel plots that eventually meet. The male twin goes on to travel with the court jester, and the female with a nursemaid and the court valets. Both face ‘tests’, such as when the girl survives a shipwreck. They adopt (rather than meet) ‘mentors’ who also act as ‘allies’. Each twin experiences a variation on ‘crossing the threshold’ – with the female twin washed up on shore, and the male being taught shadow-play in a deep quarry by the jester. Further challenges await, and each approaches ‘the inmost cave’ – he, in being captured by The Chief Archer’s men, and she in losing her companions when she falls from a makeshift flying machine. Death beckons, but both are reborn, and receive their ‘reward’ – love. The chief archer’s daughter frees the male twin from his cage – with a kiss – and the female falls into a forest, where she also finds her love in the Tarzanlike Firefly Boy. The ‘road back’ sees the twins reunited and travelling home to marshal their forces for war. The Counsellor’s son reveals a weapon he has mined using slave labour, and the ‘climax’ of the piece is a battle scene witnessed entirely from above, in a cinematic top shot. The Counsellor’s son attempts to use his weapon, but it backfires and he is blinded. The twins ‘return with the elixir’ – love – and, admitting defeat, the Counsellor’s son adds an ironic twist, transforming his explosive weaponry into a firework display celebrating the twins’ marriages. KÀ’s narrative thus offers conflict on levels spanning the personal and the political. While this is overshadowed by the spectacles of architecture and circus, the narrative nevertheless exposes the twins to increasing levels of jeopardy. The bold, mythic quality of the story is just about strong enough to keep pace with the physical display, and join with it to create a spectacular, concrete narrative. Most importantly, Lepage describes KÀ’s narrative as his attempt ‘to realize a dream of “blending the ‘live’ world” with “the ‘taped’ world” to create a “theatrical-cinematographical experience” ’.63 Lepage openly acknowledges the attempt to make the narrative conventions of screen meet those of theatre. In a 2013 interview, he says: ‘What we do is theatre. But we are

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incredibly influenced by film narrative. Because that’s the narrative people know about’.64 KÀ, then, would be Lepage’s first experiment in bringing together his ideas of narrative convergence together with other storytelling patterns. KÀ skilfully co-opts the presentational mode of circus into the representational mode of story, but it is hard to see its marriage of theatrical and cinematic storytelling producing the kind of affective responses usual to either mode. Nevertheless, these features bring some meaning to feats of impressive but otherwise meaningless skill. KÀ is a spectacle, but not a simple one. Reviews, predictably, reflected these intricacies. In 2005, Charles Isherwood of The New York Times lauded KÀ as ‘unusually beautiful and stylistically cohesive’ for a Cirque show, but described the scale of the theatre as ‘inhuman’, and precluding ‘emotional engagement in the fates of the characters’ because they appeared as ‘creatures that ultimately have no more personality than the digital images in a video game’. The ‘most consistently thrilling performer’, he wrote, is ‘the giant slab of machinery that serves as one of the two stages’.65 As might be expected, Isherwood’s review reads narrative circus on the terms of theatre, while rehearsing critiques regarding body and technology. This is unsurprising; the fluidity of a playing space constructed around two mobile platforms creates unprecedented material responsiveness  – accelerating entrances and exits, while simultaneously reconfiguring them. KÀ has far less Stage Left and Stage Right, than it does Stage Up and Stage Down. The machinery also effectively hides the fact that there are over 100 technicians at work backstage. Parisien reflects that, although KÀ ‘is the result of many experiments that Lepage did with his solo shows’, it is clearly ‘at another level’. With Cirque’s financial backing, Lepage pushed architectural aesthetics to the limit – free of financial limitation – but not without risk (see Introduction). Parisien suggests that the battlefield scene was a complete realization of the cinematic top shot – a shift of perspective used by Lepage since the 1980s – in theatrical form. Similarly, the mobile platforms and movement-responsive projections of KÀ extend the scenography of Lepage’s solo work to this point. But, he says, it’s a two-way street. Parisien sees the ‘influence of Cirque’ on Ex Machina post-KÀ in Lepage’s design conception for Playing Cards (see Chapter 8). There, a self-contained capsule stage sees Lepage again pushing ‘himself to the extreme limit’ of creativity. KÀ would also push Ex Machina to its operational limit – and subsequent collaborations would necessarily be organized differently. Bernatchez relates how,

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beyond the 80 previews Cirque usually do, KÀ’s opening was postponed 3 times. So in the end, Robert was absent for 8 to 9 months, spread over three blocks. And when he’s not here – he’s not touring his one-man shows, he’s not directing productions – we’re not generating income. So the next time he was invited to work with Cirque Du Soleil, I said – ‘We need to be front and centre in one way or another. His absence is costing us money, and we’re not involved in the production’. So a significant royalty was negotiated for Robert, and we get two thirds of that royalty.66

In closing, we should reflect on the importance of the experiences discussed in this chapter as setting conventions for subsequent collaboration; establishing the three-hander as a medium-scale project on the roster, and deepening Ex Machina’s engagement with sociopolitical themes. Experiments spanning text, songspiel, narrative dance, fairy tales, circus, and mythic structure reveal Lepage intensifying his search for a distinctive narrative form through these projects. We might usefully recall Levac’s contention that discovering ‘a theatrical structure that is our very own’ would entail discovering Québec as ‘a country’.67 Lepage, perhaps, starts searching here for that structure, in earnest. In this, we might see an important divergence; Ex Machina, perhaps, are discovering Québec stories, while Cirque, perhaps, are escaping from them.

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New ways

This chapter explores a range of decisive projects and partnerships launched by Ex Machina in the period 2004–8. Lorin Maazel’s 1984 (2004) and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (2007) would be co-produced with key European opera houses, and Ex Machina would dazzle New  York’s Metropolitan Opera audience with an upgraded staging of The Damnation of Faust (2008). In 2007, the company would present four pieces at the Chekhov International Theatre Festival in Moscow – Andersen, Far Side, the Trilogy and Busker’s Opera – their first performances in Russia. Through this, Bernatchez says, Ex Machina reached ‘a new audience that was very enthusiastic’.1 Lipsynch (2007) would see a return to large-scale, ensemble creation:  with nine actors and nine one-hour Acts, it would be their most epic construction yet, and extend the company’s experiments in blending cinematic narrative structure with theatrical form. The Blue Dragon (2008) would complete the process of upgrading the original 1985 Trilogy by further addressing some of the critical difficulties of that work. The foundation for Steve Blanchet’s transformative appointment (2013) as Ex Machina’s Director of Creation is also laid in these years. Lepage would work with Blanchet from 2005 onwards to create and launch The Image Mill (2008), in celebration of Québec City’s founding in 1608. Building on the experience of Métissage, this stretched the company’s installation work, while foreshadowing subsequent projects based on new image technologies. The Image Mill also constituted steps forward in architectural aesthetics  – delivering the largest work for monument projection in the world, to date. Crucially, the project strengthened yet again Lepage’s sense of home culture, class and city, and, in achieving what every expert said could not be done, demonstrated Québec’s culture of patentage on the largest available social-architectural canvas.

The Image Mill: All roads lead to home The Image Mill entered the Guinness Book of Records for the largest ever projected image, with ‘a total surface area of 16, 630.9 m²’, projected onto ‘the

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grain silos of the company Bunge in Québec City’, from 20 June to 24 August 2008.2 Lepage, wrote David Sokol in Architectural Record, ‘has been staring at the 1,968-foot-long building since 1997’ – when Ex Machina occupied la Caserne.3 Bernatchez describes the creative process: ‘We decided to start with engravings, and then slowly move to paintings, and then photography, and then to film, and then to computer graphics and more contemporary means of expression . . . More documents were available for the latest century, and so the fourth part is longer than the other three parts together.’4 Andrew King describes the result not as a documentary – ‘there are no voice-overs’ – but rather as ‘a concerto in four parts’, and ‘a story told through interconnected media’. The technicalities were immense, with ‘27 projectors, 40,000,000 pixels, 25 km of optic fibre, 100 moving heads, and 300 loudspeakers’, on a budget of $5 million for a forty-night run  – extended to sixty nights by popular demand. Lead billing went to Lepage and Ex Machina, but ‘projection specialists ETC Paris, light and sound supplier Solotech’ were also key collaborators. Indeed, ‘ETC designed the Onlyview multiscreen video manipulation software that would be employed to control the projections’. Equally demanding was the creative challenge of ‘condensing 400  years of history into one lucid presentation’.5 Sarah Barrell of the Independent captures the wow-effect of the piece: ‘Picture the Tate Modern, three times the length, used as a giant screen for Terry Gilliam’s latest short and you might have some idea of how this . . . is unprecedented’.6 The Image Mill was both a record-breaking example of entertainment architecture, and a crucial moment of deepening engagement with the social in Ex Machina’s oeuvre. This, perhaps, is elided by its spectacular nature; Fouquet, for example, focuses on the work’s ‘ability to draw and hypnotise crowds’, and the ‘magnificent reflections’ created in the water of the port by the projections.7 As a commemoration of Québec City’s 400th anniversary, the work could easily have collapsed into the simple aims of a touristic, heritage spectacular. However, the customization of futuristic technology, using industrial architecture as a receiving ‘screen’, and presenting quotidian detail exemplified Québec’s culture of patentage – ensuring that The Image Mill commemorated Québec’s people and its culture, connecting a people to its history with powerful results. Bjurman visited Québec to see the project in 2008. He believes it had a significant impact on its audience, while crucially reinforcing Lepage’s sense of cultural ground and political consciousness. In it, he says, you see secretaries, you see telephonists – you see poor, ordinary people. It’s not about the elite, or the presidents, or the prime ministers. It’s not even about famous figures of the church; it’s about ordinary people. And

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that’s why they were moved – the people of Québec were completely in love with that piece, because it was about them, their story, they who built the city from the beginning. I walked through the spectators with Robert, and people were crying. And they were saying – ‘That was my grandmother!’ – ‘That is my story!’ – it was amazing. And he became a son of the city, not overnight, but halfway through that piece. You have to remember that he’s from a working class family. He has stepped into the hierarchies of high society, and he’s a very good observer of that – he sees things, and he can parody without being insulting, as he did with the director of the Paris Opera in Andersen  – pulling down the underpants of the cultural elite of Europe – but in a very kind way. This connects to why he likes Shakespeare, that earthiness of the lower classes that he feels connected to – and to the class struggle in his shows, and in the class struggles in the characters that he chooses.8

The Image Mill, then, would be a personal turning point for Lepage, but it also represents a crucial moment in the reinvention of Ex Machina’s working structure and outputs. Fresh from collaborating with Cirque Du Soleil in Las Vegas, Lepage implemented his version of their ‘Director of Creation’ role. Steve Blanchet would be credited for The Image Mill as ‘Coïdéateur et coconcepteur des images’.9 This more artistic, creative version of Director of Creation would evolve into Blanchet’s full-time post as Creative Director (2013 onwards).10 A  native of Québec City, Blanchet met Lepage through mutual friends in 1999. His job then was as a Creative Director for Cassette – one of Canada’s largest advertising agencies. Lepage saw some of Blanchet’s drawings, leading to informal contributions to Ex Machina’s work, and ultimately to becoming a principal collaborator on Image Mill. Blanchet reflects that, although Lepage has evolved Ex Machina’s collaborative context slowly  – often building working relationships over many years – once partnerships have formed and are proven effective, he is very loyal to his team. As Ex Machina’s Creative Director, Blanchet works as an ideateur or concepteur – a term which derives from his work in advertising – presenting ideas and materials which are then road-tested in creative laboratories. Blanchet describes this as ‘creative tennis’  – going back and forth with Lepage to find ideas and relations between scenes and concepts, and helping to determine their best practical application. He characterizes the nature of the exchange as ‘Je propose, il dispose’; Blanchet piles ideas on the table, and Lepage chooses where to start growing material. As projects progress, Blanchet guides them towards delivering their vision; he oversees the accurate rendering of creative intentions by technical collaborators  – and

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undoubtedly played a significant part in the contextual solidity of Image Mill. The introduction of Creative Director, therefore, brings new levels of rigour and overview at the top of Ex Machina’s creative pyramid, and extra eyesight on avenues for development arising from creative accidents. Unsurprisingly, Bernatchez describes Blanchet as ‘a perfect fit for Robert creatively’ – Blanchet is both ‘an extraordinary researcher’, and someone ‘extremely creative’, who can transform research into metaphors and analogies.11 For his part, Blanchet believes Lepage is akin to the patenteux in his way of working, and thus a typically Québecois artist. Québec, he says, has been poor for much of its history. Quebeckers ‘had to find a way to become something with nothing’, so they became patenteux. This shared understanding of patentage further explains their working relationship. It is crucial to recognize the evolution of collaborative context Blanchet’s Creative Director role stimulates within Ex Machina’s creative process. For 887 (2015), Lepage, Bjurman and Blanchet worked as Director, Dramaturg and Creative Director – effectively triangulating the material as it developed, and allowing its depth to emerge in the final performance. Blanchet adds a vital complement to Lepage’s physical, experiential mode of research, or ‘geo-poetry’.12 He shares Lepage’s desire to discover local events and personal connections capable of resonating with larger events, but his background (Blanchet has a degree in journalism) supports detailed, contextual research – connecting to Bjurman’s work as dramaturg. As Lepage puts it, Blanchet ‘sets the table’. He ‘makes sure that the integrity of the artistic idea – wherever it goes – is nourished by references, expressed with mood boards, and all that – and he’s the ideal guy to do that, because he’s not from theatre. He’s from the ad world. And that’s what they do. And we never allow that into our world’.13 People came from around the world to see The Image Mill, with around one million visits in 2008; predictably, it was extended. Blanchet says the commissioners (Sociète du 400e Anniversaire de Québec) were delighted, and would have welcomed entirely new material in 2009. However, the scale of the project made this unrealistic, and, instead, roughly 25 per cent was updated annually. Notwithstanding, the project played an important role in raising Québec City’s international profile, and other experiments followed. Aurora Borealis, which Ex Machina collaborated on with Martin Gagnon, would light up winter nights in Québec City for several years, by washing ‘the Bunge with a re-creation of the Northern lights’.14 A 3-D version of Image Mill was attempted in 2011, but, Blanchet says, did not work as expected. By 2012, the piece had been overworked, and it was retired. Lepage and Blanchet would then collaborate on a new sequence, commemorating the centenary of animation innovator Norman McClaren. McLaren’s oeuvre of over 100 animations was a source of ready-made

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material which could be assembled for presentation in the twelve months available. But the formula had run its course; this was presented only in 2013  – although it would seed a future collaboration, Frame by Frame (2018, see Chapter 9). The Image Mill also seeds a later collaboration based on new image technologies – The Library at Night (2015, see Chapter 8). Most importantly, Image Mill strengthened Ex Machina’s grounded identity as a Québecois company, illustrated their power to stimulate Québec’s economy through tourism, and empowered Lepage to train his dramatic eyesight increasingly on the idea of home.

Opera on tour: 1984 and The Rake’s Progress It is during this period that Lepage’s long-standing engagement with music theatre comes to be dominated by opera. Lorin Maazel’s version of George Orwell’s 1984 (Royal Opera House, 2005)  shows Lepage introducing politically engaged – and new – opera into Ex Machina’s portfolio. Robert Thicknesse remarks that Lepage is ‘fascinated by Orwell’, having begun ‘his career with a production of Animal Farm using masks and puppets’.15 But Lepage’s rationale for accepting 1984’s directorship is critical and politicized, rather than formalist. Lepage describes surveillance culture post-9/11 as Stalin-esque: [W]‌e’re all obsessed by security and surveillance, and I flipped through the book again and just thought: it’s so rich, so now. Opera enables you to confront something in a completely different way. It’s the ultimate performing art form . . . People assume that Orwell’s book was a satire on Stalin, but look at a map and see how power is divided now – it’s the same thing.16

Although British critics wrote ‘virtually uniformly negative reviews’, largely due to its musical score, Lepage’s direction and Carl Fillion’s design were better received, and it was remounted at La Scala, in Milan (2008), and Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, in Valencia (2011). Lepage emerged unscathed, and one reviewer even opined that ‘Covent Garden should recruit him for other projects’.17 Although a co-production, significant working relationships would develop Ex Machina’s collaborative context. Neilson Vignola would again work with Lepage – as Assistant à la mise en scène on 1984, The Rake’s Progress and Faust. And Sybille Wilson, a musician and opera director in her own right, would work on several collaborations, starting with Rake’s Progress.

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The Rake’s Progress (1951) was a typically Lepagean choice – eclectic, open to interpretation and with an anti-hero – Tom Rakewell – crashing through social boundaries.18 Additionally, Rakewell is led to his demise by a daemonic ­figure – Nick Shadow – an appealing Faustian narrative, perhaps. Lepage had spent a considerable amount of time in Las Vegas prior to Rake’s Progress – and this ‘geo-poetry’ underpinned his choices. Indeed, writes Bernard Gilbert, Lepage arrived at the first creation period ‘with a book of photos of Las Vegas’.19 Stravinsky wrote Rake’s Progress while based in Hollywood, borrowing his story from William Hogarth’s series of eighteenth-century prints  – detailing the dissolution of a young man through gambling and prostitution, and his fall through society into imprisonment and madness. The piece received mainly positive reviews, touring between 2007 and 2010, and its ‘celebration-cum-critique of the American dream’, wrote critic Mark Valencia, stimulated notable discussion.20 Bernard Gilbert was Production Manager for Ex Machina’s opera work at the time. Gilbert’s account of the collaborative context is worth summarizing for a number of reasons. His account of the creative process describes Lepage’s photo-book as ‘our starting-point:  the wealth of possibilities that Las Vegas embodies, the world of gambling, of money and razzmatazz that create the conditions for the emergence of a Tom Rakewell’.21 The process began with a group of six collaborators spending one week (6–10 June 2005)  discussing possible staging concepts, which was narrowed to a ‘preliminary concept’ when the team met again at La Monnaie in Brussels (12–14 November 2005)  – re-scening the piece to 1950s Vegas and Hollywood, and presenting Rakewell as an actor about to fall. The concept developed over a further five days of work in London (13–17 February 2006), in a process that connected scenes from the opera with ‘images and sequences’ from period films  – ‘so much so’, Gilbert writes, that the story board which emerged was made up of stills from those films.22 Physical work began at the end of March 2006, in Ottawa. In May 2006, design prototypes were tested by stand-in performers who ‘walk the roles’23  – enabling the exploration of ‘a huge number of ideas and possibilities’ in ‘an extended workshop’  – from which ‘the staging emerges’. In June 2006, this process continued, resulting in an ‘animated storyboard’ of drawings, photos and videos, and the presentation of this to the co-producers, led by Lepage. The finalized design (with the exception of costume) was then built in Québec, entailing adherence to a strict shipping deadline, in order that the production could arrive in Brussels in advance of rehearsals in March 2007; ‘two months left before closing the containers’, Gilbert remarks.24 The production opened on 17 April 2007 in Brussels, and transferred to Lyon in May 2007 with ‘the same

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company of soloists and dancers’. Sybille Wilson took over from Neilson Vignola as Assistant à la mise en scène in Lyon, as the next three venues on the tour required new casts to be directed in. Wilson then travelled as resident director with The Rake’s Progress until its tour finished, with Lepage joining the production as director midway through rehearsals at each of these venues.25 Gilbert’s notes help us to recognize the nature of Ex Machina’s creative process. In opera, rehearsing with the singers comes last – so other decisions must come first. This significantly limits the development of work on tour. Because performers are not available until the end, conceptualization leads process, more than improvisation. Extensive visualizations suggest the creation of a Score, but, tellingly, Gilbert uses filmic terms like ‘storyboard’, and not those of the RSVP Cycles. Indeed, he summarizes this process as ‘conceive, sketch, explore, test, select, construct and rehearse’.26 We could seize on this as an alternative formula for Ex Machina’s process, but in reality, there is no set pattern. Rather, interacting with methodologies across disciplines has created an evolving dynamic, leading Ex Machina to adopt methods set by the imperatives of particular projects. Bernatchez, for instance, says that the first ninety minutes of a 7.00–10.30  pm ‘wrap-up meeting’ for Frame by Frame (see Chapter  9) were occupied by voting ‘to structure the show’. This took place after only two workshop blocks with the dancers, but would be possible as its narrative is a question of biographical sequencing, rather than dramatic plotting. Ex Machina’s process is not to be captured in the application of a methodology, but it does apply the principle of patentage – customization according to needs. Their process, like their performances, is an emanation of Québecois culture. We might usefully call this approach an architecting of performance – reminding ourselves by doing so that process is also something that must be created, fresh with each new project. The Rake’s Progress would tour to five co-producing venues – two of which would also stage revivals27 – so it was vital the scenography could transfer between houses. The design solution reflected architectural aesthetics  – reconfiguring the stage floor as a dominant visual element  – to the point where it had to be rebuilt. The raked stage would offer a spatial metaphor of slowly being drawn into the pit. Sympathetically, Fillion’s design revealed ‘each of the opera’s scenes through the sophisticated use of traps’ set in the stage floor. This communicated further the instability of Rakewell’s world, and rendered his descent as a concrete narrative. Building-in traps to the scenography meant it could transfer, but it also made the floor unstable  – and the design had to support heavy machinery, as well as a large chorus. Ex Machina worked with Montréal-based company SE Design and Fabrication at the design stage, drawing on their experience of building touring stages

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for Cirque Du Soleil, to ensure it could take the load. Commenting on Rake’s Progress, Lepage remarks that ‘obstacles are your best friends’ – and in opera, ‘one makes many friends’.28

Ex Machina at the Metropolitan Opera When creating new co-productions for touring, the transferability of scenographic elements is built in at the planning stage. The Damnation of Faust – designed and constructed in the late 1990s – would come to New York without that advance preparation. Paul Masck, Production Manager for the Metropolitan Opera, relays how the production was purchased from the Paris Opera, where the design was 19m wide – ‘slightly too big to work efficiently on our stage’.29 But even a slight difference was a ‘huge, huge problem’. The experience helped the Metropolitan understand ‘the value of being involved in the creation of the project at the zero hour’. It’s a vital point; under Peter Gelb’s leadership, the Metropolitan Opera has significantly increased its level of collaboration. Masck estimates the increase as being from one annually or biannually, to approximately half of the ‘six or so new productions’ which are now staged annually – itself an increase from an average of four. Masck works closely with Viviane Paradis, Ex Machina’s opera Production Manager, to make sure that their work meshes effectively; there is no margin for installation error, and collaborative production management is crucial. Since the experience of Faust, Masck and others are ‘involved in all of the workshops’ in Québec, and in continuous dialogue with Ex Machina designers. New work is then installed for a summer week of technical rehearsal on the Metropolitan Opera’s stage, and singing rehearsals take place in rehearsal rooms. Ex Machina are not shy of prescribing conditions for collaboration, but neither is the Metropolitan Opera; imported designs must have a strike readiness of forty-five minutes. Gelb says that Lepage’s ‘compromise is to accept the fact that the Met is a repertory house, and even though we will stretch ourselves inside out to make what he wants to do work, some things just can’t work’. The theatre does not have a separate rehearsal stage, so when new work is rehearsed midseason, it must be set up overnight – ready for rehearsal between 10.30 am and 2.00 pm – and struck by around 3.00 pm for the evening performance. ‘It is a 24-hour operation’, Gelb says. By way of concrete demonstration, during the course of our interview, the live stage monitor screen in Gelb’s office relays the post-rehearsal disassembly of the set for L’Amour de Loin, and the reinsertion of Manon Lescault’s for the evening performance.

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The Metropolitan Opera must also negotiate with its own status, and cultural context. Wagner  – notoriously anti-Semitic  – plays to sold-out houses without incident. But its 2014 staging of John Adams’s controversial opera, The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), was protested on the grounds of antiSemitism – and, Gelb says, it ‘was a very real problem’.30 Gelb cancelled the live broadcast of the work due to ‘genuine concern in the international Jewish community that the live transmission of The Death of Klinghoffer would be inappropriate at this time of rising anti-Semitism’  – while expressing his conviction ‘that the opera is not anti-Semitic’.31 Gelb’s theatre really is a contested space. Just a few days before our interview in November 2016, a spectator spread his opera-loving father’s ashes in the auditorium – sparking fears of chemical attack, and causing a performance to be cancelled. ‘Things happen here’, he says. Despite the complexities, Gelb describes collaborative relationships with other companies as ‘very rewarding for the Met, and its audiences’. From the beginning of his tenure as General Manager (2004/5), Gelb set out to ‘bring a new generation of directors who had not yet worked at the Met, to the Met’. He consciously hired directors like Lepage in an attempt to take opera out of a dominant rut of ‘old-fashioned’ presentation. Lepage would be new to the Metropolitan Opera, but not to Gelb. He had known Lepage since the early 1990s – approaching him with the original proposal to direct Faust for Seiji Ozawa’s inaugural Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto. Ex Machina’s Faust was still in repertory in Paris, but it had not been seen at the Metropolitan Opera in ‘more a century’32 – and Gelb resolved to bring it to New York. Faust was one of ‘six new productions’ unveiled in 2008/9, helping to mark Gelb’s third season and broaden the Metropolitan Opera’s ‘public appeal in unprecedented ways’.33 The relationships and precedents Faust established were crucial, Gelb says, as ‘we found a way to weave together our teams’: Robert is typically planning and executing numerous projects at the same time, so he needs his operation in full tilt, and he needs to originate his projects in Québec city, where he has everybody around him. So if you want to work with Robert, you have to accept those kind of ground rules. So you’ll see in the Met auditorium key Ex Machina people, and key Met people – and they’re working together, and over the years they’ve grown to trust each other. And it’s a, I think, harmonious working relationship, but it’s very atypical. One of the things I  think that makes Robert so interesting and unusual is that he rarely works with the same designer – he has all these different designers  – but the vision for the project is coming from Robert. Robert is very open because he’s so secure he’s very

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willing to hear ideas and comments. If I say something that appeals to him he’ll use it, if not, then he doesn’t. I love that about him, because he is somebody who has 1 million ideas up his sleeve. If something doesn’t work, he doesn’t have a temper tantrum, what he does is figure out what he’s going to do that will be even better. It’s a good partnership for the Québec Opera Festival, company, and the Met, because they get a Robert Lepage production that otherwise they couldn’t afford, and we get an out-of-town try-out.34

Restaging Faust also enabled its upgrade. The original scenography was ‘designed around magical effects’, which Gelb says had become ‘a little bit passé’. With new lighting by Sonoyo Nishikawa, ‘new images and new projections’  – particularly, Gelb notes, ‘scenic effects motivated by the movement of the performers’ which were ‘not technologically possible in the original conception’ – the 2008 run was very well received, with immediate revival for 2009. The experience cemented collaboration between Ex Machina and the Metropolitan Opera, consolidated Lepage’s reputation as an opera director, introduced architectural aesthetics to New York’s seasoned operagoing audience and paved the way for collaboration on (not to mention anticipation of) Lepage’s Ring Cycle (2010–13; see Chapter 7).

The Blue Dragon: Character, culture and concrete narrative The Blue Dragon, first performed in Châlon-en-Champagne (April 2008), was ‘more of a spinoff than a sequel’35 to the original Dragons’ Trilogy (1985, upgraded 2003). Ex Machina describes how Lepage visited Shanghai ‘for a direct experience of the city’ in January 2007, after which an Ex Machina team ‘began to explore the impressions and ideas stimulated by the trip’.36 Lepage’s direct intercultural contact with China’s ‘geo-poetry’37 would be a decisive difference between the original Dragons’ project and Blue Dragon, which could therefore offer an upgraded approach to intercultural representation. Lepage again played Pierre Lamontagne, and  – similarly to Andersen’s implied critique of the opera industry – his artist alter-ego facilitated enquiry into the problems of creative labour. ‘We were all pretty much socialists in school’, Lepage says, and ‘Pierre is very much a product of that generation of Quebeckers’.38 Set in Shanghai’s Moganshan 50 art district, Lamontagne would now, however, be a trilingual gallery owner, speaking English, French and Mandarin, and dating a younger Chinese artist, Xiao Ling. Where he is focused on mastering traditional Chinese calligraphy, she, in counterpoint, embraces modern technology – and exhibits a series of digitally remastered

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‘selfies’. Bringing Lamontagne onto the stage midway on life’s journey deepened Blue Dragon’s reading of culture considerably. He meets Ling when she tattoos him with a blue dragon. Tattoos, Robert Cushman reflects, ‘used to be forbidden in China except as a form of punishment; now they’re a business. So Xiao Ling herself is an emblem, and a conflicted one, of the country’s transformation. This seems to be the burden of the dances that she performs, one at each end of the show; they’re semi-traditional, graceful but angry’.39 These two characters demonstrate their personal, social and cultural contradictions through their art, and sit in a fine balance. The arrival of an old flame, however – Claire, played by Marie Michaud, a collaborator on the original Trilogy – generates sexual tensions which bring change. When Ling discovers she is pregnant by Lamontagne she flees, abandoning art to support the child by forging Van Gogh paintings. Ling was played by Tai Wei Foo, a Singaporean dancer with Chinese ancestry. Trained in Chinese dance, she had ‘never acted before’.40 The use of dance as a metaphor of the contradictions Xiao Ling faces helped communicate the character. ‘My whole interest’, Lepage says revealingly, lies in how you ‘identify with people who go through the same contradictions and paradoxes you go through’  – even when ‘you feel they’re on another planet’.41 Ling’s contemporary photography  – uncensored self-portraits of her emotional states, taken on a phone camera – plays against the elements of heritage culture presented. Indeed, Blue Dragon employs contradiction deliberately, troubling our perceptions of Chinese cultural heritage through dance. One major example is when Ling presents traditional ‘ching hsi’ sleeve dances. Sleeve movements, or ‘Hsui’, A. C. Scott writes, were ‘an important feature of dancing technique in ancient China and were considered essential to add to the grace of the performer’; furthermore, ‘the lengthier the sleeve the more accomplished the actor, for it requires great skill to manipulate them properly’.42 One such dance during the proposition phase of the work shows Ling’s technical skill – showing her virtuosity in traditional forms she is actually in tension with. In the penultimate scene, she reprises the sleeve dance. She enters, carrying hers and Pierre’s baby in her arms – well-wrapped against the falling snow that appears on the projection screen covering the set. She again wears the traditional Chinese dress of the earlier dance. She dances the width of the stage, and the interactive snow projection responds to her movement as if she controlled the elements. At the peak of the dance, she throws the baby away, towards the audience  – creating a moment of shock that dissolves in the realization that the wrapped up baby was actually the gathered sleeves of her costume. This moment of convergence shows Ling’s need for self-expression, desire for freedom from Pierre and urge to reject motherhood. The emotion

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of the moment is built from the tension of contradicting forces; on one hand, individuality and innovation, on the other, tradition and heritage. The dance is a peak of semiotic condensation, and consolidates the themes of the narrative. As a moment of convergence, therefore, it has the power to draw our attention to complex cultural questions. Early versions were positively received, but Variety noted that Blue Dragon was ‘still finding its footing’, more than a year after opening.43 Blue Dragon would ultimately visit eleven countries, finishing in early 2012, after over two hundred performances. Crucial to its development on tour was a run of twenty-two performances in Vancouver, spearheading the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. Lepage accepted this high-profile invitation – made on the condition that he would appear as a performer – and designer Michel Gauthier identifies this as a crucial moment, enabling the development of the piece in situ. The event quality of the run was further heightened by its inauguration of the new Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at Simon Fraser University. Robert Cushman’s review for the National Post in January 2012 indicates how much the work developed from 2008. Describing it as ‘a quiet knockout’, he credits Tai Wei Foo’s as ‘the best performance of the three’, noting the impressive ‘eruptions of feeling that seem to come out of nowhere but are . . . securely grounded’ as particularly dynamic.44 It is ironic, therefore, that Blue Dragon was originally written as a twohander by Lepage and Michaud to explore their characters from the Trilogy. Ex Machina notes that Tai Wei Foo was engaged when they needed ‘a third character for the story to evolve’. The ‘new triangle’ formed by the addition of Ling indeed generated ‘new dramatic conflicts’.45 Importantly, these remarks reinforce the conscious focus on narrative construction within Ex Machina’s creative process. The piece begins with three propositions setting multiple narratives in motion: Pierre discussing Chinese calligraphy, Claire passing through a storm in a plane on her way to China and Ling performing the traditional sleeve dance. The intertwining of those narratives, and the multiple perspectives they produce on the changing lives of the characters is reflected in a similarly multiplied ending  – a farewell scene set at the airport. First, Pierre exits with Claire, leaving Ling behind. Second, the exact same farewell dialogue is replayed, but with a different result. This time, Claire exits alone, leaving Pierre and Ling to exit together. Finally, the dialogue is repeated once more, except now Claire and Ling exit together, leaving Pierre with the baby. This ending in triplicate offers the closure of a definitely un-defined ending  – inviting the spectator to work reflexively with the performance by exploring the triadic pattern established  – but setting a meaningful limit to further speculation regarding these characters’ futures. In this bold ending, The Blue Dragon highlights the experiments with

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narrative form Ex Machina undertakes at this time. Additionally, alongside Eonnagata, Blue Dragon consolidates the three-hander as an alternative to solo and large-scale devised work on the roster. Moreover, it would become a technique of upgrading in itself; Lepage’s 1991 solo Needles and Opium was upgraded to a three-hander in 2014. Finally, Michel Gauthier’s design for Blue Dragon represents a crucial moment in merging experiment with narrative form, and architectural aesthetics. Gauthier is a typical Ex Machina collaborator in terms of the length of his relationship with Lepage. Gauthier did props for the original Trilogy  – a pleasing circularity  – created special effects for A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Théâtre du Trident and would subsequently work on Playing Cards: Hearts. Consequently, Gauthier is well-positioned to discuss Lepage as patenteux.46 He agrees that elements of Lepage’s practice reflect the culture of patentage  – such as the repurposing of objects; ‘he’s known for that’, Gauthier says. Indeed, it is ‘why people liked him’ in the early days – ‘because he would take flashlights and suitcases and build a city out of it’. Lepage’s earliest solutions were based on ‘very simple things’; while they have become more intricate (and expensive) over time, Gauthier believes that the principle of customization according to needs has remained constant. Lepage, he says, demands this of his collaborators, who all ‘have the same business’ – to ‘propose things’ so they can explore solutions ‘from A-Z’. Lepage will ask ‘What can I  do to transform this washing machine into a spaceship?’, and ‘you have to think fast’. The offer to design Blue Dragon came after Lepage saw Gauthier’s design for Marie Gignac’s production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Mains Salles in Québec. This, Gauthier says, used ‘two overlapping shipping containers’ fitted with garage-style doors. Gauthier remarks that ‘Robert is the main designer of his shows’. Indeed, Lepage somewhat casts designers, more than he chooses them, based on their ability to render his concept and investigate solutions ‘from A-Z’. Gauthier’s bold use of form in Les Mains Salles showed his affinity with Lepage’s vision for Blue Dragon. The construction process began with Gauthier proposing a ‘raw, basic, mechanical’ cardboard-and-sticks model of the design  – months ahead of workshops, to allow time for solutions to develop. This preparatory period is when we work it out together, and he thinks about it – and he says – ‘Well it’s nice, but maybe I would like to have a staircase to go up’. And I say – ‘But what about this staircase when you’re not using it? Where does it go?’ ‘How could we divide it in four’, he asks? ‘Could we lower this part? Do we open this part? Can we have a 3rd level? Could it extend?’ This is your job.

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Ex Machina cites Tintin’s adventure in China, The Blue Lotus, as a resource for exploration, noting that ‘the comic strip panel format may very well influence the set design’.47 Accordingly, Gauthier placed two large rectangular playing spaces on the stage, one above the other, connected by a staircase, with a small but open forestage. The comic strip panel effect was created by closing off bits of the playing area with shutters, which could thus reveal or conceal scenes as desired, using various panel configurations. The tight framing of images that the shutters facilitated – for instance, Pierre being tattooed – delineated time and location with a specificity usually accorded to film. Theatrical narrative and the sequential art of comic books met in this architectural form. Ultimately, Gauthier created an environment that united space and story, rendering Blue Dragon as a clear experiment in concrete narrative. These tightly framed images relied on Jean-Sébastien Côté’s sound design for their effectiveness.48 Côté says that, because ‘sound throughout the shows is continuous’, it is easier to blend sound and image together, as it avoids ‘pure silence’ followed by jolting cues. Additionally, because Ex Machina always mic their actors, the balancing of distance-separated sound sources (i.e., actors and amplifiers) is more easily accomplished. Notwithstanding, Blue Dragon was challenging because it is set during thunderstorm season, and weather effects could have intruded. Côté’s pleasure in the piece is that ‘the entry points and the exit points’ of the soundtrack went unnoticed  – despite their potential for intrusion. Blue Dragon, he says, is ‘my best show’; sound was ‘a big part of the universe’, but ‘you don’t know about it’. Importantly, this emerges from experimenting with sound simultaneously with the development of narrative. Côté approaches sound as a lever to help the actors get into that ‘universe as quickly as possible’ in rehearsal, and builds detailed tracks in layers from thereon in. He doesn’t propose ideas ‘through discussion’, he says, but seeks to ‘work like a good accompanist’, and help Lepage ‘go where he wants to go’. To put one of his soundtracks on a CD ‘would bore you to death’, he says – ‘but it fits with what you see’. Physical space is ‘super important’ in improvising sound because location has to be believed by audiences ‘in half a second’. As a sound designer, he says he is ‘more concerned about the story than anything else’. This, he says, is ‘what drives me’. Côté’s instinct for connecting space and narrative through sound was indeed central to the effectiveness of Blue Dragon’s concrete narrative.

Lipsynch: Staging the scream We can reasonably speculate that Lipsynch (2007) was intended to reboot large-scale devising projects for Ex Machina, as these had effectively fallen

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off their roster. Indeed, their most recent original devised piece was The Geometry of Miracles (1998). Perhaps recalling that epic pieces generate epic difficulties, Lepage selected nine trusted co-writers, seven of whom he had worked with before, including five with Lecoq-based training. Additionally, Marie Gignac  – one of Lepage’s career-long collaborators, and originally intending to perform in the piece – would work as a co-writer and Conseillère à la dramaturgie. This experienced team augured well for the project. Significantly, Ex Machina says that ‘the 9 Act Film Structure’ popularized by David Siegel was consciously used to structure Lipsynch. Typically, this begins with (1) an inciting event, leads by establishing (2) an iconic image, develops (3, 4) through breach and mishap, draws a committed figure (the hero) into complicated actions (5–7), which result in new directions (8), and ends by resolving the conflict (9)  and signposting the situation that will prevail subsequently.49 Lipsynch is noteworthy, therefore, as another deliberate experiment in blending theatrical form and cinematic narrative. Lipsynch was a major international co-production and collaboration with Théâtre Sans Frontières (Hexham). It was first performed before an invited audience at La Caserne, in a ‘six-hour-long workshop version’ in October 2006,50 before playing five nights at Northern Stage (Newcastle) in February 2007 – while still in development – and officially premiering in a full ninehour version (including intervals) at the Barbican (London) in 2008. Lipsynch received notices that reported strengths, but which consistently highlighted the need to cut back on redundancies in the material. Notwithstanding, it would remain on tour until 2012. It was presented at BAM (Brooklyn) in October 2009, where Ilya Khodosh’s online review captures the almostgot-there quality that persisted as a result of the difficulty of bringing nine narratives into convergence: In this last segment, which profiles the horrors of sex slavery, Lipsynch turns jarringly political, as if grasping for a takeaway purpose. It comes off forced and doesn’t bring closure to the event, which, frankly, after all those hours, an audience needs. Lipsynch is best recollected as a series of sparkling, inspired moments amidst banal ones, all of which never quite cohere into that glorious epic narrative that could have been.51

Lipsynch’s climax, then, is important to explore in terms of assessing its experiment with cinematic narrative structures on stage. Towards the end of Lipsynch, the audience discovers a secret behind Lupe’s death. Lupe is one of three central figures in the narrative. In the climactic scene, Lupe’s orphaned son Jeremy discovers the truth about his mother’s life – watching a recording she made aged 17, giving witness to her brutal induction into sex work. In split focus, Lupe presents her lines

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live, as if directly to the camera making the recording that Jeremy watches. As she speaks, projections of hands slide around her pale costume, symbolizing the gang rape that inducts her into indentured prostitution. The source of the hands is a white male actor, visible on stage but with his face concealed, and being filmed moving his hands around his undressed torso. A live feed picks up these images, and projects them onto Lupe, who acts as a human projection screen. Combined with her description, the projected hands effectively communicate the awfulness of the violation. At the end of the speech, Ada, Jeremy’s adoptive mother, enters and begins to sing. Lupe walks to Ada, who picks her up, an action that is repeated by Jeremy – who cradles her, in a reversed pietà. The image acts as a point of thematic consolidation, but neither the character narratives swirling around the central triad of Ada-Lupe-Jeremy, nor the production’s multifaceted engagement with voice, could fully converge in this iconic image. It may be that convergence – which relies on density of meaning, packed into an object or character  – can be neutralized as an affect by excessive weight of material. However, we should not expect all of Ex Machina’s theatre to produce the same kind of affect, nor should we allow that to eclipse other important factors. Lipsynch is a crucial moment in Ex Machina’s development – offering a narrative gymnasium through which to test important principles. As in Eonnagata and Blue Dragon the potential of triadic relationships would be further explored here. The conscious blending of theatrical form and cinematic narrative structure  – while it may have contributed to critical tension – is nevertheless a vital step towards new forms of theatre. Bjurman states that Lepage dislikes the arbitrary use of recorded material on stage, because these materials are only useful to him insofar as they elucidate the live conditions of human existence and experience.52 Live performance was used to deconstruct film and television production by staging a film set, Foley artists and voice editing technologies, thus revealing Lipsynch’s critical posture; the camera always lies.

Process in process While each of the projects discussed in this chapter are important steps in Ex Machina’s evolution – spanning installation work, opera and devising – we should not let them overshadow changes in the company’s collaborative context, and evolving creative process. Across these forms, new collaborators, new narrative structures, new ways of working with architecture and new partnerships emerge, and are transformative. A crucial continuity is Lepage’s

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work-rate. Lepage complains to Bernatchez if there are gaps in the work schedule for any reason. Predictably, Bernatchez identifies ‘over-productivity’ as a major feature of Lepage’s creative psychology. ‘The other’, he says, ‘is a capacity to find analogies between things that most people wouldn’t think of associating’. A crucial development is Blanchet’s deployment as Creative Director. Blanchet’s brain works like Lepage’s, Bernatchez says, and this ‘is of great help’. His ‘intuitions’ of how preparatory research ‘should be structured or associated’ matches up with Lepage’s way of working – and this has accelerated Ex Machina’s creative process.53 Lepage offers a clarification in this regard. Blanchet’s arrival did not straightforwardly accelerate the process:  ‘We’re not working faster, we attain results earlier. That’s the difference’, he says.54 It is important, therefore, to address again changes in Ex Machina’s process. The role of time is central in both the structure and nature of their work. Rather than cramming a standardized package of rehearsal hours  – from 110 to 150 per production – into as few weeks as possible, Ex Machina ‘stretch that over 3 years’: So what happens is that you have a group of people round the table for 5 days, do a few improvs and whatever. Then they disappear for months. They come back, we do 2 weeks. At the end we do a public rehearsal, so we get the chance to know what it is that we are doing. Then after that, people disappear for 4  months. They come back, then we work for 3 weeks. And there’s something amazing that happens between these weeks, when nobody is really researching the ideas of the project. But there’s a rendering farm in the back of your head. When you do computer work, you do your whole thing, you go home, and during the night there’s a rendering farm of computers that kind of go – ‘Oh so this goes here, okay and na-na-na’ – and the morning after, you push play and your thing works. And you say, ‘Ah well, there’s a little problem here, or problem there’. That exists in our brains. Your brain selects stuff, and connects stuff, and glues stuff together. I’m convinced, it’s not proven scientifically, but I’m sure it exists. Because 4  months goes by, people come back  – and on day one of rehearsal the show is months further ahead. And we’re all different individuals from different parts of the world, and we all come to the same conclusion on day one – ‘I thought the same thing!’55 That’s time, that’s incubation, the connections, what should be kept, and what works and what doesn’t – this thing happens in everybody’s head that nobody was conscious about  – it just grew. That’s the rendering farm. And you have to trust that, because you can’t quantify it. You have to trust that the work will surface and that

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somebody or something will happen that will guide you; you have to trust that it’s not just going to not happen. Untrust is what kills all art. You have to trust that, like in nature, something will grow. You just have to be patient, and accept that this year there was more rain, or less rain, or that the quality of the ground is different – and whatever is produced will be the result of the conditions that are there. So there’s a nowness in the work that I think is important. You have to go for the now. That’s why I prefer the theatre over cinema – cinema’s always the ghost of who you were, it’s always a trace of who you were. Theatre is always who you are, the moment you’re performing – you are responsible on that day to tell the story, so it’s the nowness that is important. Always avoid saying things like ‘Well of course, if we had this, if we had access to this, it would be different, we’d be able to work, we don’t have this, we can’t do it’. You have to do it – even if you don’t have it. You have to use what is there that will give something – which will be modified completely in another work session – because the conditions of now, this new now, is essential. Accepting that is difficult for a lot of people.56

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Part Three

Starting points (2008–18) Introduction This third section accounts for a period in which Ex Machina are largely – but not entirely – able to explore their aims with freedom. If the first five years of the company up to 1999 represent a difficult birth, and the years between then and 2008 represent a period of reorientation and experimentation, the case studies discussed in this chapter are the result of eventual artistic maturity. The company have adjusted to changes in context, adapt their creative process freely between projects and continue to search for new narrative forms through a series of major co-productions. The works discussed in this section include The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, Totem, Der Ring des Nibelungen, two different versions of The Tempest, L’Amour de Loin, The Library at Night, Playing Cards: Spades and Hearts, Frame by Frame and 887. Again, it is more than productivity that is noteworthy here. The final chapter shows how this trajectory has culminated in support for the construction of a purpose-built venue for the company in Québec City, le Diamant – a change of context that offers yet another new beginning. Chapter  7, ‘Critical relationships’, explores the vital partnerships that have supported the flowering of Ex Machina’s practice, particularly that with Cirque Du Soleil and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. This chapter focuses on understanding the collaborative context within which Ex Machina work, and the economic realities of international co-production. It begins by investigating The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, a collaboration with the Canadian Opera Company that would see Ex Machina once more engage the challenges of intercultural theatre. The question of negotiating how such representation is simultaneously negative cultural appropriation and positive intercultural engagement looms large here. This chapter also concerns itself with a major expression of architectural aesthetics in the form of Lepage’s Ring cycle. While the design came in for strident critique, it nevertheless

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embodies an important realization of practice for Ex Machina by playing a decisive role in staging the cycle as a concrete narrative. Chapter 8, ‘Brave new worlds’, sees Ex Machina push itself into yet new territory again, including a new and major intercultural collaboration, significant reconfigurations of theatrical space in the Playing Cards projects and developments in architectural aesthetics made possible by engagement with Virtual Reality technologies. It is the experience of Playing Cards: Hearts which has particular focus here. This production would match the innovation of architectural aesthetics, and witness yet further experiment with narrative  – but its literal and metaphorical revolutions in theatrical space would face the harsh realities of international co-production. Chapter  9, ‘Beginning’, ends the book by exploring Ex Machina’s most recent works, investigating the collaborative context through a case study of their first co-production with the Canadian National Ballet, Frame by Frame. Of additional interest here is Lepage’s autobiographical solo, 887  – which represents a peak of architectural aesthetics. The on-stage physicalization of Lepage’s childhood home and city of birth produces a detailed and distinctive concrete narrative, worthy of critical attention. Chapter and book conclude by looking to the future of the company as they move from la Caserne to le Diamant, in 2019. The move should ensure Ex Machina retain the creative flexibility they need, even as they gain an important performance venue through which to develop their work, and connect in full to their own cultural context. In an important sense, Ex Machina will be ready to start work with these resources in place.

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7

Critical relationships

Ex Machina’s commitment to international, interdisciplinary and intercultural theatre-making places them in a territory with distinctive challenges. We might read their performances for positive emblems of internationalism, or for risk of appropriation; we might laud their aesthetic innovations, or critique their comportment as a co-producer, and the compromises that financing international theatre demand of them. This chapter explores Ex Machina’s co-productions of opera and circus (2009–16) in this light, starting with The Nightingale and Other Short Fables (2009), and moving on to address Totem (2010), the Ring Cycle (2010–13) and L’Amour de Loin (2015). These cross-institutional collaborations add fresh energy to Ex Machina’s evolution, and facilitate new and bold experiments in architectural aesthetics. These collaborations would also generate fresh opportunities to tackle the contradiction of intercultural theatre  – namely that positivity of engagement with other cultures can generate the negativity of cultural appropriation. Ex Machina enter another phase of development here, raising their work to new levels through important relationships – and with critical themes and responses becoming heightened in parallel.

The Nightingale and Other Short Fables In 1992, Lepage had directed his first operas for Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company  – Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung  – and The Nightingale and Other Short Fables (2009) would be Ex Machina’s first co-production with the company. Sybille Wilson and Rebecca Blankenship would be notable returning collaborators, respectively, as Assistant Director, and Artistic and Musical Consultant. Based around a selection of Stravinsky’s music, Lepage says he found ‘a lot of space in the ideas’ to facilitate ‘what I  wanted to do’.1 Indeed, the ‘highly theatrical’ Stravinsky was a ‘fantastic composer to discover’; his work opened a ‘Pandora’s box of possibilities’. Lepage’s research into music written around animal characters led him to Stravinsky – and a collection of ten pieces of different lengths.

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Lepage had also been seeking an opportunity to bring opera and puppetry together  – having been deeply impressed by Michael Curry’s puppetry for Julie Taymor’s Oedipus Rex at the inaugural Saito Kinen (1998)  – and having himself collaborated with Curry on KÀ (2004). Taymor’s Oedipus proved that puppetry could be more than ‘decoration’ in opera, Lepage says. Indeed, Lepage notes, puppets inevitably bring out ‘the poetry of opera’ by neutralizing contemporary tendencies to play characters naturalistically. For Nightingale, Curry would create a cast of seventy-five puppets, which, the designer says, produced a ‘wonderful hybrid’ feeling – ‘very much like World Theatre’. Moreover, using puppetry in opera offers spectators the powerful contradictions of live and inanimate figures, and of supreme voice and supreme voiceless-ness. Typically, Lepage travelled with Curry to Hanoi in Vietnam, to explore the geo-poetry of the region, spending two weeks with Vietnam’s ‘puppet masters’, who revealed the ‘mysteries and secrets’ of their ‘sacred tradition’. Vietnamese water puppetry ‘is a 1000-year-old’ folk form, and Lepage sees this grounded cultural interaction as mutually beneficial – helping ‘explode the rules and the vocabulary’ of a traditional form  – while at the same time generating understanding of how they ‘could use it for our purpose’. The source tale, The Emperor’s Nightingale (1843), was written by Hans Christian Andersen – and, Lepage acknowledges, reflects its period in being a ‘chinoiserie’. In the nineteenth century, he remarks, a lack of information led to representations of ‘the Orient’ based on ‘fantasy’, and ‘hearsay’  – to the extent that they were labelled chinoiserie. Lepage and Curry borrowed Taiwanese, Japanese, Turkish and Vietnamese puppet traditions to make their ‘own kind of chinoiserie’. It may be that the problems inherent in such appropriation were countered by the embedded research Lepage and Curry engaged with in a grounded context, and a specific cultural practice. Nightingale’s coastal setting supported Lepage’s decision to fill the orchestra pit with 67,000 litres of water, primarily to facilitate Curry’s experiments with Vietnamese water puppets, and bring them closer to the audience. This significantly limited the number of houses that could receive the work after its initial tour – an important financial consideration in co-production. In Canada, at least, Lepage’s return to COC after a gap of nearly twenty years, now with Ex Machina, placed an appealing narrative around the work and mitigated some of the financial risk. The practical difficulties are also noteworthy; Ex Machina’s Production Manager for opera, Viviane Paradis, relates how the performers had to wear wetsuits, as the water could not be so warm that humidity interfered with equipment.2 The scenography was also a direct response to the strict hierarchies of opera – which typically buries the orchestra in the pit – but which now had

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to be repositioned in prime position on the stage itself. Lepage believes in the ‘idea of convergence – that the audience pays to see a community of artists come together and create something’  – and by liberating the musicians from the pit, he would create a powerful, visual emblem of this. Moreover, he says, creating new interactions between singers, musicians and puppeteers, actively showed Nightingale’s audiences the ‘people who should be working together . . . reinventing the art of opera’. It is important to note that this reconfiguration of traditional relationships of creative power is accomplished by reconfiguring the architecture of a conventional spatial relationship. This manoeuvre generated both Nightingale’s concrete narrative, and its meta-theatrical commentary; Lepage said that audiences ‘come to the theatre to get an image of their world’, and that ‘we’re in a society now where we want that hierarchy . . . to change’. Therefore, ‘you have to convey that idea on stage’. In Nightingale, the architectural transformation of pit-to-pool not only represents an instance of patentage in solving the problem of foregrounding the puppetry, but also an excellent emblem of revolution in theatrical space in terms of transformed spatial relationships, and a critical statement that opera needs to reconsider its hierarchies if it is to thrive. Nevertheless, Lepage says that he considers ‘the music to be the leading element’ in directing opera, and he seeks to place the voice at the ‘centre’ of staging. Nightingale received the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Production (opera) in 2010. Tamara Bernstein would write that Nightingale was a ‘masterpiece’ and its ‘magical storytelling’ made the audience feel it was ‘being transported into the heart of a child’.3 Tellingly, Lepage notes that ‘amidst his musical complexity, Stravinsky was interested in telling really simple children’s fables. And, in a way, I think it’s exactly how, each time, we should go to the theatre: with the open mind of a child’.4 Lepage’s taste for fable is noteworthy, given the experiments with narrative form Ex Machina undertake at this time. Eric Domville’s text for Nightingale’s programme recognizes ‘an echo of the Orpheus myth’ in the fable.5 This mythic narrative pattern resonates with several narrative structures used by Lepage, for instance, Needles and Opium (1991, 2014); this may help us understand his facility with the material. However, narrative clarity did not limit the work’s depth; Nightingale was an opera, but also an analysis of opera’s hierarchies; multiple modes of puppetry troubled questions of representation, rather than simply triggering them. Although its chinoiserie ran the risk of Orientalism, Nightingale’s many layers diminished difficulties that had plagued previous intercultural works such as the Trilogy and Ota. Indeed, Bernstein’s review neatly illustrates Nightingale’s level of intercultural competence in her description of its ‘Asian puppetry’ as ‘perfectly kosher’.6

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Totem: Evolving through the gift shop While creating Nightingale, Lepage would also work on his second show for Cirque  – Totem (2010). This designed-for-touring, ‘big-top’ circus project would extend his collaborative relationship with Neilson Vignola, who would here work as his Director of Creation. Totem offered a different kind of red thread than other Cirque shows – a history of evolution from the spark to the swamp, through early human cultures, and onto the present day – a Darwinian narrative, and clear rejoinder to creationism. Interviewing Lepage, Keith Watson notes his alarm at ‘the credibility given to creationist teachings in parts of the US’. Lepage says that ‘[i]‌t freaked [him] out that in this day and age the US could be so backward scientifically . . . evolution is implicit, it’s in our bodies. I’m not trying to do politics with this show; it’s circus, it’s entertainment. But it is important to talk about evolution’. This thread was clear, but, read one review, ‘the evolutionary theme in Totem serves only as a vague attempt to lend aesthetic consistency to the show’.7 Totem was far from polemical, but its intentions were conscious. Lepage tells Watson, ‘The day a man from Kansas City makes his son cover his eyes and takes him out of the big top, then I’ll know the message is getting through’8 – clearly referencing the long-running tensions between scientists and creationists in the United States, and exemplified by ongoing battles within the Kansas State Board of Education over what narrative of human existence can – and more importantly cannot  – be taught in science education.9 Lepage would tell Benedict Nightingale that ‘[t]he things I enjoy I don’t necessarily understand right away, but they feel tasty, exciting, playful, risky and you feel the audience is sitting on the edge of its seats. And yes, the circus can be spicy too’.10 Despite its spicy agenda of prodding anti-Darwinists, embodying human potential, celebrating the origin stories of multiple cultures and, adds Lepage, bringing ‘animals back to the circus but in their proper place’,11 Totem received generally weak reviews. Charles Spencer of the Telegraph reviewed Totem in both 2011 and 2012.12 In 2011, Spencer noted the ‘superb’ circus acts used by the ‘curiously soulless’ Cirque, expressing hope that Lepage would ‘revolutionise the stale format’ – but lamented that ‘even [he] hasn’t been able to rouse the company from its complacency’. In 2012 Spencer hoped for improvements, but ‘[t]‌he show appears to be unchanged, right down to the strenuously unfunny clowning and the incomprehensible narrative about creation myths and evolution’. Spencer critiqued the ‘grim regimentation of Cirque’, and expressed his preference for circus where ‘performers are allowed to have personalities of their own’. He concludes ‘that the show is the most tremendous rip-off ’: ‘A programme comes at a tenner, while a carnival face mask consisting of little more than glitter and some feathers will set you back £379 at the ludicrously overpriced merchandise

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stall. In hard economic times, Cirque du Soleil feels like a bloated, self-indulgent luxury one could very happily live without.’13 Poor notices are little deterrent, however; by Totem’s third year of touring, it had ‘visited more than 12 cities in four different countries’ reaching ‘more than 1.5 million spectators’.14 Cirque is undeniably profit-focused, but they also administer multiple charity, outreach, corporate responsibility and sustainability programmes. Notwithstanding, the blunt commercialism of adopting an ‘exit through the gift shop’ approach problematizes the social values Cirque claims for itself  – and inexorably edges them towards becoming the apotheosis of Neoliberal Art. Hypercommodification is an increasingly popular survival strategy for theatre – in a context where live performance faces massive competition from cheaper and easier alternatives – but long term it will likely prove a form of cultural suicide by auto-asphyxiation. Ex Machina are not immune, and have commodified some of their theatre – producing graphic novel versions of The Blue Dragon and 887, for ­example – but this is a far cry from Cirque’s commercial practice. For Lepage, however, contemporary circus’s potential is very much in line with Ex Machina’s praxis. Prior to Totem’s 2011 run in London, Lepage told theatre critic Mark Shenton that circus manifests ‘lessons of integration, balance, trust, discipline and patience’, and expresses transcendent meanings, going ‘beyond politics’ to be ‘about who you are and who you share your identity with’.15 Indeed, whatever substance Totem has connects to Lepage’s emphasis on the importance of people understanding their common genetic ancestry (see Chapter 4). In attempting this cirque d’idéologie, Lepage would already have the supporting emblem of Cirque’s performers on his side. Writing in the Times, Benedict Nightingale lists how Totem would ‘bring together 50 artists from so many nations [19]16 that, on the first day of rehearsals, [Lepage] was communicating through 12 different translators, two of them speaking different Chinese languages’. Moreover, Totem realized another of Lepage’s core principles. Nightingale asks him ‘if there is an overall theme to his work’; Lepage’s answer is ‘reconciliation’ – the ‘idea that people can overcome their national and linguistic divides’.17 Lepage reiterates this elsewhere  – identifying reconciliation as the main theme of Far Side.18 All life, he says, is ‘part of one big thing. We’re so preoccupied with politics and borders and cultural differences that we ignore this’.19 It’s an important point; across the oeuvre of Ex Machina performances, contradiction builds seemingly irreconcilable elements into the fabric of performance. Engaging with contradiction generates reflexive space for audiences to negotiate the problem of reconciliation – a problem which haunts the world. Totem may be circus, but it shows Lepage’s increasing willingness to publicly identify the sociopolitical principles underpinning Ex Machina’s praxis.

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Whether or not intercultural theatre offers ethical engagement with the question of reconciliation remains to be seen. The representation of indigenous culture in Totem as a spectacle for commercial purpose is problematic, for example. Nightingale remarks upon representatives of ‘first nations’, notably Native Americans, who sing, dance and do ‘stunning things with hoops’ – and it is not clear how this creates a channel of reconciliation.20 Nakota LaRance – a multiple world champion hoop dancer – is the performer Nightingale references. Of Hopi, Tewa and Assiniboin roots, LaRance’s many online videos display his skills and adaptations of this traditional form  – including blending moonwalking and hip-hop into his demonstrations.21 Others highlight the origin of the hoop dance as a shamanic healing ceremony, starting with a single ring with multiple symbolic meanings  – the seasons, the stages of life, natural forms – with hoops added over time as the form became popularized.22 LaRance has raised the profile of this cultural form, and by performing it in Totem, places a cultural practice under erasure before a global audience, while securing material resources for further development. Folding these potentials into a Cirque performance, however, may disguise them. However, we can legitimately speculate that such potential was recognized in Ex Machina’s 2011 production of The Tempest, in collaboration with the Huron-Wendat Nation (see Chapter  8). This incorporated the twenty-one-strong Sandokwa dance troupe – showing clear intentions to engage with indigenous artists in maximum depth – and perhaps triggered by working with LaRance on Totem.23 Finally, Totem is also noteworthy for its ‘big-top’ spatial configuration  – foreshadowing Lepage’s circular design for Playing Cards (2012 onwards; see Chapter 8).

Collaboration: Ex Machina and the Metropolitan Opera Ex Machina’s vision of theatre as a meeting place for all disciplines is one reason the operatic form provides an ideal territory for exploration. Wagner, Lepage says, ‘expressed the idea that everything is braided at the same time; a good theatre piece or Opera is as much about words as it is about music as it is architecture, painting, costumes, choreography and acting. It’s the romantic idea that art should be at the crossroads of everything’.24 After Faust (2008–9), the Metropolitan Opera emerged as Ex Machina’s major partner in exploring these crossroads. Subsequent to the Ring cycle (2010–13), this relationship extended to include the Festival d’Opéra de Québec, with co-productions of Thomas Adès’s The Tempest (2012–13) and Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin (2015–16). Opera is both antique and contemporary, and this inherent contradiction (not to mention its resources) is a second reason

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its territory is ideal for exploration. Peter Gelb’s vision for the form embraces this contradiction, and this affinity helps explain the number of Metropolitan Opera co-productions on Ex Machina’s roster. Gelb’s approach to opera is a ‘walk into new territory with old material’, Cate Kustanczy writes; ‘a little bit of old, a little bit of new, and voila, an entirely new way of perceiving opera within the larger cultural realm. Gelb’s penchant for mixing up old and new, and for pushing audiences in new and occasionally uncomfortable directions, speaks to his vision about the possibilities of an old art form in an ever-evolving world’.25 In interview, Gelb says that he must ‘walk a tightrope every day’ as his theatre is ‘at the front line of the turmoil between tradition and artistic advancement’.26 Lepage’s directorial style appeals to Gelb ‘first and foremost’ because he is ‘a great storyteller’. From the outset, Gelb sought out directors ‘[w]‌ho are so creative and so visionary that they are able to accept the challenge of telling a story that is already known, but to tell it in a way that’s going to stimulate and excite, and amaze and delight the audience – or at least that’s the intention’. The difficulty, he says, in filling a 3,800-seat venue every night is precisely that: ‘to do something new, to create new excitement and keep the art form refreshed – it is necessary to produce new versions of works that have been produced hundreds of times’. The ‘creative challenge is really great’, therefore, because the temptation of ‘deconstructing a piece and turning it upside down’ to find fresh angles is strong, but means ‘you’ve left your audience behind’. That, Gelb says, is ‘the easy way out’, and ‘unfortunately it’s been supported by academics and music critics who don’t really understand that that’s ultimately going to result in the death of the art form, because even though it may titillate the elite insiders, what it does is turnoff or limit the possibility of engaging new audiences’. Lepage’s storytelling abilities and ‘his ever-changing but always stimulating aesthetic’ are crucial in Gelb’s plan to counteract shrinkage in the core audience for opera. Gelb attributes this wastage to ‘a lack of education of the arts in schools in [the United States] for what is now maybe four or five decades’  – that, and ‘a world where everything is defined by ever shortening soundbites’. The ‘entire art form’, he says, ‘is suspect to a new, younger generation of potential audience members’. Therefore, he concludes, ‘it’s essential that we work with someone like Robert Lepage’ because his ‘visually mind-boggling’ work ‘makes total sense’ and appeals ‘to a much broader audience’ – dazzling audiences, but nevertheless ‘supporting the story’. Delivering projects that meet the aims of both Ex Machina and the Metropolitan Opera requires the collaborative context to be organized with great efficiency. Taking point here are production managers Viviane Paradis and Paul Masck, from Ex Machina and the Metropolitan Opera,

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respectively. The details of the collaborative context are revealing. The Metropolitan Opera, Masck says, do not co-produce their standard repertoire – what he calls ‘the ABC of operas’ – ‘Aida, Boheme, Carmen’. This repertoire is approximately 125 operas in total, and they present 26 each year. Masck manages around 40 projects at any one time. ‘Conductors and singers are booked 5 years in advance’, he says, and productions are put in cold storage in between times, in 40 foot sea containers, stacked 6 high. 1200 of them. In New Jersey heat and cold. And a big opera like Aida is 22–24 containers of scenery. And that production is 30 odd years old, and we continue to do it. And we have other things we have built-in – and performed once. Two years ago we had a piece that we performed – 20 years ago was the last time – and it hasn’t been anywhere since then other than New Jersey.27

It may seem tangential, but the storage life of 125 opera designs is a fair metaphor of the baggage which the opera form carries – and which must be continuously negotiated. The Metropolitan Opera co-produces only ‘rarer works’, or new operas, Masck says. These pieces allow greater innovation, but new work ‘is extremely expensive to create’. Opera, he remarks, is ‘about the most complex thing you can do’  – requiring ‘people with expertise in basically every field that there is’. Factor in the linguistic complexity of international collaboration, and production meetings can be like ‘going to the United Nations to talk about scenery’. However, co-production means sharing budgets, and reducing costs; this improves financial risk management, and, he says, means that ‘you can present more variety’. After co-producing houses have received productions, they might ‘get a rental somewhere else’. Despite the complexities, co-production provides a platform for opera to evolve. Over time, the two organizations have developed ‘a shorthand’, and have come to ‘understand how this all needs to work’. Paradis confirms that there is greater consistency in Ex Machina’s opera production team than there is on the design team – an important factor in ensuring continuity of practice.28 Paradis took over from Bernard Gilbert as Production Manager for Opera, and has worked on 1984, Rake’s Progress, Faust, Nightingale, the Ring Cycle, The Tempest and L’Amour de Loin. Despite some initial challenges, the organizations now ‘know each other very well’ and have even swapped personnel.29 The main issue the partnership faced early on was when Ex Machina arrived in New  York for a week-long creation period  – which the Metropolitan Opera had scheduled for strictly technical rehearsal of cues and set installation. ‘It

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was not a diplomatic incident’, Paradis says, but it was an ‘uh-oh’ moment; the partners realized they had to communicate better about expectations and practice, and how they might adapt to each other’s needs.30 Advanced planning is all, in opera; even the restaging of Faust was used as a path-breaking production to test new technologies in projection, sound and video interactivity before the Ring. In 2008, she recalls, the Metropolitan Opera had no video production department. Catherine Guay – Video Project Manager at Ex Machina – was crucial to them in bringing on board new technologies. This is an important example of Ex Machina’s influence upon their co-producing partners. Ultimately, the Ring would have seven different video designers, and include 3-D projection effects: six hours of music requires considerable sound-image coordination, Paradis remarks. But Ex Machina must also compromise with the ‘superstructure’ of the Metropolitan. Although it would be easier  – and cheaper  – to coordinate the manufacture of production elements if they were all made in Québec, US union regulations don’t allow this. Finance is at the core of co-production, and central to understanding this element of collaborative context is the stipulation that emerged from the silence of 2000 – that Ex Machina would be co-producers wherever Lepage worked as a director. ‘From that point on’, Bernatchez says, when someone comes to Robert he says ‘Yes, I’m very interested, please speak to my producer’. And then the shit hits the fan. Because they want Robert only – but we tell them ‘You won’t get “Robert”; there will be a series of designers working with him, we will choose them, and you’ll have a say in that selection. The physical elements, the set, will be built in Québec city. And you’ll have to foot the bill for that. And please add an overhead of 15%.31

Bernatchez opines that ‘our approach is so unusual that there’s lots of resistance’, and this meant going through ‘walls’ with some European opera houses. However, he says, Ex Machina must set terms of co-production because, when Lepage works overseas, productivity – and therefore revenue – are reduced. Co-production can actually reduce costs, even with hefty transportation fees, as manufacturing is cheaper in Québec. It is, therefore, one significant way Ex Machina pays forward into the economic environment of Québec. Moreover, co-production also acts as a firewall between Lepageas-artist, and institutional systems that could negate Ex Machina’s way of working. Co-producers, perhaps, experience the inseparability of Lepage and Ex Machina more than anyone else.

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For the Metropolitan Opera, co-production with Ex Machina meant additional complexities, as it demanded standing union agreements be renegotiated, for example, those relating to set construction outside of the United States. Nevertheless, the relationship evolved and now, Bernatchez says, ‘the model works’ – but he does not romanticize the partnership: We had a tablecloth – a large one – made for The Tempest. Something like 40’ x 20’  – and it had a Velcro join down the middle so that it could be magically torn in two on stage. We made a prototype in Québec city, and then did a week of workshops here. And we had the set built in coordination, and then we moved to New York for the rehearsals with the singers and the orchestra. So the model works. [But] our prototype tablecloth didn’t work in New York, so we had one made in an emergency by the Met’s workshop. And it cost $16,000 – and the Met told us, all properties are your responsibility. You asked us to do that, so we’ll take out that $16,000 out of the budget we pay you to develop the production. $16,000 – a piece of cotton, 20 x 40. So sometimes it doesn’t work, but sometimes it does work – and we end up with an extra $2-300,000 that can be poured into creation. However, when we did the Ring, out of a $10 million budget our profit was exactly $6000. That’s the surplus  – the overheads. And I  spent the equivalent of 10 months working full-time on that production – I  wasn’t paid for that  – I  was paid by Ex Machina, but Ex Machina didn’t receive anything for that.32

Masck adds more detail still to this picture of collaboration; most of the work for the Ring was done in Montréal, ‘in two major summer periods’, with the Metropolitan Opera’s crew, and using acrobats as stand-ins for the singers. Indeed, the Metropolitan Opera’s production office wall bears a picture Masck describes as ‘50 Americans standing on the set in the middle of a cornfield outside of Montréal’. Larger parts of the Ring set were made in New York and shipped to Montréal, while companies like Scène Éthique made ‘some of the mechanical pieces’, he says. Sometimes the density of subcontractors available in Québec City has the advantage; Masck smiles about ‘the Ring being built on one street’. Sometimes the experience available in New  York has the advantage. The floor of the Metropolitan needed to be reinforced to receive the set of the Ring, so the expertise of the New  York–based structural engineering firm that had worked on KÀ was commissioned in undertaking a ‘huge amount of calculation’.

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Wagner, architectural aesthetics and Der Ring des Nibelungen Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle accounts for the departure of the Norse gods from the human world. Parts One and Two – Das Rheingold and Die Walküre – were presented in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2010/11 season, and Parts Three and Four – Siegfried and Götterdämmerung – were added in 2011/12, enabling the full cycle, collectively Der Ring Des Nibelungen (1848–74), to be performed. The theatre had not staged a new Ring for over twenty years, but given the status of the piece, it was inevitable that Gelb would schedule the work at some point during his tenure – and, given Lepage’s fit with his artistic direction, probably inevitable that Lepage would be its director. When Gelb contacted Lepage in 2005, he made what Elena Park describes as the ‘offer you can’t refuse’ – a Ring with the artistic and fiscal backing of the Metropolitan Opera.33 More importantly, the timing would be right for Lepage. In the silence of 2000 Lepage had spent two weeks touring Iceland with Marie Gignac, and the country’s geo-poetry gave him his production concept.34 Lepage also ‘did a lot of research on what Wagner wanted to do’,35 and Ex Machina’s conception of theatre as a meeting place of disciplines clearly aligned with Wagnerian notions of the gesamkunstwerk. Lepage writes that ‘[e]‌xploring the way in which we “see” music has always been a fascination of mine’,36 and the Ring’s design would inscribe dynamic musical properties of tempo and rhythm into scenographic form. Working with long-term Ex Machina collaborators Carl Fillion on design, and Rebecca Blankenship as artistic and musical consultant, Lepage was again able to evolve his architectural aesthetic through the Ring. The design was inspired by the cracked landscape of Iceland, and the wooden planks of a stage floor. In essence, Lepage says, the stage design was an automated stage floor made of twenty-four movable planks.37 These could be lifted together as one, and rotated individually, to create shapes representing different forms at different heights, and which acted as a projection screen. The architectural element of the floor is reconfigured as active and expressive in the design. The same scenography would be used in each part of the Ring, working, Park suggests, ‘in the same vocabulary’38 as Faust – creating not only the suggestion of location, but spatial metaphors against which character and action would be read. This would be an architectural space inseparable from its story, and a story inseparable from its architectural space. This Ring would, therefore, become a concrete narrative. Lepage said that the primary imperative underlying the Ring’s design was the creation of ‘a coherence that will last for 16 hours’. He believes that the

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cycle moves inexorably ‘toward the idea of organising society’ modelled on ‘the hierarchy of the gods’. Ultimately, a single design would unite the four pieces spanning this complex progression, by giving image to the processes of social transformation they describe. Creating dramatic unity through visual unity is a gesture typical to architectural aesthetics, and for Lepage a dominant one; ‘The stage director is preoccupied by space. That is your job as the stage director’, he says.39 This approach created a notable contradiction – setting Asatru gods on high-tech hydraulics, against the backdrop of 3-D projections  – and the difficulty of reconciling this underpinned many negative critical responses. As a concrete narrative, Lepage’s Ring was no simple spectacle of ‘entertainment architecture’– its design created an everpresent spatial metaphor for the forces of change acting upon the gods. At the same time, its presence was a real-life emblem of how technology is changing theatre. There was a parallel of anxiety here, then, between the Norse gods on stage, as they receded from the world, and offstage, with technology’s power to erase the world that we know. Lepage’s hope was for fresh excitement within ‘an extremely classical and traditional interpretation’.40 However, while the singers, orchestra and conductor (James Levine) were often praised by reviewers, the design was often sharply critiqued.

Reviewing the Ring The Ring put the art form of opera front page and centre, and across multiple platforms – news, reviews, blogs, breakfast TV and HD broadcasts to fortyfive countries. It is interesting to trace the development of the conversation around this work by focusing on its treatment in leading opera magazines. Before opening night, Lepage publicly stressed the importance of probing the roots of Wagner’s narrative, and the need to balance fidelity to Wagner’s aesthetic while attracting new audiences to it. August Ventura (Opera News) would recognize in the staging a ‘continuation of the composer’s own creative vector’. Indeed, Lepage told Ventura that ‘[o]‌ur production tries so hard to be faithful to Wagner’s idea of the gesamkunstwerk, the great Mother Art that he considered opera to be, where every aspect of performance art  – whether it be, of course, music and drama, but also architecture, choreography, poetry and literature  – everything is welcomed. Not only welcomed  – everything is compulsory in Wagner’s world’.41 Despite the ‘sharply divided’ critical reception, Ventura notes that paying audiences were more favourably disposed42 – and Lepage would keep faith with his twentyfirst-century Wagnerian-ism. Writing in May 2011 – effectively the end of the Metropolitan season  – Ventura would encapsulate the ongoing, core

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contradiction of Lepage’s Ring in describing it as ‘faithful to the story’s mythic setting yet contemporary in its visual language’.43 Exploring the anxiety of a world dying  – while another is born  – means presenting contradictory aspects of both. This contradiction may be why the production satisfied neither radical nor traditionalist reviewers. Reviewing Rheingold in the December edition of Wagner Notes for the Richard Wagner Society of New  York, F.  Peter Phillips described it as ‘intellectually tepid’, with ‘little new in this telling’. The actors were nothing ‘less than brilliant’, however, and Phillips expressed hope that as this ‘Ring progresses, Lepage will turn his imagination to the characters and the story, as much as to the “Machine”, and will give us a responsible, provocative interpretation of this great work that offers something new, fresh and worth thinking about’.44 Fred Cohn (Opera News) concurred  – writing that ‘[m]‌usically the evening was close to a triumph’, but more successful in creating interest through the design than from Lepage’s ‘direction of the singers themselves’ – which seemed the ‘very embodiment’ of the ‘park and bark school of operatic performance’. The ‘evening unfolded in arid inertia’, therefore, with the audience ‘marking time between dazzling special effects’.45 Patrick Dillon wrote grumpily that Lepage’s Rheingold was ‘ugly’, ‘noisy’ and ‘dramatically inert’  – launching the Metropolitan Opera season ‘with a resounding thud’.46 The production for Dillon was ‘completely empty of concept, of theatrical urgency and excitement’ – although, again, the ‘singers were all good, and a few of them splendid’. However, like Phillips, Dillon also looked forward to Lepage supplying ‘more compelling stage action in the operas to come’, to better manipulation of the set, and more subtle work with ‘body doubles’.47 Robert Levine (Opera Now) would describe the production as ‘spectacular and gripping’, and far from an ‘abstruse and abstract’ replacement of the ‘very naturalistic, beloved Otto Schenk Ring’ – which had been feared. Levine heavily praised the musical performances, but, typically, wondered if the characters could have been developed at the same level that ‘the set and effects have been conceived’.48 By contrast, John Yohalem (Opera Today) wrote that ‘things are happening every moment’, and the ‘fierce heat’ of the archetypal characters ‘makes itself felt’. The gods crossing of the rainbow bridge to Valhalla at the end of the piece ‘is the most exciting version of this climactic event that I’ve ever seen on any stage’, he wrote – although the ‘new events at each new chord, every syllable, every new motif ’ were eventually overwhelming.49 Die Walkure would premiere on 22 April 2011. Dillon would credit it as being ‘more involving’ than Rheingold, but landing ‘well short of the mark’. The design is still ‘ugly and nearly as noisy’, not to mention ‘dangerous’. Ratcheting up even further on his previous review, he lists the ‘capital offences’ of the

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production, which was disengaging, limp, ‘poorly managed’ and played ‘like a concert in costume’ – we might, he wrote, see better staging ‘in the average high-school play’.50 Opera would report that with Siegfried ‘[t]‌he depressing saga continues’; the rotating planks continued to offer ‘picturesque if often meaningless combinations and permutations’, while the projections of natural elements like fire and water ‘frequently contradicted both logic and text’.51 The premiere of Götterdämmerung (27 January 2012)  would, for Anthony Tommasini of the New  York Times, be the ‘most theatrically effective staging’ in the series, and the ‘clearest representation’ of ‘Lepage’s vision’. Tommasini attributes this to Lepage’s ongoing simplification of the staging, which ‘allowed you to focus on the exciting musical performance’ – and hoped for similar developments in the season-concluding performances of the full cycle. By this time, Tommasini writes, Lepage was ‘bristling at some of the criticism’ the production had received – especially as the role of the design in facilitating the ‘highly praised singing and acting’ went largely uncredited.52 Speaking to Ventura in 2011, Lepage defended the work: Opera has to move on and step into the 21st-century. And to do that, it takes time and change and resources . . . We have this new audience. We have to not just seduce them with flashy devices but we have to make the vocabulary of Opera evolve . . . To welcome them into the room. And if we also believe that Opera is still a viable way of telling a story, then we have to be sensitive to our times and the tools and vocabularies that are available to us.53

Reflecting in 2016, Lepage says that critics could not read the production’s use of technology because they are not used to seeing that, and they want to see what they know. You only like what you know. So what you don’t know is an obstruction. In New York, there were people sitting in the room with the scores – Wagner’s scores on their lap – literally – and they’re looking at their scores, and they’re saying, ‘Oh they’ve cut this!’ And then of course the set made a noise – and they go – ‘No set!’ But this is opera – this is the meeting of set, and orchestra and all of that – yet there’s a whole batch of people sitting there that don’t know that. So I don’t listen to that criticism. I don’t care, and I’m not in it for them.54

Lepage, like Gelb, is ‘in it’ to attract new audiences to opera  – to extend the appeal of the art form, and thus renew it. For Gelb, the design did ‘something

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that has never been done in the history of the Ring, which is to actually be able to scenically transition from one moment to the next in ways that conventional stage technology can’t possibly accommodate’. The design, therefore, was a scapegoat ‘for people who objected to it for other reasons’. The underlying problem was that, by not following the dominant approach of staging the cycle ‘as a metaphor for something else’, the production appeared to some critics as ‘a totally retro step backwards’. Not for Gelb; indeed, he contends that the production was a significant ‘portal into opera for new audiences’.55 Certainly, Lepage acknowledged, it was a learning experience: A cycle is not a circle, necessarily. A  cycle can be a spiral. The world starts again, but you’ve learned from your first cycle, and then you do another one, then probably go back to your starting point, but you’re a level higher. That’s why, for me, the image of a spiral spring is what the Ring is about. It’s about constantly walking and doing the same goofs, but of course being more informed than the last time.56

The Tempest and L’Amour de Loin Ex Machina would open their co-production of Thomas Adès’s Tempest on 26 July 2012 in Québec City, from where it would transfer to New  York. This piece would initiate their pattern of launching co-productions with the Metropolitan Opera at Québec’s summer opera festival. Adès had previously worked with Ex Machina as conductor at the Royal Opera House, on Rake’s Progress. Hidden by the controversy surrounding the Ring, Lepage was indeed spiralling up to a higher level  – revisiting his long-standing relationship The Tempest, but now as an opera. Unlike the Ring, The Tempest received notes of unqualified praise. Tommasini reviewed the production as ‘[o]‌ne of the most inspired, audacious and personal operas to have come along in years’, displaying ‘a superb cast’, and with Adès drawing ‘a textured, glittering and suspenseful account of his opera from the great Met orchestra’.57 The production was far simpler than even a single section of the Ring. Masck reflects that it was ‘a much more straightforward theatre piece’, with little machinery, so after it had been performed in Québec ‘we sent a few people up there to go pick it up, basically’.58 New singers were rehearsed in, and the piece opened in New York on 23 October. Like both Andersen and the Ring, Lepage brought a meta-theatrical design into the production by staging a stage upon a stage  – the scenographer’s equivalent of a play within a play, perhaps. Whereas the Ring made the stage floor itself an animated performer, and Andersen was book-ended by

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scenes in the Paris Opera – revealing its meta-theatricality only at the close – Lepage would set this entire Tempest in the theatre of la Scala, in Milan. Heidi Waleson (Wall Street Journal) declared, ‘This is the Met at its adventurous best’.59 By setting the opera in one of the most famous opera houses in the world, but actually exploring areas of the theatre beyond its playing space, this Tempest brought multiple layers of commentary on representation and opera production to the stage. Ex Machina would also open their next Metropolitan Opera co-production – Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin (2000) – in Québec City, in 2015, before its New  York transfer in 2016. Both Tempest and L’Amour de Loin demonstrate Lepage’s directorial skill with contemporary opera  – even as they consolidate Ex Machina’s pattern of co-production. Lepage’s commitment to directing rare or new operas is an important aspect of his work to rejuvenate the form, but, he says, ‘audiences are resisting’ it.60 The weight of baggage opera programming must address slows the appearance of new work. As Masck says, the Metropolitan’s ‘next newest opera this season [2016–17] may be Rosenkavalier’ – first performed in 1911. L’Amour de Loin is triply ‘unusual’ in programming terms he says, ‘because it’s such a new opera’, ‘because you only have 3 people’ and ‘because a lot of times when you’re doing an opera absolutely everybody in the cast has performed it many times, in many productions’.61 L’Amour de Loin was not an established classic, but it would benefit from Ex Machina’s established relationships. Opening in New York on 1 December 2016, L’Amour de Loin saw Lepage reprise partnerships with Michael Curry as designer and Sybille Wilson as Associate Director. Ex Machina’s opera team would bring the production through the now-established channels, and there were other connections. Mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, who had sung the Rhinemaiden Flosshilde in the Ring, would transfer her role of the Pilgrim from Québec to New  York, where she would be joined by bass-baritone Eric Owens – who had also played in the Ring as Alberich – here singing the troubadour Jaufré Rudel – while adding a new collaborator, soprano Suzanne Phillips  – as Clémence. Although the piece presented Curry fewer opportunities for puppetry than Nightingale, there were stylistic connections – particularly the deployment of birds on wire pulleys crossing the stage, and different size puppets used at different stage depths to create illusions of scale. The first performance of L’Amour de Loin was directed by Peter Sellars (Salzburg Festival, 2000), who met the need to represent the sea by filling his stage with water. For Lepage, this ‘was too literal’62 – and, even if he had wanted another venue full of water – it would have been impossible to achieve at the Metropolitan Opera given their daily turnaround times. The creative solution found for staging the sea showed the culture of patentage at

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work. This, along with the deployment of a mobile bridge – an architectural metaphor of distance and connection across geography and culture – would create the concrete narrative of L’Amour de Loin. L’Amour de Loin’s sea design consisted of a large frame above, and covering, the playing area. The frame was tilted, high upstage, low downstage. The frame was empty except for roughly forty strips of material – each embedded with 1,000 LED lights – which ran side to side at regular intervals. Curry’s production originally included bands of material to receive images, but, Associate Director Sybille Wilson says, these lacked interest when tested, or were too literal, so the company experimented with LEDs. In the final design, the LED strips faced forward, and were backed with opaque material so the performers on stage were not blinded as they moved between them. The LEDs were also colour-changing and networked to a computer so that pre-programmed footage of ocean movement  – which had been digitally transformed into patterns of flow and colour – could play out over the LED strips. Wilson says this video is ‘very defined’ with ‘cues’ and a ‘musical rhythm’ that are ‘very specific’. It ‘tells a story to us’, she says.63 This technological innovation, combined with lift and/or tilt of the frame, created stunning impressions of the sea – in different times, temperatures and conditions. At points, the pulsing lights would suggest the flow of digital information, and hint at metaphors of communication across distance. Lepage fairly describes the effect as a ‘high-tech production of a mediaeval story’.64 Although L’Amour de Loin has only three characters, separate choruses of men and of women are required. These stood upstage left and right, respectively. When the back of the frame was lifted, these choruses could not be seen beneath the frame due to the glare of the LEDs facing the audience. When the frame lowered, however, the heads of the singers became visible, and the illusion was created that they had emerged from under a wave. The flow of light allowed the music to be expressed visually. Moreover, the design encapsulated an always-visible contradiction between high-tech electrical light, and the water it represented. The libretto for L’Amour de Loin  – in English, Love from Afar  – was written by Amin Maalouf, and is based on a thirteenth-century ballad telling the story of a French prince who falls in love with a woman he has never seen, and sails to Tripoli to meet her while disguised as a troubadour, only to die in her arms. The narrative is a typically Lepagean myth in its Orphic qualities  – mirroring Orpheus’s discovery of ideal love with Eurydice, and his symbolic crossing of water to recover her, leading to death. As the Pilgrim who provides the revelation of Clémence’s existence to Jaufré, Mumford would regularly punt her way across the downstage on a boat set on a track between two of the LED strips. The other main feature of the design was an animated bridge, which also travelled on a track

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between the LED strips, but slightly higher upstage. At both ends of the bridge was a small pulpit, from where Owens and Phillips, as the doomed lovers Rudel and Clémence, would mostly sing. This bridge could both pivot and tilt on its moving base. When tilting, individual sections of the device’s flat floor would be pushed outwards, thus creating steps (much like the stairs on an escalator) for the performers to climb or descend. Ultimately, the emotional bridge between the characters is expressed metaphorically in this classic architectural emblem of connection (we need only consider Ota to recall Lepage’s knowledge of the symbolism of bridges), producing a concrete narrative of love transcending separation. Observing Lepage direct the work in at the Metropolitan Opera was revealing, partly because of the differences it highlighted between his way of directing at la Caserne, and away from home. Lepage has a private style of directing, preferring to speak very quietly to his performers, and frequently in close proximity to them. However, early in the first rehearsal Lepage was handed a microphone to speak to the performers on stage from the auditorium. The strategy is entirely practical; the time it takes to reach the stage from the red-velvet auditorium of the house is considerable. Lepage quickly abandons it, preferring to move onto the stage to direct Owens’s physical positioning on the bridge for Act One. But then, after testing these ideas, it is Wilson who swiftly takes the stage to share feedback from the production team with different groups of performers. In the first phase of rehearsals, Lepage generally remained in the auditorium, focused on the overall picture, while Wilson would attend to details of gesture on stage, with both connected by wireless cans. Given the limited, and therefore precious, time available to establish the work in its performance environment such trust is essential. At its heart is a fluid relationship between Lepage and Wilson that clearly works very well. Wilson says their collaboration on Hearts was closer to the traditional relationship between director and assistant director.65 These rehearsals show how Lepage and Wilson have become skilled collaborators – complementing each other’s commentary to the performers without confusion, or managing different focuses. There is frenetic activity in breaks between the running of material – with multiple assistant stage directors in almost constant movement, and a large technical team spread out across eight temporary desks set up in the auditorium. It works so seamlessly it’s sometimes hard to tell if anything is actually happening – almost as if the production team works like a compound eye, each contributing their particular angle in order to generate the actual picture. The only time an easy distinction can be made between Ex Machina and Metropolitan Opera personnel is when there

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is a break, as they are working under different union agreements. The strictness with which breaks are taken is a testament to the seriousness with which the work is undertaken, and to positive commitments to protecting workers’ rights; nevertheless, in full-heat rehearsal the abrupt halting of work – mid-aria – is jolting. On the day before the dress, Lepage worked closely with Owens on movement for his death scene. The most complex moment of narrative staging is Jaufré’s arrival – and death – in Tripoli, which sees him carried on a stretcher to see Clémence in the citadel. He is brought on stage by four actors, witnessed by the Pilgrim and Clémence, who are standing on the bridge. Comparatively speaking it’s not that complex – but the narrative is hard to follow visually. He arrives, revives, collapses, is prayed for and dies, before the Pilgrim takes his body away. The clearest demonstration of the skill in storytelling that Gelb prizes in Lepage are the simple changes he makes to the physical structuring of this passage – clarifying what is happening with precision, while allowing the emotional power of each moment of extremity to emerge in a progressive sequence – and not as a single, blurred emotion. The New  York Classical Review would not only list L’Amour de Loin in fourth place in its top ten of musical performances in 2016, but would also describe it as one of the Metropolitan’s ‘great successes of the decade’  – being a ‘profound’ and ‘mesmerising’ experience, ‘visually and intellectually brilliant’ and ‘an important addition to the repertory’.66 L’Amour de Loin is also part of an important evolutionary dynamic for Ex Machina. Bjurman says that L’Amour de Loin illustrates Lepage’s increasing fascination with the Middle East, and he points to connections between Celestine and L’Amour de Loin; they are both positioned in a crucial ‘hinge’ moment in culture – the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance world.67 As Kent Nagano  – who conducted the premiere of the piece at the Salzburg Festival in 2000 – says, L’Amour de Loin explores ‘the North African world’ and its ‘differences of culture’ with ‘a European world’, and is therefore ‘very relevant’ today; ‘The Troubadour sets off over the sea, and he really tries to come to terms with the great cultural differences between these two radically different cultures, radically different traditions, radically different histories. That is a theme that we feel evermore so pertinent in our complicated world’.68 L’Amour de Loin – more than even the Ring, perhaps  – is the definitive Ex Machina opera  – exemplifying patentage, contradiction, architectural aesthetics, concrete narrative, the visualization of music and the politics of métissages – in an effort to stretch the boundaries of the form.

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Paying for art Opera is expensive, even in co-production, and while it provides opportunities to innovate, it also points us towards exploring the financial relationships supporting the delivery of Ex Machina projects. For Bernatchez, the decisive feature in Ex Machina’s monetary landscape is Lepage’s artistic leadership.69 Many companies in Québec, he says, are led by ‘an administrator, producer or whatever’, and ‘gradually, unconsciously, the goal becomes not to make a deficit. The goal becomes “We need to balance the budget” ’. Conversely, Ex Machina is driven by Lepage’s vision, ‘and we’re certainly not afraid of making deficits’. The close relationship between artistic and financial risk has shaped Ex Machina’s operational structure and relationships. Multiple and expert accountants are ‘precious’, Bernatchez says; ‘At some point we had the equivalent of 80  years of experience of accounting, in-house’. Lepage ‘was not a rich guy at all when he was 40’, Bernatchez reflects, even reaching points where he had ‘invested all of his money into his shows’. That situation was unsustainable, so through his other projects – with Peter Gabriel and Cirque, for e­ xample – Lepage has been able ‘to balance his own budget and have an income’. At the same time, Ex Machina’s accountants have proved invaluable, for example, when risk-taking brought the company ‘close to $1  million in red ink’. On one occasion, he says, the Canadian government  – having demanded lump sum investments in the economy from migrants leaving Hong Kong after reversion to Chinese rule – had a ‘bundle of money somewhere in Ottawa’ which, by law, had to be invested in the economy. Accessing this ethically dubious fund saved Ex Machina from bankruptcy. While less precarious than others, Ex Machina nevertheless remain vulnerable to financial shortfalls – meaning it cannot be too choosy – and funding sometimes comes with strings attached. Lepage is pragmatic in this regard; ‘Your shop window is your culture’, he says. Invitations to embassy receptions, he has found, have also been subtle displays of Canadian ‘know-how’ to potential commercial partners. At other times, money has been tied to specific locations where the Canadian government is actively promoting business – ranging from Russia to Chile – and this has shaped the company’s touring patterns.70 Relationships with international theatre agents are of vital importance (see Introduction). It is crucial that they ‘are able to sell our shows’, Bernatchez says, because ‘we need to tour in order to finance the next show we’re slowly developing’. Early on, high-profile show cancellations or poor notices made it more difficult for agents to sell Ex Machina’s work. ‘But that’s in the past now’, Bernatchez reflects:

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Gradually, we’ve tried to give more time, or spread the creative time more cleverly, so that the shows will be rather ready when they open. Because we were facing the problem that many, many presenters wanted to be involved in our work, and present it, but they wanted to be the 10th presenter, or the 12th presenter, or the 8th presenter, so by definition you need to fill the 1–7 slots before that. And it can become quite a challenge for an agent to find a presenter that will agree. We’ve been lucky, but I  believe that now we’re developing shows in a slightly better way, and we’re less at risk of opening shows that aren’t ready yet. It’s like agriculture – you have to let a field rest for a while before re-exploiting it. The other thing that time allows for – and time is not the only factor – we give the creators the opportunity to go wrong, to make mistakes. It’s okay for an idea to be costly and not to be used in the end. You’ll see situations where two very boring scenes – at some point – someone has the idea to make them overlap and suddenly it’s good. Things have to be bad and boring before they get good most of the time, people should be allowed that. The whole thing should be understood as a craft, as much as a genius artist at work. Prototypes, trial and error – periods of rest – then we go back to those prototypes and tweak them, and suddenly they work – and it’s true on the technological level, and it’s true on the script writing level, and it’s true on the staging as well. I think that our approach is in that spirit.

Bernatchez neatly describes here the economies produced by working within a culture of patentage. But experimental freedom is not without financial limits, as we shall see in the next chapter. Customization according to needs takes time, and time is money. On that basis it is unsurprising that Ex Machina have embraced the co-producing partnerships addressed in this chapter, and elsewhere, although they inevitably bring with them some level of artistic compromise, however minor. Finally, in terms of wages, ‘we pay rather well’, Bernatchez says. ‘We understand the value of the creators. If the shows are good we’re in business’, and the best abilities have to be paid for. The non-standard pattern of working hours at Ex Machina meant that ‘[w]‌e had to negotiate our own collective bargaining agreement with the union’, Bernatchez recalls. But ‘because we knew we were asking a lot of our collaborators’, Ex Machina had not only already established the practice of paying rehearsals when the union set a minimum weekly wage for rehearsing, but ‘were already paying twice’ the rate set by the union. Ex Machina now have up to 30 permanent employees, and hire anywhere between 120 and 300 freelance staff per year. The company has ‘a big economic impact in terms of employment and taxes’, Bernatchez states. Moreover, ‘[w]e get fresh money from abroad that wouldn’t have got here if it wasn’t for Robert, if it wasn’t for the company – and we spend it here’.

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8

Brave new worlds

Between 2011 and 2015, Ex Machina would deliver a series of key projects upgrading existing trajectories. The Tempest (2011) would be Ex Machina’s first full collaboration with an indigenous group, the Huron-Wendat nation in Wendake. Being site-specific and not designed for touring, this represented greater cultural sensitivity in both casting and in not presenting an indigenous culture as an object for extended commercial display. The Library at Night (2015) built on the installation and advanced technology projects Métissages and The Image Mill. The Library at Night extended architectural aesthetics by using virtual reality to explore world-famous library buildings. This chapter focuses mainly on the Playing Cards series, launching with Spades (2012) and followed by Hearts (2013). While Playing Cards was neither commercial nor critical success, it represents a crucial moment in Ex Machina’s evolution. In its experiments with architectural aesthetics and concrete narrative, the Playing Cards series is one of the company’s most significant, unique and analytical creations.

Virtual reality: The Library at Night Ex Machina’s reputation for advanced image technologies is demonstrated in the invitation to launch the first International Biennial of Digital Art (2012) at the Museum of Fine Arts (Montréal). Fragmentation  – three scenes from Lipsynch  – was presented through ‘ReACTOR, a 3-D system designed by Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw’. The scenes were ‘shown on six screens set up in a hexagram in a darkened gallery’, with each showing ‘actors on stage from different perspectives, which visitors experience as if walking around the stage’.1 The emergence of advanced Virtual Reality (VR) technology has helped Lepage in upgrading his interest in 3-D and in exploring the contradiction of images possessing architectural properties. The Library at Night (2015) emerges from this trajectory, which ranges from 3-D video in The Tempest (1998) – where Théâtre du Trident audiences were

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given 3-D glasses – and also touches projects like Métissages, The Image Mill and the Ring. Alberto Manguel’s book The Library at Night (2006) explores libraries across history, from ‘Alexandria to the clandestine children’s library at Auschwitz-Birkenau’,2 structured by fifteen ‘Library as’ themes  – Myth, Order, Space, Power, Shadow, Shape, Chance, Workshop, Mind, Island, Survival, Oblivion, Imagination, Identity and Home.3 Although Manguel ‘eschews e-books’, he sees the library as a meeting place for technologies old and new, and expresses surprise that ‘technology has not found more artists like [Lepage] who find a vocabulary and a usage proper to that technology and don’t simply try to turn the electronic technology into a bad copy of a paperback’. Acquainted for thirty years, Manguel describes Lepage and Jorge Luis Borges – to whom he read as a teenager – as ‘the two geniuses he has met in his lifetime’. For his part, Lepage describes ‘the exhibition, which uses Oculus Rift headsets, as the most ambitious VR project to date’. The Library at Night is more than an exhibition for Lepage; ‘It’s an event’, he says – an opportunity to reflect ‘on what exactly is a library and what’s the future of a library, what are libraries for, and what will be their function’.4 With Manguel’s collaboration, Lepage and Creative Director Steve Blanchet developed the project over two years. They selected ten libraries for exploration  – and created an experience marrying active reading with architecture. Lepage believes that if the project ‘can trigger a debate and discourse and a different way of seeing libraries, then I  think we’ve pretty much attained our aim’.5 This focus on architectural aesthetics is predictable, but Lepage’s openly stated intention to stimulate discourse is rarer. Forty visitors at a time initially walk through ‘a reconstruction of Manguel’s personal library before entering a darkened room that feels like a gloomy forest’  – replete with pages from books decorating the floor like leaves. Donning head-mounted display devices, visitors then ‘travel’ to any of the virtual libraries, with narration provided by Manguel; the library at Alexandria ‘may have burned down millenia ago’, Jeanette Kelly writes, ‘but in Lepage’s immersive world, the visitor sees clerks shelving papyrus rolls  – and then experiences the flames licking at their feet’. The ten libraries are Alexandria (Egypt), Biblioteca Vasconcelos (Mexico), Admont Abbey (Austria), National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canadian Library of Parliament, Hasedera Temple Library (Japan), Copenhagen University Library (Denmark), Library of Congress (USA), Sainte-Geneviève Library (France) – and that of the submarine Nautilus, ‘an imaginary library from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’.6 The Library at Night was available every Tuesday at the Grande Bibliothèque in (Montréal) between 27 October 2015 and 28 August

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2016,7 having been commissioned to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this ‘most visited library in the French-speaking world’ – with nearly 30,000,000 visitors in its first ten years.8 Marian Scott attributes the Bibliothèque’s success to its ‘role as a “third place” in the city’. This idea ‘describes places distinct from home (the “first place”) and work (the “second place”)’. The Bibliothèque successfully models the future library, not only as a place where old and new ways of accessing knowledge meet, but also in showing the social action of library architecture in terms of generating meetings between people.9 The Library at Night is an important exploration of architectural aesthetics in several ways, then. Moreover, by showing how different cultures distil their perspectives on knowledge into distinctive library architecture, it invites us to contemplate our ideological choices in the organization of knowledge, and the power structures this embeds in society, and the world.

The Tempest: Collaborating the nation Ex Machina’s collaboration with the Huron-Wendat Nation on The Tempest (2011) would see the company becoming a meeting place for cultures, as well as artistic disciplines – being a major cross-cultural partnership. Lepage would again choose Michel Garneau’s French-language version  – but the character Ariel would be translated into Innu by Josèphine Bacon. Presented at the Amphithéâtre Extérieur de Wendake (1–30 July) – an outdoor venue bordered by woodland – the visual contradiction between built and natural forms supported textual tensions between characters like Prospero and Caliban, with these intersecting forms producing a parallel spatial metaphor of cultural interaction. Architecture would be seen here as a social action capable of generating cross-cultural encounters. Lepage believes this interaction of cultures and imaginations produced an acutely contemporary interpretation of The Tempest – ideally supported by the community’s amphitheatre. The space creates a locus for encounter between audience and performers, between the many disciplines of theatre, dance, circus, music – and, he stresses – the respective communities of the collaborators. Moreover, not only does ‘Wendake’ mean ‘island’ in the Huron language, for Lepage, the space itself is like the island of Prospero.10 The production was staged upon – and specific to – indigenous land, and would not travel. The performance location was an active factor in the creation of meaning which would be negatively extracted on tour. The prioritization of cultural sensitivity over usual practice is noteworthy, suggesting another ‘upgrade’ in terms of intercultural practice.

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Indeed, Alex Tremblay wrote that in the context of Wendake, ‘the play takes on a completely new meaning’. The historical and cultural resonances sought by the project were ‘rich and evocative’ in performance, and the ‘participation of Sandokwa . . . was one of the strongest points of the production’, allowing audiences to ‘discover the richness of Amerindian traditions’.11 In Huron-Wendat, ‘Sandokwa’ means eagle  – the being that acted as messenger between humans and the creator, Yusgéha. This troupe of twenty-one dancers of different ages – now running for forty years – has performed all round the world, preserving traditions of rhythm and dress, while sharing Huron-Wendat culture globally through traditional dances and songs.12 Although the plot went astray, and Tremblay was not convinced by the clowning or the acrobatics, the production reflected purposefully on what was in store after immigrants began arriving.13 Konrad Sioui, grand chief of the Huron-Wendat Nation, said the project represented ‘an exceptional boost for Wendake, in terms of both tourism and economy’; Lepage and Ex Machina’s reputation ‘can only have a positive impact for us’.14 But the impact on Ex Machina is also noteworthy. Lepage’s programme notes show the contradiction of supernatural and political intrigue to be part of the play’s appeal. Additionally, Shakespeare wrote The Tempest just as Québec was founded, and its allegory of encounter between old and new worlds also appeals to Lepage. His emphasis on the power of cross-cultural encounter to generate social transformation is noteworthy. He contemplates Samuel de Champlain mapping New France, at the same moment Shakespeare was beaching his characters further down the Atlantic coast – recalling the play’s direct relevance to Québec and Canada. Prospero, he writes, replaces the matriarchal system of the island with one of brutal magic. Shakespeare explores the trope of the Noble Savage through Caliban, but neglects to depict his culture. However, Lepage says, we can’t blame Shakespeare for his cultural eyesight – he was hardly alone in seeing in the Brave New World the potential to reinvent his own society. The play inevitably reflects Elizabethan, colonial ideology, but there is clearly a growing awareness here that when cultures meet it is not always equally, and, perhaps as a result of that awareness, the Huron-Wendat collaboration results in an emblem of more positive cultural exchange.15

Hearts design The question of cultural encounter is also at the centre of the Playing Cards series. As Lepage remarks to Le Soleil’s Josianne Desloges, having traversed multiple cultures, playing cards ‘contain the history of the world’, and ‘a host

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of themes’ – ‘good luck, gaming, poker, tarot, the world of politics, addiction’. Desloges correctly notes that this ‘criss-crossing of simultaneously different yet inter-connected cultures and eras’, has ‘been one of Lepage’s favourite themes for a long time’.16 Bjurman says Lepage is ‘like a sorcerer with tentacles  – detecting tendencies in society’. But Lepage has ‘become more politically aware’ and ‘more interested in the world’.17 Researching ‘into the origins of cards’ had led Lepage and his collaborators ‘to the Arab world’18 – but we should recall that Bjurman identified this trajectory as latent, much earlier in Lepage’s engagements with Hispanic culture. Hearts would ‘make up a cosmos dealing with our past, present and future relationships, our exchanges, and sometimes too, our culture shock when encountering the Arab way of life’.19 Playing Cards offered a potentially unrestricted canvas on which to map out a global history of intercultural dynamics – and its circular stage design would present an apt spatial metaphor of the Theatrum Mundi. But while Spades (2012) and Hearts (2013) would indeed probe the stage of the world, they would also reveal the challenges of sustaining such grand experiment. Playing Cards would be defined from inception by architecture – being designed bespoke for an international tour of circular buildings. Years before, Lepage had again shown his interest in architecture by initiating the 360° International Network of Artistic Circular Venues. The Network’s brochure tells how the idea of ‘a network connecting round spaces with an artistic purpose’ arose when Lepage visited Philippe Bachmann at Le Cirque in Châlons-en-Champagne – in 2005. Lepage ‘was inspired by the peculiarity of the stage area as a constraint on creation’, and mentioned ‘other spaces like Roundhouse in London, or El Tanque in Tenerife’. Bachmann then created an inventory of circular spaces in Europe, discovering that ‘technical constraints linked with their specific architectural characteristics’ seriously limited the artistic repertoire they presented.20 The network Bachmann created to meet this lack – and which would host Playing Cards – was formalized with the directors of the founding venues signing a Charter outlining their aims.21 The main tenets of the Charter are that circular spaces have vast potential, and reinvent audience-performance relationships, while stimulating ‘creators’ visual and spatial imagination’.22 Perhaps inevitably given the venues Bachmann initially contacted, the network was funded almost entirely through French and European sources.23 Given the Euro-centric accumulation of venues and funding  – and the expense of touring heavy scenography across continents  – a large-scale project might have been thought overambitious. Notwithstanding, ‘We always have a number that guides us’, Lepage remarks; ‘This time, it is 12 because we think the show will last 12 hours’.24 Having triggered large-scale

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architectural reconstructions in both Las Vegas and New York, the power of broadcasting ‘the original and exceptional heritage of round artistic venues on a national and international scale’25 would have been clear to Lepage. The problem of reconciling the architectural ‘characteristics of these spaces’, with ‘artistic creation in all disciplines’,26 may have also appealed to the patenteux in him. Unsurprisingly, Ex Machina was the first ‘to accept the network’s invitation to take up the challenge’.27 Peder Bjurman’s presence as one of the network’s six founding directors – and his deployment as dramaturg for Spades – undoubtedly added further confidence. The challenge would be the limits a 360-degree audience configuration places on typical Ex Machina scenographic techniques like projection, vertical space and automation, and basic elements like entrance and exit:  Playing Cards would demand some concerted patentage. The loss of upward verticality would be mitigated by emphasizing downward verticality – with the playing surface pitted with multiple traps, similar to Rake’s Progress. A rotating pathway around the edge of the platform offered some element of automation. Lepage launched the original Spades design with Jean Hazel; Michel Gauthier subsequently upgraded Hearts’ design, first by adding a circular, revolving riser to the central part of the stage. He also reinstated some verticality with a metaphorical ‘sky’ above the playing space – a series of large golden cogs creating a suggestive ‘clockwork’ image, and supporting a number of temporal and mechanical themes. The design, Gauthier says, is ‘a whole theatre by itself ’ – but such a degree of self-containment also means ‘It’s a very expensive show’.28 Perhaps most importantly, Gauthier delivered Lepage’s proposed solution to lacking a projection surface  – a 360-degree, wrap-around gauze screen. With a ‘121 foot’ circumference, this was ‘heavy’  – and, Gauthier says, it needed six powerful DMXs to raise and lower it.29 David Leclerc’s projections exploited the 360-degree gauze skilfully – for instance, in a scene titled ‘Taxi 1, November 2010’. Chaffik, a Québec City taxi driver, has picked up a fare, Judith, a Laval University film lecturer. His taxi is indicated only by seats and a steering wheel, on the central revolve. Projectors mounted at the front and back of the ‘car’ – each wide-focused for a 180-degree throw, and thus surrounding the characters with images – display the characters’ scenic view as they travel. This footage, however, is not realistic, but abstract. Québec’s urban geography has been stripped of colour and detail, and is shown only in electric white outlines flowing over the screen as the car moves. It’s a deceptively simple concoction of object, sound and image that plays cleverly with haptics to create the illusion of motion – while enclosing the characters in both an intimate setting, and the environment of Québec. The moment unites private and public life, generating the opportunity for cross-cultural

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encounter which triggers Judith and Chaffik’s relationship. Space and politics intertwine here to create a distinctive moment of concrete narrative:  the uncanny effect of the animated car gives physical and metaphorical expression to the cultural shift initiated by Judith and Chaffik’s mutual attraction. The final workshop period for Hearts started on 29 July 2013; I observed these workshops over four weeks at la Caserne, viewing two public rehearsals, and the opening in Essen (5 October 2013)  as part of the Ruhr Trienalle. Gauthier speaks revealingly about the process of arriving at design solutions through these, and earlier, workshops. Lepage, he says, ‘always has an idea of the mechanism he wants to try to work with’. Designers ‘propose and design with Robert at the very beginning’; Gauthier does this by creating ‘piles and piles of sketches’ using the digital 3-D drawing tool SketchUp. Once the structure, or mechanism has settled down and been built, ‘you dress this thing, this idea, build things up around it’. ‘We improvise the design all the time’, he says; this is ‘your job’. The designer ‘can’t just obey the order, you have to feed [Lepage] all the time’. If ‘you propose a little table, you give him a toy – that’s what he likes. He plays with it – he’s going to work days on that little table. He can make a bicycle out of ironing board, like in Far Side’. Lepage pushes this play with design ideas ‘until the very end’, Gauthier says. It is this commitment to working the solution from every angle which places patentage centrally within Ex Machina’s process. Indeed, from my own observations of Hearts, it seems each collaborator works like a patenteux, under continuous pressure to make the next creative leap; ‘Which is the case’ Gauthier concurs. ‘Everybody is improvising’ – but, he says, Lepage has the ‘final decision’. Once rehearsal starts, designers must ‘be very aware’ when Lepage moves the ‘little rectangles on his big board’. Gauthier here refers to the large whiteboard – present in every rehearsal – upon which magnetized lozenges marked with scene titles display the work’s narrative structure. The ‘actors can change their delivery in a second’, but rapid reordering of scenes means changes to the connective tissue of transitions – and this can be problematic. Moreover, changes to engineered components might require their return to the workshop, and subsequent reinstallation. Without the incubation periods between rehearsal blocks, it would be impossible to deliver designs within Ex Machina’s process. The pressure of improvising design, Gauthier says, is that ‘you don’t have enough time’. If a well is mentioned in morning rehearsals, the designer cannot wait to be told  – it needs to be there in the evening. The technical team are present throughout the actors’ rehearsals (9.00 am to 1.00 pm and 7.00–10.00 pm), but ‘during the afternoon – when the rehearsal stops – that’s when you rush’. The space is free for technical rehearsal from 2.00–5.00  pm (during Hearts this is when Lepage and Blanchet work

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elsewhere on 887). Time pressures, Gauthier says, actively shape design solutions, which must focus on ‘the essence – the essentials – of things’. JeanSébastien Côté works in Ableton Live during workshops because its visual matrix means different tracks and timings can be viewed simultaneously. This pace of technical response allows Côté to improvise the sound design. Material can be swiftly dropped into Ableton Live, and, Côté says, he ‘can change the sample – tweak it live, play with it – bring the pitch down, filter it, whatever – it’s very creative from my point of view’.30 The presence of designers throughout the entirety of Ex Machina’s creative process is an oft-noted, definitive feature of this collaborative context. After running material, designers and technicians mount the stage, resetting or adjusting materials, often significantly. There is a correlation between the amount of discussion after each ‘take’, and the time needed to reset. Lepage is clearly attuned to this rhythm of problem-solving, and uses it as the in-breath and out-breath of rehearsal. His symbiosis with Ex Machina’s technical team in rehearsal is striking. In a telling moment, he breaks his glasses, and brings them to props designer Virginie Leclerc to see what can be done. The moment is an emblem of Lepage’s very human relationship with his technicians, and the culture of patentage operating in even the minutia of rehearsal. That’s not to romanticize; Ex Machina’s process is ‘physically hard work’, Gauthier says; ‘to be there for a whole month from 9 in the morning till 11 at night’ is very demanding. But ‘[w]‌hen you go and work at la Caserne you know it’s going to be like that’, he says; ‘if you don’t want to work this way – well, you don’t’.

Writing Hearts The final period of workshop development for Hearts begins with a table rehearsal in Lepage’s office in the roof of la Caserne; ‘As usual, it’s going to be a big chaos’, he predicts wryly. Previous workshops took place that May, and in November 2012. The room illustrates not only Lepage’s love affair with Japanese culture – being lined with books on decor, tea, photography, history, gardening, tattoos, festivals, puppetry, fabrics, martial arts and religion – but also his fascination with new and old ways of understanding the world  – shown by books ranging from Waring’s Dictionary of Omens and Superstitions to Negroponte’s Being Digital, from Parisi’s Abstract Sex to Martinson’s Song of Orchid Island, from Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos to Bjornsson’s Icelandic Sources of der Ring des Nibelungen and Hans Jenny’s Cymatics – among multitudes of books on languages, science, religion and travel. There are sundry books on cinema; film references punctuate Lepage’s rehearsal talk, possibly more than anything else.

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Underway, the whiteboard displaying Hearts’ narrative structure takes the focus. Three columns of rectangular, magnetic lozenges, each with a scene title and date, capture the story’s spine. Lepage describes the pattern of scenes as the ‘double helix’ of the story – encapsulating its organic architecture, and fluid transitioning between styles, locations and eras. The structure is largely agreed, and these workshops will focus on the writing of content. ‘In the bigger projects the actors are called writers’, says Playing Cards’ Dramaturg Peder Bjurman, and we should recall they are contracted as such. Lepage, he says, is more ‘nervous about having to write from scratch’ than in creating opera or circus  – where as much as possible is decided far in advance.31 The possibilities produced by new creative problems are why Lepage prizes making original work at la Caserne more highly than anything else, but it is inevitably more testing. In the early stages of a project like Hearts, ‘I spend most of my time writing the script . . . with the actors who are actually going to perform it, and then I spend a lot of time debating and discussing around the table. I do a lot of that’, Lepage says.32 Inviting ideas into the process like this ‘helps us find our way’, Lepage says – with the important effect that ‘we decide earlier now what the structure is going to be’: Very early in the process now I do these drawings and I say to people – ‘Well, we haven’t explored this yet, but I suspect that’s probably where we going to go’. And sometimes I’m right, and sometimes I’m wrong . . . . We used to kind of wait until the end, and we would have a storyline that seemed then to hold together, but there would be something missing, and somebody would come up and say – ‘You need the hero to do this’. That’s true – and we do it, and then it seals the story. Now we’re more conscious earlier on – ‘Ah, it’s going to be this kind of story!’ . . . So we’re savvier about these things now than we were.33

On these terms, Ex Machina’s creative process appears to have become more linear, and shaped to at least some degree by both an authorial lexicon and greater consciousness of narrative structure. Notwithstanding, the collaborative context remains quite open; from the beginning, it is clear that the process will accommodate a multiplicity of approaches. ‘I’m not historically correct, or politically accurate’, Lepage says. Although Hearts is largely based on actual events, Lepage seeks to guide the group in being inspired ‘from the situation rather than the actual facts’. However, collaborator Kathryn Hunter describes the story as one exploring the horrors of colonialism in Africa – particularly Algeria and Morocco – and

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expresses her desire to seek clarity of characterization. Lepage concludes the session in a mock English accent: ‘We need Theatre to decide for us!’ Work continues in the main rehearsal space on the ground floor that evening. The circular stage occupies much of the room, pushing technical tables to the edges; actors, crew, props and costumes will remain underneath it throughout. The design folds the offstage world and wings below stage  – thereby producing a new and challenging set of creative problems to address. The evening rehearsal addresses the difficulty of staging a torture scene and a character disappearance in the round. Lepage uses the first of many cinematic references to direct his actors – requesting a dispassionate approach to torture as modelled in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Continuous adjustment to dialogue and equipment is made, and a series of possible versions are tested in a process lasting two hours. It is rigourous, painstaking patentage, far from chaotic – requiring the highest level of focus and organization from everyone involved. Design solutions are improvised, and the actors continuously rewrite and declutter the working script under Lepage’s direction. Resetting between ‘takes’ facilitates ensemble discussion about the order of narrative events, which are then tested in practice. Once the material is standing, the ensemble moves on. The depth of research undertaken to prepare for this way of working is plain to see. In traditional theatre-making models, Lepage believes, ‘you can never do real research’. There is no room for suggestion, attempt or failure, but, he says, theatre thrives on having ‘a lot of permission’.34 If that permission is available – as it seems to be here – the ‘pockets’ of work and ‘jewels’ discovered in workshops can be worked into what Lepage calls the ‘set list’ of a show.35 Bjurman researched intensively for Playing Cards, generating more ideas than could be productively used. But ‘[t]‌here is a good moment for every idea’, Bjurman says.36 Bjurman’s dramaturgical role in large collaborations is different to that in solo work, being ‘to structure, more than pitch lines and ideas . . . more to develop, rather than create’. He works with Lepage before the actors ‘are brought into the writing process’; early ‘ideas are important in the construction’, and ‘inform the written dialogue’, while, importantly, ‘the main structure is there from the beginning’. Lepage is reluctant to identify specific techniques he uses to begin workshops – although drawings and diagrams are clearly significant. ‘There’s no tricks’, he says. ‘The thing you have to break through is the shyness of a new group of actors together – a huge shyness.’37 Lepage, after Lecoq perhaps, inserts an ice-breaking phase of play into the process, before improvisations begin. Spades rehearsals, for example, began with poker. Lepage:

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I never asked them to improvise before maybe a couple of days, so the very first day we just played poker. So they sit and they play and they get to know each other, and then after that – you put that in a situation, so then one person plays a waiter, plays a card dealer, whatever, you do this – so suddenly people improvise and explore but they don’t feel they’re asked to act.

For Lepage, acting should be all about playing. The writing of the show is a playful process. Acting is about playing, and not acting. You’re supposed to be a player! Playfulness is the creative thing – and you have to favour that. But that’s been taken out of theatre – it’s a place for actors. No: it’s the place for players. I always come back to this idea of playing. Why is it called a play? Why are we called players? Playwrights? Since we’ve been called actors, people have stopped playing.38

Concrete Hearts Hearts follows multiple narrative trajectories spanning the time period from 1855 to 2011. Its main themes are magic, technology, photography, colonialism, immigration and terrorism  – with these being intertwined in historical figures like Robert-Houdin, Nadar and Méliès  – and centred on Chaffik’s search for truth. Day 2 of rehearsal explores Chaffik’s desert journey, as he attempts to resolve the mysteries of his family’s immigration to Québec from Algeria, via Morocco  – staying overnight in a hotel that Méliès also visited. The question of how to transition from this location to the next looms large. Lepage suggests introducing Méliès to the scene. First, Chaffik lies down on a trick bed. The base pivots inside the frame, and he disappears underneath; simultaneously, another character rotates up and into position. In essence, it is a revolving door, placed centre stage. Méliès conducts the disappearing trick, creating what Lepage characteristically refers to as a ‘convergence’; the transition is accomplished, but so are connections between characters and themes. It’s a ‘quick fix’ Lepage says, but with a cast of seven already multi-roling over sixty characters, it’s important not to resolve problems by adding more. Much of the evening rehearsal is devoted to the question of an ending. Since the morning, the final scene ‘Chaffik Arrested’ has become ‘Chaffik Killed’; by the end it will be titled ‘The Well’. The renaming of scenes reflects the collaborative authorship still available to the ensemble, while the well

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produces a clear example of patentage, having to be built rapidly in the afternoon technical slot to facilitate that evening’s rehearsals. For Lepage, the echo of the well is a poetic device  – enhanced by miking actors’ voices  – perhaps reinforcing Hearts’ structuring and depiction of history as an echo chamber. Throughout the piece, the residue of history clamours for attention, obscuring the possibility of reconciliation, and the need to reconceive the future. The imprisoning effects of the past are, ultimately, what costs Chaffik his life. Lepage refers to this in the ‘double helix’ or ‘DNA’ of the work, saying Hearts has ‘a system where the past informs the present and the present informs the past’. Blanchet – in his first week as Creative Director – describes Chaffik’s body entering the well, and Judith giving birth to their child, as ways of resolving their interconnected character arcs in images of death and life. After lengthy discussion, this is the idea that Lepage favours most  – predictably, given that they render a concrete narrative of appearance and disappearance. The blending of politics and magic in Hearts is made concrete in this moment, therefore. Disappearing acts, and disappearing into history, are melded together in one image. Before the rehearsal, ‘Judith’s Baby’ was the last scene. Lepage, however, wants to try playing Chaffik’s death scene last, potentially raising the narrative stakes – as his life, and fatherhood, will both then be on the line. Furthermore, positioning birth after death constructs it as an epilogue, and Lepage wants the narrative dynamic to continue to the very end. Ultimately, however – for now – concluding with Judith’s labour is favoured. Lepage foregrounds Judith’s more politically charged ending, over Chaffik’s more tragic demise. Although estranged from Chaffik, Judith has converted to Islam in his absence. She is from Québec, but adopts a ‘new’ culture, and gives birth to a baby of mixed race. It is the character who embraces métissages, both socially and ethnically, who Lepage chooses at this stage to bear the ending. Days 1–3 of workshops are devoted to similar decision-making, until Lepage is satisfied with Hearts’ narrative architecture; ‘Now we have to start structuring inside the scenes’, he says. Simultaneously, the design is integrated into rehearsal. Gauthier’s ‘sky’ of twelve golden cogs  – much like the inside of a watch – now hangs above the stage. These rotated on mirror ball motors, creating a meta-theatrical image of the stage as a machine through which, Gauthier says, ‘you can travel everywhere, many different physical directions, changing places from a desert to a restaurant in New  York  – you can go back in time and ahead in time  – and many dimensions’.39 Gauthier’s design for the piece was based on the theme of ‘magic and automatons’, with the stage itself functioning as an automaton, and with its multiple traps creating an illusionist stage. Gauthier’s design

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evokes many images; a clock, an orrery, a gearbox, a planetarium, a gyroscope or a bomb. The 360-degree gauze is an important addition, and upgraded the original design. Audience visibility is pronounced in a 360-degree space, so even intimate locations feel public, and Spades suffered from this lack of intimacy. But when Judith meets Chaffik in his taxi, for example, the moment could be private because the lowered gauze obscured the cross-view. The arrival of full props is crucial. One challenge of a 360-degree world, props designer Virginie Leclerc points out, is the enhanced level of concrete description to be accomplished by objects, and costume, and its coordination with dialogue. Blunt exposition that trips over the design must be trimmed. Improvisations of scenes in the next phase of rehearsal, therefore, see Lepage and the actors writing both the drama, and addressing the multiple functions of dialogue. Bjurman calls for simplicity, reduction of exposition in the dialogue and for ‘air between the lines’ to make space for implication. ‘We will tell you if information has to be planted’, he says. The ‘amount of research for this project’ is ‘amazing’, he says, but ‘sometimes it’s brought out raw on stage’ and ‘sticks out like a sore thumb’, needing to be digested more. Lepage’s use of physical images in his rehearsal talk reflects the search for concrete narrative. One characteristic initiating remark is ‘So shall we just wing it and after that, sculpt?’ A typical note is that a scene has ‘no shape’, so the ‘drama is spilling out everywhere’. Elsewhere he says, ‘Content comes out of the situation’  – indeed, Lepage doesn’t direct the actors so much as ensure the shape of the scene drives the dialogue. ‘If there is no conflict then there is no scene’, he says. There ‘has to be a real disagreement’ if there is to be ‘a real debate’. Elsewhere ‘[t]‌here is no breach of protocol’, and interest is lacking. Lepage doesn’t over-intellectualize this process verbally; when he is satisfied, remarks like ‘This will fly’, or ‘Let’s let it cook, let’s let the pieces find themselves’ are typical. His sense of knowing when to move on and ‘Let time do its thing’ is keen. This process of digesting the scenes leads the ensemble up to their first répétition publique – of Acts One and Two only (Friday, 16 August). By this stage, Hearts had become a concrete narrative that generated a wide reading of history, politics and culture. Ex Machina ‘stories tell two stories’, says Lepage: history and History. In Hearts, the History is France’s occupation of Algerian territory, from beginning to end. But then the history is this taxi driver who’s Algerian, who is inviting his girlfriend for dinner and so on. In that little story, there’s the big story, in that big story, there’s the small story. You have to have that for people to follow you.40

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Hearts did not fully consolidate the dialectic between history and History at this stage  – particularly in connecting the racism Chaffik experiences in Québec with the backdrop of colonial French attitudes  – but later versions would. The next morning, the company convened in a third-floor rehearsal room for notes. The focus, again, was narrative. Lepage says he is satisfied with the ‘braid’ within the structure, and believes the work has achieved a ‘delicate balance’ between monumental historical figures and local characters. But the work is still too long – and, in Lepage’s words, must be cut so that ‘the labyrinth of what we are trying to say’ can emerge. Bjurman urges the group to develop tension where possible, noting that there are many moments in ‘the quest of the hero’ – Chaffik – where the sense of danger could increase. Although not shown the previous night, Lepage now believes the current finale is a ‘disappointing end to the story’, and ponders reversing it – Chaffik, perhaps, instead of being killed might become a killer, and, in an echo of his grandfather’s fate, would have to flee his home country. He has no motivation to kill, but if the police officer who emerges as his antagonist were to be shot accidentally as they struggle he would enter ‘the skin of his grandfather’. Lepage says that he doesn’t have a philosophy of endings.41 The focus on endings here is due to increased possibilities that final scenes present, and Lepage’s belief that ‘[y]‌ou have to try everything – you have to try all issues, all events’ in discovering an ending. ‘Nobody’, he says, ‘knows where we’re going when we start, and we count on the show to tell us what to do’. Lepage is ‘satisfied’ with the show leading the ensemble to Chaffik’s death, but Bjurman believes the audience will ‘feel cheated’. Bjurman looks for ‘the end as a microcosm of everything that’s gone before’, but for Lepage, an ending ‘has to be something that’s open’. These variances have pushed them to ‘start imagining the possibility that there is a reversal’  – with Chaffik shooting, rather than being shot – and, Lepage ponders, ‘maybe that’s what the show wants?’ From my observer’s perspective, the ensemble have already created a remarkable ending, but mis-positioned it at the end of Act Two. This scene  – ‘Explosions:  (1871 Flash Nadar, 1960 Bombe FLN, 1905 Film Méliès, 2011 Vigipirate)’  – shows different historical periods, characters and events overlapping in the same cafe. Nadar enters the space to take a photo, Méliès to make a film, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) to set off a bomb and a remote control robot bomb disposal unit enters to defuse one. All seven actors are involved in the scene. Nadar enters with his apprentice – who mixes chemicals under his supervision. They disappear as Méliès pops up with a girl, whom he films drinking tea. Chaffik’s grandfather passes a suitcase bomb to an FLN colleague – who conceals it

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beneath the cafe table before leaving. The robot then takes the stage. Nadar reappears, still mixing chemicals for his flash photograph; Méliès returns with the girl. The composite image is accompanied by ticking sounds, and Nadar counts backwards, in warning, towards the flash. As the bulb flashes, the FLN bomb explodes violently, and loudly. Simultaneously, lights angled to turn the gauze opaque obscure the actors – but this is a politicized moment of making visible. The scene acts as a historiography of technological progress – a narrative of scientific advancement twisted towards violence, in response to the evils of colonialism. Many meanings have been packed into the idea of explosion, and the moment is one of thematic consolidation  – inviting comparisons between the process of history and the process of bomb-making. History assembles every bomb, perhaps, and we can see that it takes a long time. The scene combines ‘four cardinal points’, Lepage says; there are ‘four things that converge’ – each of them related to an explosion from a different generation. In Essen, the cogs making up the clockwork sky were spinning in tandem with a ticking sound effect; theatre itself, perhaps, is an explosive device in its capacity to apprehend the history of terror. The scene can’t be repositioned at the end, as this would undo the fabric of the piece, and nor can the entire third act be cut to accommodate it in a traditional position of dramatic climax – but it creates a hard act for Act Three to follow. The public rehearsal ushered in noticeable changes in process. Lepage changes gear: there is a very different energy in his directing; he speaks faster, uses demonstration more often, makes a greater number of suggestions and is more prescriptive. If actors deviate from scene structure, they are noted; alternatively, Lepage gives them pre-scene reminders on the ‘structure and proposition’. Starting with the first scene – ‘Expo Universelle de Paris, 1855’ – he makes specific adjustments to prop positions: spaces groups of performers precisely; instructs some to use the revolving strip of the stage to create 360-degree interest and others to use multiple languages in the background to suggest context. Lepage has scripted the final part of the scene, but also intervenes in rehearsal. Don’t say ‘I want to buy’, he says; say ‘How much is it?’ – flipping the line to reduce the telegraphing of intention. The technical team also take preparations up a notch, now practising transitions between scenes, and each actor works from their own pod under the stage floor – a kind of super-cramped dressing room with a mirror, costume hooks, storage pouches and light – so that they can rehearse their technical preparation as well. The acceleration in process is driven, at least in part, by the approach taken to narrative. ‘We are very strong at starting the braid of the story’, Lepage says, but ‘usually it comes a bit loose at the end’ due to the need to ‘wrap up quickly’.42

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Lepage’s approach to narrative is promiscuous  – and stimulated by Bjurman, whom he describes as having ‘a lot of references’, and being a ‘good guide’ in developing story. Automatic writing is used. For Spades, Ex Machina ‘followed a writing method based around tarot’43  – an element of chance creation similar to the use of the I Ching in the original Trilogy. Mythic narrative is another touchstone, and I ask Lepage if he has recognized the Orphic pattern of ‘hell and back’ in his solo works, which reflect the Greek idea of katabasis. These frequently echo the structure of Orpheus and Eurydice’s story  – showing heartbroken or bereaved artists undertaking symbolic descents, crossing water and being tested on their way to truth. If there is a relationship, ‘it’s very unconscious’, he says, although ‘you can’t pretend that you don’t know about these things, because we’ve done so many things’. But he is ‘interested in many myths’, and while ‘they find their way into what we are doing’, Lepage believes there is ‘not one way of telling a story’.44 Referencing ideas like the ‘Return of the Hero’, Lepage says that creating ‘mythological stories’ is not the aim, although ‘we are conscious that there is a natural arc in stories that you can’t fight’, and so ‘we wait to see how it manifests itself in our work’ – but Ex Machina do not follow it ‘like a Hollywood recipe’. While devising Spades in 2012, Lepage stated he is ‘interested more and more in writing, and less in the mise en scène’.45 In 2013, Lepage confirmed his interest ‘in writing methods’  – mentioning in interview Syd Fields, three-act structures, ‘nine act theory’ and ‘the twelve act Campbell’  – although he stresses these ideas are not used ‘systematically’.46 In 2016, Lepage clarifies that his material ‘is not written’; rather, ‘[i]‌t’s improvised until it crystallises into something that’s permanent’ – a neat metaphor for concrete narrative.47 Lepage’s dominant contribution in the context of collaborative writing, therefore, is in terms of structure. In this, cinematic narrative is central. ‘What we do is theatre’, Lepage says, ‘But we are incredibly influenced by film narrative. Because that’s the narrative people know about’.48 Indeed, Lepage’s film references during workshops  – including Crying Game, The State of Things, Red Light, Day of the Jackal, Princess Bride, Pee-Wee Herman’s Big Adventure (‘a masterpiece’), The Dictator  – far outweigh theatrical references  – to Macbeth, Hamlet, Book of Mormon. Interestingly, Lepage’s experiments with blending theatrical form and cinematic narrative structure are only met with resistance at home. Broadly speaking, theatre as an art form is defined by redefinition, not by stasis. Yet Québecois critics have told Lepage variously that his work ‘is not theatre’, or that he has failed to ‘understand that theatre is text’. These are, as Lepage says, ‘extremely imprisoned’ visions of theatre.49

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Writing Unlike Ex Machina’s other large-scale collaborations, Hearts would only have three workshop periods (instead of four), and this final workshop period would last for four weeks (instead of three). What I  observe in practice quickly does away with the perceptions I bring with me. Table discussions frequently dominate  – sometimes lasting up to seventy minutes. After discussions conclude, the practical editing process begins with first ‘takes’ – running an open-ended version of the material, without interruption. These improvisations are often remarkable creations in themselves – lasting up to forty-five minutes. Lepage then gives notes clarifying the dramatic shape and conflict of the scene. A second ‘take’ then attempts to create that dynamic more consciously. Further notes on outcomes lead to a third ‘take’ – producing a consolidated dramatic architecture, decluttered dialogue and a baseline script for actors and technicians. The scripting is organized via online document sharing, allowing the collaborators to review the day’s work and share materials  – and particularly dialogue  – with ease. Everything is filmed, allowing the performance text to be captured. The actors review their improvisations every day – almost like rushes – and update the working script on the group’s shared platform. The scale of Hearts is such that sharpening the internal architecture and dialogue of the scenes – at this stage thirty-five in number – takes a total of eight working days crossing 1–10 August. Lepage remarks that the process is like ‘boiling down a lake into a bowl of soup’, but looking at the tired eyes of the actors, a cup of coffee might be a better metaphor. Hearts is based unequivocally on detailed research into characters and contexts, a fact that explains some of the difficulty of transforming scripts based on documentary material into dramatic dialogue. ‘Let’s find the hyperrealism and then we’ll clean it up’, Lepage says  – neatly summarizing the process of impro-editing down to a streamlined version. ‘It shall become Theatre!’ he declares at one point – ‘But first it has to go through this’. This is clearly a research-led process. A large pile of books in the rehearsal room stand testament – Berman’s The Re-enchantment of the World, Stora’s Histoire De L’Algerie Coloniale 1830–1954, During’s Modern Enchantment:  The Cultural Power of Secular Magic, Alleg’s La Question, Kaminsky’s Adolfo Kaminsky:  Une Vie de Faussaire  – alongside music, books and films on Robert-Houdin and Magic, Méliès and cinema, Yvon and photography, tarot. There are personal connections as well; Lepage tells the group that his first theatre teacher in Québec was Algerian.

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Having re-worked the material, the company spend Monday to Wednesday (12–14 August) working scene-by-scene, and use Thursday to run Acts One and Two, before the first public rehearsal on Friday night (16 August). Rehearsals begin on 12 August with Lepage saying he has ‘written two taxi scenes’ over the weekend, and ‘edited a few things’. He does not ‘want to castrate every idea’, but has had to have ‘quite a big clean-up’ to avoid scenes with ‘15 subject matters’. He apologizes to the group for rushing in this way, as he has not had time to consider all of their suggestions, but the average scene length is excessive, and he reassures them he has not tinkered with the structure. Rehearsal notes will now include Lepage’s remarks, and after going through scenes, the performers are expected to rescript from the existing text using recordings and notes, and then submit these so that the technical crew can create the most up-to-date cue sheets possible. The role of assistant director, here performed by Sybille Wilson, thus gains increasing significance. More difficult for the actors to process than Lepage’s editorial intervention is his remark that, while they have arrived at a script for the first public rehearsal, ‘the acting has disappeared’. While it is ‘practical to write it down’, he says, the performance ‘still has to be improv’ – and the cast need to ‘get back into acting’, otherwise the material is ‘of no interest’. The piece is made up of ‘beautiful improvisations’, and ‘obviously has a real organic life’ – but the actors must restore an improvised quality to the performances. With Lepage insisting on a script, and then insisting on restoring the improvised quality of dialogue, the actors seem confused. Hunter addresses the elephant in the room, saying that it’s not clear what the space is between improvisation and script. Lepage explains that the essence of the scenes has been obscured because the text has been ‘written down too methodically’, and ‘that’s where we run into problems’. Lepage compares it to pulling on a flower, and expecting it to appear; but you can’t pull on a flower – ‘the process is organic’ and not mechanical. ‘There is a beast there’, he says, a ‘political, historical, kooky’ piece of theatre. But ‘the more we sculpt it together’, he tells them, the better the acting will become – because the characters will ‘find the right things to say’. There are ‘gazillions of great punchlines’ but ‘everybody is killing everyone else’s punchlines’. Therefore, ‘the dynamic and the game’ of Hearts depend upon still further editing. Lepage directs the material towards a performative architecture – not the actors. ‘Don’t burn the punch’, he says, bringing strong focus to a single line; elsewhere, there’s ‘still too much stuff and side pocket conversations’, or too many ‘diagonals’ or ‘little nooks and crannies’, bringing focus to decluttering. Even Lepage’s talk about dialogue is expressed in concrete, spatial terms. Lepage is serious when he says he doesn’t ‘have any tricks of the trade to pass on to the actors’, that he’s ‘not

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an acting coach’, and prefers instead to stimulate actors’ intelligence because ‘actors are more believable when they know what they’re talking about’.50 With scripts for Acts One and Two finalized, the last week of rehearsals begins on Monday afternoon (19 August), with scene-by-scene work. The experience of testing the work before an audience clarified what Hearts offered its audience. A  public rehearsal of the full work was given the following Friday night (23 August), with notes and discussion the next morning to conclude the workshops. With a full sharing close at hand, the process accelerated yet again. As collaborators entered a gruelling fourth week of process, exhaustion was clear, but also the determination to complete. Reflecting upon the experience, Michel Bernatchez says that three weeks of Lepage’s working rhythm ‘is the max – after that people are just too tired’. Ex Machina typically map out their workshops ‘with one week, then 6 months later a few weeks, then a few months later a three-week rehearsal period’. There was little choice with Hearts, but, Bernatchez says, ‘I will never put down four consecutive weeks again’.51

Bet on red The Playing Cards series would be defined in performance – both positively and negatively – by the architectural aesthetics of the circular platform stage. Bodily movement at the key moment of entrance and exit was slowed down, due to the need to use steps. This action of space upon the body meant that scenes were topped and tailed with ellipses, serving to flatten the dynamics of performance. Tellingly, the entrances and exits of supernatural characters were among the most effective  – working with the sense of the uncanny produced when figures rise from, or disappear into, the ground, rather than against it. The architectural aesthetic of the Playing Cards design is both virtue and vice, therefore, producing an immediate level of stylization – but one strangely lacking in theatrical energy. Spades would suffer from this, in particular. However, by the time Hearts opened in Essen, the company had resolved this with ‘pop-up’ entrances – launching into dialogue at the point of entry, frequently combined with rapid standing, almost like a jack-inthe-box. The pace and energy this introduced was transformative – making Hearts like a magic show in and of itself – and, in tandem with Gauthier’s design themes, enhancing the piece’s meta-theatrical layers. For Spades, however, this potential for the actor to capitalize upon the design would come too late. The four performances in the tetralogy were to be made ‘each year between 2012 and 2015’.52 The question of why the project was put on hold

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is important to address, therefore. First, Spades was poorly received. Writing in the Toronto Sun, John Coulbourn gently hit the nail on the head. Spades is everything we’ve come to expect from an extraordinary artist and his company – everything, and somehow, something a little bit less. Where Lepage’s staging has always been laden with high-tech gadgetry, there have always been the simple little effects that are the mark of a true genius . . . Those moments have been sacrificed in Spades – victims, one suspects, to an ambitious new vision. But one or two of them would be welcome, particularly when an audience is relearning the lesson that the mind can only enjoy what the butt can endure.53

The weakness of Spades meant that bookings for Hearts suffered considerably – exacerbated, remarks Véronique St. Jacques, not only by the expense of touring a self-contained theatre, but also by the four-day get-in – and four dark houses – it necessitated.54 Indeed, Hearts booked less than half the touring of Spades.55 Bernatchez explains that co-producers bought into Spades ‘on the basis of Robert’s reputation’ but when ‘presenters saw it, they weren’t happy with it, and we were already committed to financing Hearts. We weren’t able to sell Hearts because of the bad reputation of Spades. So we spent more than $1 million on creating those shows, but the income was not close’.56 Spades ‘explores the theme of war’, and puts into contradiction ‘two desert cities’ – Las Vegas, a ‘caricature of the Western World’s values’, and Baghdad, ‘bombed by President Bush in the name of promoting democracy’. Las Vegas here is a new ‘Tower of Babel’, bringing together ‘characters of different origins and affinities. Taking place over one weekend  – specifically, the weekend when bombs fell on Baghdad and Celine Dion opened her megashow in Las Vegas – the characters reveal ‘the city’s multifaceted identity’ – as a ‘multicultural crossroads, a place where anything goes, a meeting point between wealth (sometimes extreme) and poverty’. Just like this ‘gambling city that chooses to keep on playing even though the country is at war’, the characters ‘fight private battles with their Demons here, in hopes of resolving their own contradictions’.57 Despite exploring material with clear Ex Machina pedigree, Spades, Bernatchez says, caused the company’s largest deficit on a project since Zulu Time (1999); ‘If the first instalment of that project had been as good [as Hearts] we would be working on a third now’. On the last day of Hearts rehearsals, however, Bernatchez had to break the news that the tour to São Paulo was cancelled. Although this created much-needed rehearsal time before the Montréal run, it was a negative note which, in hindsight, foreshadowed Hearts’ ultimate fate.58

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Another factor was that the 360° Network ‘expected shows that would be rather light’, and Bernatchez says, Spades ‘was not light’. This reduced the number of available venues and potential income for the project; ‘Half of the venues couldn’t receive the production because of technical obstacles – the weight of the grid. That weight – it would be a problem in 95% of standard venues. We were looking at spaces that in some cases had glass roofs’. The bluntest answer to such difficulties is to cut costs – but, by seeking to position itself at the cutting edge of technology, Ex Machina’s work is frequently expensive. That, Bernatchez says, is ‘the bet we make repeatedly’, in order ‘to make things happen’: I do not allow myself to question the financial validity of one of Robert’s decisions, just because I  need a budget to be balanced. In Spades, there’s a scene where Tony Guilfoyle is in therapy  – which needed a one-time effect, where a circle of chairs descended from the sky to create a therapy circle. That was costly. It called for a series of synchronised motors, which needed automation, and it added to the weight of the grid. So I wondered for a while – ‘Should we invest $30,000 into an effect that will last 30 seconds?’ And actually that’s a question I  do not allow myself. We are here to serve the work. If I  have to set a constraint, Robert tries to use it as something that’s stimulating to finding another solution. I  try to do my job with an artistic sensibility  – and the whole thing works as long as the artist does his job with a financial sensibility.59

The answer, Bernatchez says, is simple  – make good work. Then, ‘there are better chances that shows will have a long life, and generate long-term income’.60 The Playing Cards series may eventually be completed  – Diamonds, exploring the world of business, was scheduled third, and Clubs, exploring the ‘proletariat’, fourth. However, it is likely that the material will only reach full realization when each section interacts ‘in one marathon performance lasting 12 hours’.61 Given the expense of touring the work, however, such an event is likely to be seen only in Québec, or in cities near enough to reach by road.62 It may be that Ex Machina’s new home and performance venue in Québec City, le Diamant, will be able to facilitate the project after it opens (spring 2019).

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9

Beginning

Several of Ex Machina’s projects during 2014–18 bear witness to a maturation of practice, evidenced by the upgrading of several major solo works. The choice to revisit and revise already successful projects shows the company’s theatre-making vocabulary had developed, offering new tools to explore familiar territory. Needles and Opium (1991, 2014) and The Far Side of the Moon (2000, 2017) would both be upgraded. Ex Machina’s return to the fraught terrain of Elsinore (1995) in Hamlet/Collage (2014) would see Lepage return to the territory that had led him to give up acting. This last example, perhaps, renders the greatest change in Ex Machina’s fabric. The collaboration would restore Lepage’s confidence in his abilities  – and he returned to acting from text in 2016, after a hiatus of twenty years – playing the Marquis de Sade in a stage version of Doug Wright’s screenplay, Quills (2000). Frame by Frame (2018), a first co-production with the National Ballet of Canada, would see Image Mill (2013) upgraded through interaction with live dance. Accompanying this solid bunch of upgrades would be a new, autobiographical solo, 887 (2015). This chapter explores Frame by Frame’s unique creative process, and analyses the significant moment of artistic consolidation produced by 887’s mature investigation of both architectural aesthetics and Québec’s political consciousness. Chapter and book conclude by contemplating another beginning; Ex Machina’s move from la Caserne, to a new home in the heart of Québec City – le Diamant.

Frame by Frame The collaboration with the National Ballet of Canada (CNB) on Frame by Frame was initiated by Principal Dancer and Choreographic Associate Gillaume Côté, who originally approached Lepage to propose working on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (1943).1 The collaboration (although not the idea) appealed to Lepage, and in 2013 he invited Côté, also a Québecois, to the Image Mill exploring the work of animation innovator Norman McLaren. Lepage proposed to Côté that they explore McLaren’s

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work, and dates were set for exploratory phases of work. The collaborative team worked incredibly fast in Laboratory 01, Lepage says, producing enough choreographic material and scenography in a five-day workshop to generate an initial structure – with ideas to spare.2 Laboratory 02, which I observed, started on 16 September 2016, deploying ten dancers (six male, four female), hand-picked by Côté from a pool of seventy. Its objective was to progress initial discoveries and to explore the viability of development to a full production. It would be an intensive week – as much an assessment as a workshop block. Notwithstanding, Ex Machina would open 887 in Québec City that week. Typically, Lepage would take two rehearsal slots per day, and then perform in the evening. It was a punishing schedule, and although Lepage would only rehearse and perform side-by-side for this first week of a month-long run, it was clearly taxing. Lepage arrives at morning rehearsal after opening night, coffee in hand; ‘I’m getting too old for this’, he jokes wryly. The process begins with an orientation – Lepage and Côté outlining to the dancers how the material will gel into a narrative dance piece. Lepage reassures them that they will be helped in meeting the challenge of moving from an abstract to a more concrete world. This immediate emphasis on discovering narrative form demonstrates how central such concerns have become to Ex Machina’s praxis. The choreography from Laboratory 01 is then reviewed, a section at a time. Twenty titled sections are shown sequentially on the rehearsal room whiteboard, describing McLaren’s relationships, collaborators and animations, and presenting a provisional structure. The contradiction of live and recorded body is central throughout, with dancers accompanied by projections of McLaren’s animations almost continuously. By the end of Laboratory 02, two sections have merged, and another two have swapped place, but the vast majority remain in position. While observing, I’m struck by how different this process is to that of Hearts. There, farreaching discussion framed the work; this is a more direct, physical process – predictably, given extensive dramaturgical research has been in place since before 2013. A more noteworthy variance in process, perhaps, is that there will be no public rehearsal at the end of these workshops. Laboratory 02 takes place at la Caserne – not at CNB in Toronto – and this gives shape to the process. There is no sprung floor, and although seven strips of temporary dancefloor have been laid, the rehearsal period has to be brief to avoid injury. Time is precious, therefore, and in order to maximize it, the rehearsal room has been mocked up as if a dance venue. Above, three main lighting bars are hung with seven lanterns each, positioned for even coverage across the strips of dancefloor. Typically to dance, booms on both sides of the space facilitate sculptural side-lighting. Powerful strobes face each other

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across the space, also. A large projection screen creates a cyclorama at the rear, and film projectors are mounted front, back and sides. The floor has a great number of marks for the dancers. Everything is filmed; a small screen is mounted above the technical working area so that recordings can be reviewed at any time. Peak creativity is maintained by rehearsing in conditions close to those of performance. Facing the space are four long tables, on two different levels. Among others, Etienne Boucher (Lighting), HUB’s Thomas Payette (Video Integration) and Félix Fradet-Faguy (Image Design) work from the higher level, while Adèle Saint-Amand (Assistant Director), Paul Bourque (Technical Director) and Jean Lapierre (Props) work on the lower level. Blanchet, Côté and Lepage sit in a gap between the tables at floor level, facilitating interactions between the team, who frequently huddle in this gap for intense discussions between ‘takes’. The visual layout of rehearsal might suggest a vertical hierarchy – five technical operators, eight crew, ten dancers and Blanchet, Côté and Lepage. However, the rehearsal space is actually configured to facilitate communication within a large, complex team, and to ensure total focus on the problem of building a concrete narrative from abstract choreography. On day one, the work remains in its raw form, and choreography occupies the focus. Côté’s choreography cleverly transposes McLaren’s different styles of animation into different styles of dance, both classical and modern. By day’s end, the group have reviewed eighteen sections of the work. Day two starts at 9.00 am; Côté, and dancers, however, commence work long before rehearsal begins  – preparing physically, and going over the previous day’s changes. They will rehearse with the whole production team from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm, with additional work until 8.00 pm; between 8.00 and 11.00 pm the room is dedicated to technical rehearsal. Few choreographers could rework intricate sequencing on-the-fly as Côté does here. The arrival of Karen Kain (Artistic Director of CNB) and Barry Hughson (Executive Director) in rehearsal adds yet more focus. It will be a crucial – and long – day in assessing the project’s potential. In conversation, Kain reflects upon the origins of the co-production; the possibility of partnership had long been in the wings, she says, but it took more than ten years for a natural connection to emerge, and spark the undertaking.3 Lepage’s collaborators have to be ‘nimble’ she remarks. Côté believes that such flexibility could only be achieved by working at la Caserne, due to CNB’s tightly scheduled repertory system and the restrictions this creates on dancers’ availability. Once all sections have been reviewed, the whiteboard is reversed to reveal a spider diagram of McLaren’s close relationships, and collaborations. These changes show the focus on rendering McLaren’s life in solid detail ratcheting up a gear, a major step towards shaping the

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material into a concrete narrative. The presence of a mnemonic storyboard of research in the rehearsal room is noteworthy. Significant individuals each have a dedicated section of images around the diagram  – Claude Jutras, Grant Munro, Guy Glover, Ravi Shankar, Vincent Warren, Evelyn Lambart, Maurice Blackburn and René Jodoin. The lower half of the board is divided into seven strips  – describing different phases of McLaren’s career – topped by a picture of him at work alongside a thumbnail image from an animation. These strips are headed with themes – rain/prehistoric, organic/poetic, figurative/narrative, graphic, mirror pattern, acting/ pantomime and dance – and different tools McLaren used – fountain pens, brushes, scalpels, compasses, scissors, actors and dancers. Scenographic elements, props and objects – including an animated draughtsman’s table like that from Geometry – now come to the fore in blending these elements with the choreography. The ensemble shows increasing confidence in revealing narrative through the material. The developing relationship between McLaren and Guy Glover, for instance, starts life as a duet, before becoming a narrative dance depicting their relationship blossoming while working at Canada’s National Film Board. Another section takes its title from McLaren’s 1968 work Pas de Deux. The dancers perform the original choreography, but Lepage places another dancer behind a live feed camera to represent McLaren directing. This re-presents the original film as the projection of a live dance, while configuring the live dance in the moment of the original film. This makes the narrative moment concrete, going beyond a simple re-creation of the event itself to interrogate its meanings via the contradiction between images of live and recorded bodies. Recreating the effects of Pas de Deux creates particular problems for the company. In rehearsal, Lepage says it is a ‘technical nightmare’ – ironically, advances in camera technology mean that creating the required antique effect is extremely difficult. The problem is solved by deploying an infrared camera which interacts with the body stocking costumes worn by the dancers, as well as the theatre lighting, to produce the requisite chiaroscuro effect. The film is then fed through a processor to add the effect of movement echoes in canon, which made the original film groundbreaking. It’s time-consuming, and the idea takes the whole morning to develop, but neatly illustrates the culture of patentage at work. The dancers, too, work within this culture. After lunch, Lepage replaces the controlling gaze of the camera with a series of objects. The dancer ‘playing’ McLaren is given a brush through which to ‘animate’ other dancers. The object connects the idea of animation to choreography, and even puppetry – but connecting the line of energy from the object to the dancer is harder than it sounds, and a pencil is tried. Continued experiment

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shows the dancers making adjustments to carefully learned choreography, clearly working within the principle of customization according to need. Framing choreography as animation, and bringing film animations to life, blurs spatial and temporal boundaries, producing effects that detach the viewer from real time and place – even as the narrative becomes more concrete. For instance, McLaren’s Horizontal Lines (1962) is projected onto dancers’ bodies. Varying the tilt, thickness and separation of the white lines projected onto the body render its construction hyper-visible. Experiments with projecting the recorded image onto the live body are followed by experiments with placing the body over the recorded image. In front of a rolling film showing a snowy landscape, the troupe crosses the space on pointe, matching the speed of movement – and appearing as if human fence posts viewed from a car window. It’s a delightfully comic effect. In another section, dancers in black costume stand evenly spaced against the projection screen, silhouetted by back-projected images of celluloid frames. As they travel forward, they hit side projections; the effect is of two-dimensional figures peeling off the screen to become three-dimensional. As rehearsals progress, the dancers become increasingly adept in suggesting creative experiments to the technical team, and Lepage becomes more confident in suggesting adaptations of dancers’ line and pathway. Patentage stretches the entire team, including Lepage. Emblematic of Lepage’s architecting of performance is his ability to combine and compress elements into a single form. In one case, he begins by adding two dancers to a solo of McLaren at work. They are hooded, as in Bunraku puppetry, and work to animate an anglepoise lamp attached to his drafting table. This creates a metaphor of McLaren’s ideas coming to life. Later, another solo focusing almost entirely on hand gestures is developed using newly arrived, hand-held LED strip lights. Illuminating this soloist’s body with hand-held lighting allows manual synchronization with a soundtrack of electronic beeps and buzzes. This brings Lepage to his feet; he calls for an experiment compressing the two solos into one piece. The hand gestures are performed as choreographed, but now the dancer stands behind McLaren at his desk as he works – and the gestures move around his head, along with the LED strips. McLaren’s mental continuum suddenly – delightfully – is given concrete expression. Then the crew unbolt the table and attach the LED strips to it – new gestures are swiftly choreographed – projection is added. More experiment follows; ultimately, this process of compression produces a sophisticated metaphor of creation as a mental ballet. We might note that Lepage’s distinguishing ability to work with mixtures – of cultures and disciplines – probably extends from this floor-level capacity for architecting performance by combining blocks of work into more complex structures.

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Although the creative pressure of patentage may be experienced as chaotic, in reality, the architecting of performance requires a methodical process of systematic, unrelenting, collective experiment. Lepage never accepts the first solution, but insists on testing the construction from every angle, and cleaning out the whole problem. Without Ex Machina’s creative team, this process would not be possible. For example, the workshops conclude with the presentation of an accidental discovery made during technical rehearsal time. Having left the back projector running while raising the screen, the technicians recognized the potential of McLaren’s animations when used as raw light, rather than as projected image. McLaren’s horizontal and vertical white lines appear laser-like when striking haze – and the sculpting of the body achieved when the dancers are back-lit in this way is striking, but just a touch murky. Lepage receives the proposal, but adds a textured cross-pattern from the side projector in order to increase the body’s overall visibility  – which now appears as if a living hologram, creating a remarkable moment to conclude the laboratory.

Upgrades The revival of Lepage’s pre-Ex Machina solo, Needles and Opium (2014), is interesting for several reasons, first as another instance of upgrading. New projection technologies  – particularly the ability to make projections stick to moving surfaces – would alter the meaning of the piece somewhat. Additionally, this new version would be presented with a more advanced version of the rotating, open-cube design that had featured in Dream Play and 1984. Second, the new Needles would become a three-hander – perhaps stemming from Ex Machina’s increased engagement with this format in the late 2000s  – but more importantly facilitating bookings by differentiating it from Lepage’s tour of his new solo, 887. Third, although the upgrade reconsidered its original representations of female and black characters  – Juliette Greco and Miles Davis  – they would appear, but remain without dialogue, sensualized, and speaking through movement and music. The business of the upgrade remained in the parallels between two heartbroken gay men, actor Robert and polymath Jean Cocteau. Full embodiment of Greco and Davis’s narrative of love and race would significantly change this still-important focus, so the upgraded version developed their narratives, but left them still somewhat under erasure. The piece could still develop further, therefore, especially as the principle of métissages is so central to Ex Machina’s work.

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The Hamlet/Collage (2014) would in essence upgrade Elsinore (1995) – using the benefit of hindsight, and deploying the rotating, open-cube design and projection technologies used on Needles. Lepage remarks that while he was ‘probably too young’ when he took on Elsinore, it contained ‘a lot of really good intuitions’. With another twenty years of experience, he says, ‘[Y]‌ou know what these words mean exactly’, and ‘you know which ideas work, which don’t’.4 The upgrade, however, is of somewhat less impact than Lepage’s interaction as director, with Russian actor Yevgeny Mironov. Through this collaboration, Lepage came to terms with his negative experience on Elsinore  – which caused him to give up acting. Equally, Mironov reconciled Lepage with Stanislavskian acting. Lepage hinted at his early, negative experiences of Method training at the Conservatoire at CUNY in 2016, noting that the best Russian actors use the Method ‘to tell a story’, and suggesting that he had reconciled his acting style with that of naturalism.5 I asked Lepage if Mironov helped him see the Stanislavskian in the Lepagean. He remarks that ‘Yevgeny said “That’s what you do. You’re very Stanislavskian. You do what Stanislavski would have wanted to do”. And I said, “There’s no way!” And then we started working with him, and I went “Oh fuck yeah”. That’s why it was so great to work with Yevgeny. I suddenly became interested in acting again, and more confident because he was kind of saying “You’re doing the same thing I’m doing” ’.6 Working with Mironov would restore Lepage’s confidence as an actor by helping him to rediscover the common stylistic ground of actor-as-storyteller. Lepage would return to acting from text with aplomb, performing the Marquis de Sade in Quills (2016) in Canada and France. The experience, Lepage remarks, caused him to ask why ‘I really never had any confidence in myself as an actor – never’. He believes this is due to the criticism he received when he ‘was much younger’, often based on dated and inflexible ‘precepts or concepts of what acting is’.7 Lepage’s (albeit temporary) withdrawal from acting complicates his suggestion that Ex Machina never ‘navigated’8 on critical success, but, regardless, after collaborating with Mironov when I did Quills – I ended up doing stuff I never would have done before, on every level. ‘Oh no, I can’t do this, no way’ – and we did readings, and people said ‘You are the part’. ‘No way – I’m doing this because we can’t find any other actor to do it, and eventually we will’. And people were saying ‘My God! You are the part!’ And it was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life.9

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Robert Lepage/Ex Machina

Making 887 887 would be Lepage’s first solo work since Andersen, and would benefit from the collaboration with Mironov (2014), and also an invitation to speak at the Thirteenth Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (2015). In Prague, ‘something happened to me’, Lepage says; seeing ‘so many young people still interested in the craft, still thinking that theatre is more interesting than whatever other new technology, or film, or TV, or web series  – that gave me a shot in the arm’.10 Most important, 887 would be Lepage’s first collaboration with Blanchet as Ex Machina’s full-time Creative Director.11 Research and preparation for the project began in August 2013, with Blanchet and Lepage working round the table intensively for a month of afternoons  – between morning and evening Hearts rehearsals. Blanchet’s training in journalism brings contextual depth to the table, and 887 would be historical, as much as personal, autobiography. Beginning with the theme of memory, and focusing on Lepage’s childhood in the 1960s, they evolved the work to connect Lepage’s family’s narrative to Québec’s culture and history. The story of Lepage’s family, rather, would become the ‘history’ of the piece, while the story of Québec would be its ‘History’. 887 Murray Avenue, we may recall, was Lepage’s childhood address. The historiography of Québec which Blanchet and Lepage had produced through the original Image Mill (2008) probably informed greatly the creation of an autobiographical performance grounded strangely outside of personal detail. Well-publicized aspects of Lepage’s life, including early drug experiences,12 severe alopecia and homosexuality lacked references in the work itself. Blanchet’s arrival as Creative Director evolves Ex Machina’s collaborative context, as he is entrusted to make judgements about material Lepage generates in this crucial, early phase of creation. This trust is also a factor in 887’s rapid development (relatively speaking) – eighteen months between first workshops and first performances. In early sessions, Lepage would improvise around material for ten minutes, which Blanchet would feedback on – perhaps suggesting the idea merited four minutes of stage-time. Lepage would then reduce the material to exactly four minutes, live-editing the dialogue down while simultaneously incorporating Blanchet’s suggestions and retaining the effective material – verbatim. ‘I think Robert is a computer’, Blanchet jokes; ‘when he dies, they will open his body and find that he is a robot’. Research and preparation generated a huge amount of material, Blanchet says  – over forty potential scenes. At the end of the first phase, Lepage presented these improvisations without technical support, in a twohour showcase of ideas for Ex Machina personnel, but not in full public rehearsal. This exercise was intended solely to assess project viability – checks

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and balances perhaps unprecedented for a Lepage solo. Being met with encouragement, 887 received the green light. Subsequently, collaboration with other concepteurs began – with Bjurman, notably, joining the process. 887 then developed in three two-week blocks of collaboration, spread over one year. Bjurman’s arrival, therefore, consolidated a new and powerful collaborative structure at the heart of Ex Machina’s creative process. This triangular structure of Creative Director, Dramaturg and Director will not occur on every project, but 887 nevertheless defines a new model of collaborative practice for Ex Machina. Blanchet says that the task of organizing 887’s many scenes into a shape and a story was complex, but accomplished quickly. 887’s intricacy, however, comes not from volume of material, but from its shifting time zones. These were organized around a ‘Week in the Life’ – providing both forward chronological momentum, and recognizable ground from which to zip around events in Lepage’s childhood and Québec’s history. This umbrella structure of seven days allowed different events to be apportioned to different days of the week. Bjurman says Lepage has ‘become more personal, and more political’ over time, with each intensification ‘coinciding’ in the structure of 887. He believes that through 887 Lepage is asking, ‘What should I do with my status as an artist? How can I talk about stuff that interests me, and that are important features of the world – political or social?’13 At the heart of this lies the inseparability of memory and emotion. We feel when we remember; we remember when we feel. Personal and political memory is therefore united and intensified in 887 – multiplying the emotions of politics, and the politics of emotion. It is only when Lepage’s political feelings are triggered that he is able to memorize a political poem he has been commissioned to perform. 887 presents a remembrance of Québec that is both analytical and effective, bringing into focus a particular social reality, and questioning its symbolic construction. Indeed, 887 accomplished a thorough deconstruction of the personal and the political. The ‘Week in the Life’ structure acts much like an onion, and as layers of Québec society are peeled away, the construction of the personal and the political is revealed. 887 ultimately offers us the contradiction of an invitation to move forward in understanding – through the past. After 115 performances on tour, the text of 887 was published to coincide with a homecoming press night at Québec’s Théâtre du Trident, on 15 September 2016. It begins, typically, with a proposition. ‘The show is going to start in a few minutes’, Lepage says disingenuously. Waving a mobile telephone at the audience, Lepage segues from a polite ‘Switch Off ’ reminder, to asking why he can remember his childhood telephone number – which

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appears projected on a black wall behind him  – but not his mobile. He explains that his interest in memory – and 887’s genesis – arose in 2010 after he spent a week trying to learn Michèle Lalonde’s poem Speak White (1968), which he had been invited to present at Nuit de la poesie 40 anniversaire – a restaging of a key moment in Québec’s cultural history. The ‘Week in the Life’ structure allows the fictional compression of multiple events into this single week. Day 1 pays witness to Lepage’s attempt to memorize the poem using the technique of the memory palace – attaching the words to visualized objects in the rooms of a house. In connecting the poem’s polemical language to the rooms of his childhood home, Lepage initiates a growing connection between the personal and political – ultimately enabling him to memorize and perform the poem. This is poetic licence, however; Lepage states in interview with Geneviève Bouchard that ‘[t]‌he starting point of the show was really the building’.14 Memory and architecture become intertwined in 887, staging the memory of architecture – and the architecture of memory. In this early stage, the invitation made by the proposition combines with the recessive spaces of the design to mimic the ‘passage sequence’ of entering a building15 – an energy that will be maintained by ever-increasing detail of inspection, and which parallels the work’s probing of the past. Behind Lepage a scale model of 887 Murray Avenue – the block of flats where he grew up – revolves into view. The design is a clear example of a selfcontained architectural unit being inserted into a theatrical space, and this is but the first in a series of architectural gestures. Importantly, the model is taller than Lepage, dominating his body enough to be imposing, but not enough to create unmerited spectacle. 887’s residents are presented in turn on miniature screens  – appearing as apartment windows  – showing their everyday lives. Lepage’s accompanying speech gives these ‘characters’ vitality through anecdote; his final proposition is that 887’s residents collectively represent the province of Québec in microcosm. In establishing the trajectory between local and global, Lepage again deploys poetic licence  – folding Johnny Farago (who actually lived on neighbouring Lockwell Street16) into 887. This allows 887 to convey both the residual, restrictive power of religion in Québec society of the time, and the more liberal, postwar moment that was emerging:  Farago’s mother gave birth to him aged 14, and was forced to do so in front of an audience of medical students at Laval University. This was the punishment for birth out of wedlock imposed by Québec’s Grey Nuns. In line with Lepage’s interest in the Renaissance, 887 presents a transitional historical moment, as one culture dies and another emerges. But it also explores architecture in its active sense, as shaping ‘the social life of a place’.17 More than pinpoint historical accuracy, Lepage says it was more

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important to include ‘[a]‌ll the political dynamics of the moment as they manifested in the different flats’.18 The Farago family form a vital part of the proposition, therefore – allowing the work’s sphere of relevance to expand beyond personal experience through the melting pot of Québec society, and on to community, city and, ultimately, nation. The model rotates again to present a blank side for use as a projection screen; the fluidity of this repeated architectural gesture reflects the design’s power ‘to challenge the planar stability and homogeneity’19 of the concrete environment it explores. Lepage rotates mode of delivery as well – speaking the first of a sequence of rhyming poems which provide a change of pace, and serve as rough markers of time, and reflection, throughout. There are around seven – one for each day of the fated week, perhaps – peaking with Lalonde’s Speak White. ‘Speak white’ was an infamous command used on North American plantations to compel slaves to speak English; ‘This same expression was later used to urge French-speaking Canadians to speak English and remind them of their inferiority or subordinate position’.20 Lepage has explored tensions rooted in language throughout his career, but the status and ideology of text and language are both thrown into relief by 887. The projection shows Québec from the Parc de Braves battlefield, while a diorama on a table slides in from stage left on tracks, sandwiching Lepage between an image of the city, and a model of the park. Using live, recorded and symbolic representations, this builds a multilayered perception of Québec City. The projection zooms in to show more details, in a satellite top shot. The connection between urban environment and Québec’s history is established through images of the generals who the streets are named after, Wolfe and Murray, and of the painting A View of the Taking of Québec, which depicts the decisive battle with English troops for the territory on 13 September 1759. The model rotates to show Lepage’s personal library, where he is calling his friend Fred to help him memorize Lalonde’s poem. It’s the end of Day 1; the memory palace has failed to help Lepage retain the text, but it has triggered a detailed reflection. Day 3 pays witness to Fred’s visit. Although ostensibly autobiographical, there is no doubt that Lepage is playing ‘Lepage’ as a character with particular dramatic functions  – evidenced by the manipulation of personal details  – like presenting ‘Lepage’ drinking beer when Lepage is no drinker – and the omission of others previously noted. Fred’s dramatic function is to highlight the contradictions in this character construct. ‘Lepage’ is blunt and insensitive about Fred’s addiction problems; vulgar with money, and self-obsessed  – unable to concentrate when he discovers Fred has recorded the voice-over for a prerecorded obituary (his ‘cold-cut’). He rages about changes to historical street names, and becomes frustrated with his poor memory. Ultimately, he

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ushers Fred from the scene arrogantly (telling him that no street in Québec will be named after him once he dies) and viciously (asking if getting your sense of humour back is one of the 12 Steps). Fred’s function is to amplify negative personal qualities to a level where they balance the romanticism of reflection – allowing ‘Lepage’ to function as a typically Lepagean anti-hero. This comic self-portrait also functions to prepare the audience for a burst of archival information regarding the birth of Québec’s sovereignty movement. This then segues neatly into Lepage’s own archive, moving from official headlines to his family’s memory boxes  – which he wheels in on a trolley. He turns the trolley around – and on the reverse of these cardboard boxes we now see a model street scene depicting his Uncle Maurice’s house. Widening the focus to his extended family, a live feed camera shows Lepage looking into the building, observing a miniature world. He tells his lawyer uncle he wants to be an architect  – and is told he will need to change schools. This ambition is ultimately thwarted; Lepage later reveals he was denied access to the school which would have enabled him with a route into architecture on economic grounds. Poignantly, he recounts his mother’s reaction: ‘If you tell this to your father, it will finish him’. Lepage’s unlived life as an architect probably underpins architectural aesthetics, to at least some degree. Lepage’s anger at the denial of opportunity on the grounds of class surfaces again after a final-year performance of Aristophanes’ The Birds at the Conservatoire in Québec. Lepage opines to the Conservatoire director that the standards of voice and text work have increased since his day. This is because the Conservatoire no longer recruits students from rural areas or the working class, as they cannot afford the training; Lepage is incensed. The metaphor of 887-as-Québec is extended on Day 5.  Lepage reveals that he encountered a neurologist friend by chance, who has told him that memory depends not only on recall, but on emotion. It thus relies upon effective communication between the cerebral hemispheres, a point humorously illustrated via a projected animation showing a neighbouring family’s domestic breakdown on an image of the building’s floor plan. The property is divided into left and right in the animation, just as the brain is divided  – but Lepage further extends the architectural image to reference the idea of Canada’s two solitudes: the husband and wife involved in the fight agree to lead separate lives, in the same building. This segues neatly into a discussion of the genesis of the Canadian national flag – noting its exclusion of symbolic reference to First Nations peoples, and failure to properly include Québec. The sequence constructs the architecture of a nation  – domestic, geographic and symbolic  – cleverly building a picture of Canada’s many contradictions.

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This is given architectural emblem on Day 2. Indeed, argues Natalie Rewa, the presence of an ‘architectural model’ on the stage of 887 ‘asserts a resistance to one perspective, guiding the spectator instead to seeing the gestural performance’.21 At home in his library, Lepage tells the audience he has no space for Lalonde’s poem; to include it would mean reorganizing the entire shelving. We may remember Lepage’s interest in library architecture (see Chapter 8), and the parallel it offers between the organization of knowledge and society. The lack of space for Speak White is more than physical; it is a symbolic exclusion of knowledge. The architectural metaphor of libraryas-society thus enables Lepage to highlight the power of cultural gestures of inclusivity. When Lepage ultimately finds he can perform the poem, he effectively includes it in his library – triggering a reorganization of personal knowledge that articulates in turn a demand for an equitable reorganization of society. On the night of the Nuit de la poesie 40 anniversaire, we see Lepage arrive late to sound-check, flustered and still unprepared. Speak White will be performed last – adding to the pressure. In the event, and as Lepage steps out to perform, the moment before speaking is frozen; a projection of his shadow is fixed against the screen behind him. He steps away from it – literally, splitting time in two, past and present. Lepage ruminates upon his predicament. Only his father, he feels, would have the authority to speak Lalonde’s poem – neither he, nor any of the attendees, have the requisite humility. The motto of Québec is Québec: Je me souviens, he explains, and – having realized that memory is as much feeling as it is recall – we can see the crisis he needs to reconcile. How can he deliver this poem with authenticity, unless he too speaks from the history of pain that led to the poem being written? Lepage steps back into the past, once more merging with his shadow, and his uncompromising delivery of the poem shows that in remembering the past, he has rediscovered himself, his family, city and nation – in present feeling. Predictably, this is a politics rooted in contradiction. Mark Fisher writes that Québec’s motto derives from a longer, nineteenth-century phrasing: ‘I remember that, born under the lily, I grow under the rose’. Lepage’s interpretation of this to Fisher is that this ‘was a reconciliatory way of saying we have both natures’ – the lily being French, and the rose, English.22 This embrace is typical to Ex Machina’s praxis, using as it does strategies of contradiction in theatricality, to display the contradictions of politics and identity enmeshed in history. We should also recall Lepage’s 2016 remark23 that the ultimate theme of his work is reconciliation24  – which on the terms described here, suggest the need to explore identities based on métissages. In its questioning of Québecois and Canadian history, identity and politics, 887 not only presents an apotheosis

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of architectural aesthetics, but also a pinnacle in Ex Machina’s praxis – as well as Lepage’s reconciliation with the idea of home.

Taking the narrative turn Applying the approaches of creative practice within academic enquiry itself can yield important insights. As Suzanne Keen argues, ‘[T]‌he use of narrative as an emancipatory method of giving voice to the silenced in political discourse bring[s] ideologically freighted understandings of the purposes and capacities of narrative to light.’25 This book has constructed a narrative in three parts – three Acts – in direct correlation to Ex Machina’s search for new forms of narrative theatre and experiments with cinematic structure. Just as Lepage’s emphasis on story connects Ex Machina to ‘the narrative turn’,26 and an emphasis on narrative as an analytical tool, I have used the story of Ex Machina to bring to light some perhaps new voices, and new understanding. In attempting this, I have deliberately modelled this book on structures drawn from Robert McKee’s screenwriting classic, Story (1999).27 Acknowledging now that this book is modelled around the idea of a screenplay is part of the narrative structure I have deployed, and is, effectively, a final turn in the ‘plot’. Above, 887 is presented as the ‘Story Climax’28  – a peak of professional development and an emotional reconciliation of self and home  – and now begins the process of ‘Resolution’.29 In the next section, the future condition of the ‘characters’ will be suggested. Positively speaking, the story structure of this book makes sense of Ex Machina’s work, but problematically, this narrative control suggests the authority to define a complex reality. I believe this narratology of Ex Machina is valid, but no single story can authoritatively claim to have captured every voice or angle of experience. The ‘Cast Design’30 of the book seeks to articulate Lepage’s approach through relationships with major collaborators, and in doing so, generate a fresh picture of Ex Machina’s core, evolving practice, but there are many other voices to hear on this subject. My approach requires apologies to published and forthcoming monographs – not to mention Francophone scholarship – for just this reason. Broadly speaking, the story I have told follows an arc of transformation. Ex Machina begins in McKee’s ‘Positive’, with them searching for new stories through technical innovation and intercultural engagement:  this search quickly encounters ‘Contrary’ conditions, with technical breakdown, criticism and financial difficulty; the ‘Contradictory’ situation then arises, where their search for new stories brings them to explore established story structures; and we are now in the ‘Negation of the Negation’31 – where Ex

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Machina’s search for story is described as a story in itself, taking the idea to its limit. The grouping of case studies into particular chapters reflects my ‘choice of events and their design in time’32 – fundamentally, my shaping of materials into a loose plot. The structure of this book, therefore, is ‘a strategic sequence to arouse specific emotions and to express a specific view of life’33 – gathered around the story of the company’s difficult birth, survival tactics and ultimate flourishing. The Introduction accounts for the ‘inciting incident’34 behind the formation of Ex Machina  – Lepage’s diminished creative control within industry production contexts. The ‘Acts’ (or Parts) of this book conclude with ‘Progressive Complications’,35 peaking ‘in a climactic scene which causes a major reversal of values’.36 The excitement of launching the company is positioned against the unexpected crises early productions faced; the financial crisis produced by Zulu Time is positioned against the unexpected critical acclaim of Far Side – and so on – driving the ‘arc’37 of Ex Machina’s narrative through irony, reversal, and contradiction. Causality, then, underpins this story, ‘in which motivated actions cause effects that in turn become the causes of yet other effects’– thus describing Ex Machina as a ‘consistent reality’.38 The structure of this book, therefore, is in itself an argument against the notion that chaos determines Ex Machina’s collaborative context. If the structure of a story can be an argument, then, perhaps, an argument can be a story. And, just as Ex Machina experiment with narrative to innovate in theatre, it may be that exploring the narrative status of criticism is necessary in fully comprehending complex ecologies of theatre-making such as Ex Machina’s. In borrowing theatre’s creative tools, we may find other ways to read it.

Le Diamant The ultimate ironic reversal presented above is globetrotter Lepage’s homecoming – first, with 887 probing the idea of home on every level, and second, with Ex Machina’s move to a new home in Québec City, le Diamant. If each of the parts of this book represent a phase in the evolution of Ex Machina, the opening of le Diamant (2019) clearly initiates another such phase. With neat circularity, le Diamant will occupy a historic building that includes the nightclub location where Ex Machina started rehearsing Ota – in 1994. Moreover, the insertion of the new construction within – and around  – an established building is an architectural gesture typical of Ex Machina scenography. Le Diamant will replicate the functions of la Caserne, while adding the new dimension of a fully functioning theatre  – an enhancement of

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function that will enable Ex Machina to push the boundaries of architectural aesthetics, while facilitating new trajectories which la Caserne could not support. Ex Machina’s efforts to mitigate the limits of la Caserne should be noted here. Lepage says Ex Machina has ‘always opened la Caserne to small companies, start-ups – we would lend them material, often we would almost give them the room instead of renting it, or we’d rent it for a very, very low fee’.39 Technical Director Paul Bourque says that la Caserne has also supported the arts in Québec City by acting as a host for festivals such as the annual Carrefour International de Théâtre (May–June).40 However, while the building is equipped for festival performance, it could not function as a permanent venue; Bourque highlights lack in several areas, including backstage areas, wings, foyer and storage for seating – and particularly, zero flying height to host larger, money-making shows. Running a theatre is far more costly than running a rehearsal space, and, with a likely capacity of 100 seats, la Caserne would have quickly crashed – taking Ex Machina with it – as it could not have generated its own budget. Moreover, visiting performances would require handing over the space, and prevent laboratory work being undertaken, Bourque says. Therefore, le Diamant has greater potential than la Caserne to foster artists, audiences and culture in Québec. Lepage recognizes the importance of this, saying that his career was nurtured post-Conservatoire by ‘a trend of Cafe Theatre that happened in Québec city and Montréal’, but ‘that time is gone’: We never played in a space where there would be more than maybe 70 people, it was really, really limited. Sometimes you’d play in front of 40 and it was jam-packed. But there were a lot of Cafe Theatres – most of them were pretty much full, there was an audience for these things – and it was a kind of a launching pad for a lot of young companies, and a lot of writers and directors.41

Lepage believes le Diamant will improve on la Caserne’s offer to Québec City. Théâtre Premier Acte – a place where new artists showcase new work – is one initiative le Diamant will support. They have only ‘a very small room’, but ‘the most interesting stuff in Québec happens in that room’, he says. Lepage calls Québec ‘an incubator city’  – and has ‘always considered’ la Caserne as an incubator for Ex Machina’s work. The intention is to reproduce ‘la Caserne on top of le Diamant’ – and for it to be ‘a multidisciplinary place’ for performance, while retaining this function of incubation.42 Bernatchez notes that although the vision is still taking shape, ‘the idea is to build a repertoire’ of new projects and revivals to present.43 Ex Machina’s capacity for multiproject working will be enhanced – ensuring the energy of first-phase creativity will

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still cross-pollinate their practice, as projects at every stage of development can grow, side-by-side. The original project was more ambitious, and would have brought Ex Machina under one roof with les Gros Becs youth theatre, and Carrefour International de Théâtre. Now, the youth theatre will take over la Caserne when Ex Machina occupy le Diamant; Lepage expresses pride in that ‘heritage’, and believes this is the ‘best way to make a good use of that space’. Moreover, Ex Machina will still seek to partner the youth theatre, and intend to work with them at le Diamant. Beyond nurturing Québec’s theatre-makers of tomorrow, Lepage has a clear vision for le Diamant’s audience. He believes le Diamant could be a radical model for theatre’s social potential, a place which  – instead of reinforcing social stratification and economic division  – could be a site where society can meet itself and break down barriers through art. Le Diamant may, then, enable still deeper exploration of the social and political concerns explored in Ex Machina’s oeuvre, just as much as it may enable greater experiment with theatrical form. Theatre, Lepage says, ‘doesn’t exist if there’s not a gathering at every level’. Performance is ‘always the result of a group effort’ and seeing it in action can make ‘you suddenly believe in society, believe in gathering, unifying’ – and therefore, it is still ‘full of hope’. It’s clear that Lepage’s vision for le Diamant is to create a popular theatre for Québec City, which creates access to all theatrical forms – for all Quebeckers. Lepage believes that ‘the survival of the art form’ depends upon the audience being included.44 Indeed, ‘[t]‌heatre, more than ever, can only survive if it’s eventful’.45 And ‘[i]t’s urgent’; failing to make audiences feel like ‘the show needs you, you are participating . . . that’s what’s burying theatre’.46 In terms of scheduling at le Diamant, Lepage, speaking in 2016, says the programming ‘should not just be a showcase of our work, but it should also be about new circuits’, and ‘bringing people from all over the world to try stuff, and to meet, and to cross-breed with dance and opera and whatever other art form’.47 Bernatchez notes that the demand to premiere shows at le Diamant will need to be weighed against the opportunities provided by the international festival circuit. 887 was commissioned to premiere at the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games in Toronto, for instance, and the company will still rely on such investment partnerships to create its work.48 After his experience in Prague, Lepage believes le Diamant could also be ‘a place to reflect on theatre . . . We should have international meetings of theatre designers and writers. A  place to make people more aware about certain things’.49 Popular entertainments like pro-wrestling could ‘co-habit with what we do at le Diamant’, he says. Circus, opera, theatre and wrestling should co-exist at le Diamant; ‘all these things should live together, all these audiences should mingle and brush against each other – because there’s something to

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be learned here’. Having met and watched pro-wrestlers on Québec’s circuit, Lepage is inspired ‘to make that statement, and bring it into the conversation of theatre. What is theatrical? And what is theatre about? And what’s it for?’50 Although le Diamant represents a homecoming of sorts, the final word goes to Bernatchez, whose reflections on touring remind us that Ex Machina’s business abroad is far from over: At some point we were very excited and had a huge map of the world on the wall. And we said let’s put some pins in where we’ve toured, you know, it will be so impressive. And that was after 15 years of touring. We’re a big touring company – and we had a few dots. Essentially, that was it. We go back to London, 15, 20 times, Toronto many times, and when you put pins into the map, it doesn’t look like much. It’s odd that we’ve been so few times to South America: Latin America, to a certain extent, we went more. In Eastern Europe – our shows are expensive, and now the well is drying up for government money for the arts, so I don’t know what’s possible. It would be great to have some sort of foundation that would help shows being presented in territories where they don’t have enough money to receive what we do. There are places and theatres where there’s something going on that we should be able to explore, and we don’t. It’s understandable but strange that we’ve never performed in Africa. I don’t want to cover the world – I would like us to know the world.51

Coda It’s 23 November 2016. I’m walking out of the Metropolitan Opera staff cafe. The end of lunch has been called over the tannoy. Lepage is sitting on his own at the table nearest to the exit, working on two screens simultaneously – a tablet and a mobile. As I wave, I can’t help but notice that the wallpaper on his mobile is Leonardo da Vinci’s The Mona Lisa. There’s an old therapist’s cliché  – you learn more from what falls out of somebody’s pockets, than you do from their face. So, in closing, I  just want to offer a note on why I think this particular painting is an emblem for Robert Lepage/Ex Machina’s approach. Is it because of the painting’s famous ambiguities? No. It’s because the architectural features in the landscape behind her – a road and a bridge – embed this woman in a concrete narrative of unresolved contradiction; is she coming, or is she going? We will never know. In this moment, Mona Lisa is both  – returning and leaving. And perhaps it is those ‘énergies contradictoires’52 that keep her – and Ex Machina – alive.

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Notes Introduction 1 Robert Lepage, interview, Québec: 21 September 2016. Henceforth ‘Lepage2’. 2 Undated archive materials are marked ‘n/d’, and unpaginated materials are marked ‘n/p’. 3 Robert Lepage, interview, New York: 18 November 2016. Henceforth ‘Lepage3’. 4 Jim Armitage, ‘From Miami to Beijing: the Greatest Shows on Earth Are Made in London’, Evening Standard, 12 December 2016: 42. 5 Patrick Caux and Bernard Gilbert, Ex Machina, trans. N. Kroetsch (Vancouver: Talon Books, 2009), 60. 6 Cathy Turner, Dramaturgy and Architecture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 5. 7 Armitage, ‘From Miami’, 42. 8 Ibid., 43. 9 Ibid. It was clearly a large-scale variation of designs for previous work, notably Elsinore (1995). 10 Robert Lepage in conversation with Frank Hentschker, CUNY Graduate Center, New York: 14 September 2016. Henceforth ‘Lepage, CUNY’. 11 Lepage2. 12 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 83. 13 Simon Usborne, ‘“People want to feel they might see an accident” – How Dangerous Is the Circus?’ Guardian.com, 26 March 2018. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/mar/26/circus-yannarnaud-cirque-du-soleil-fatal-fall (accessed 30 May 2018). 14 Andrew Gilbert, ‘Reorientation’, California Magazine, May–June 2009: n/p. EM archive. This is the earliest use of this term that I can find in print. 15 Alberto Pérez-Gómez, ‘Architecture as a Performing Art: Two Analogical Reflections’, in Architecture as a Performing Art, eds Marcia F. Feuerstein and Gray Read (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 15. 16 Joseph Clarke, ‘Wagnerism Embodied’, 2011: 67. Available online: http:// utoronto.academia.edu/JosephClarke (accessed 21 December 2016). 17 Ibid., 59. 18 Gray Read, ‘Introduction: The Play’s the Thing’, in Architecture as a Performing Art, eds Marcia F. Feuerstein and Gray Read (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 1.

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19 Peter P. Goché, ‘Staging: Making a Scene’, in Architecture as a Performing Art, eds Marcia F. Feuerstein and Gray Read (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 73. 20 Read, ‘Introduction’, 3. 21 Ibid., 2. 22 Lepage2. 23 Ibid. 24 Lepage, CUNY. 25 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 12. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Aleksandar Dundjerović, ‘Robert Lepage and Ex Machina – Lipsynch (2007) – Performance Transformations and Cycles’, in Making Contemporary Theatre, eds Jen Harvie and Andy Lavender (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2010), 163. 29 Robert Lepage, Practitioner Symposium, Rose Bruford College, 9 February 2006. 30 Robert Lepage and Ex Machina, The Seven Streams of the River Ota [text] (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 1996), 63. 31 This is the full show title, as given in Martine Corrivault, ‘Du Nouveau dans le Circuit des Cafés-Théâtres a Québec: Le Zinc’, le Soleil, 20 January 1979: n/p. EM archive. The venue’s programmer, Yvon Tanguay, deserves a nod for giving Lepage his first, key professional engagement. 32 Le Théâtre de Vieux-Québec, ‘Robert Lepage’, En Attendant programme biography (1982): n/p. EM archive. Engagements include América-noïaques, Piaf and Equus. 33 Dundjerović, ‘Robert Lepage’, 162. 34 Serge Drouin, ‘Une Triste Réalité Servie Avec Humour’, le Journal de Québec, 15 November 1982: n/p. EM archive. 35 Michel Bernatchez, interview, Québec: 19 September 2016. Henceforth ‘Bernatchez’. 36 Théâtre de la Bordée, Saturday Night Taxi programme (1980): n/p. EM archive. 37 Bernatchez. 38 Scott Duchesne, ‘The Canadian Improv Games: Finding (Out) the Vision’, Canadian Theatre Review, no. 77 (1993): 74. 39 Ibid. 40 Rémy Charest and Robert Lepage, Connecting Flights, trans. Wanda Romer Taylor (London: Methuen, 1997), 182–3. 41 Le Théâtre de Vieux-Québec, ‘Robert Lepage’. Also performed 1983 and 1984. 42 Ibid., 9 November–11 December. 43 Ludovic Fouquet, The Visual Laboratory of Robert Lepage (Vancouver: Talon Books, 2014), 10–14. 44 Bernatchez.

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45 Bernatchez. 46 Théâtre Repère, Circulations_Liste_Tournee_Canadienne (1985): n/p. EM archive. Between 21 March 1984 and 30 May 1985. 47 Bernatchez. 48 Bernatchez. 49 Théâtre Repère, ‘Repère_ programme_de saison_83-84’ (1983): n/p. EM archive. 50 Théâtre Repère, ‘Danses-tu?’ programme (1986): n/p. EM archive. 51 Anna Halprin, Performances, Available online: https://www.annahalprin. org/performances (accessed 31 May 2018). 52 See also Stand Bye [sic] 5 Minutes and Solange Passe (both 1984), California Suite (1985), Brecht’s Mother Courage and Ann Diamond’s Echo (both 1989). 53 Théâtre Repère, ‘À Propos_programme’ (1985): n/p. EM archive. 54 Théâtre Repère, ‘Program_Le_Bord_Extrême’ (1986): n/p. EM archive. 55 Jean St-Hillaire, ‘Le Tandem Girard/Lepage a la Bordée: Quand l’Amour Devient Incendie’, le Soleil, 14 February 1987: n/p. EM archive. 56 Robert Lepage, ‘Le Mot du Metteur en Scène’, Carmen_Programme_ Montréal (1987): n/p. EM archive. 57 Gordon McCall and Robert Lepage, ‘From the Directors’ Desk’, programme, Romeo_&_Juliette_Saskatoon (1989): n/p. EM archive. 58 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 13. 59 Jean St-Hilaire, ‘L’Humour Noir Surrealiste Selon Lepage’, le Soleil, 31 March 1991: n/p. EM archive. 60 Ibid. 61 Théâtre Repère, ‘Théâtre Repère: Robert Lepage, le Cycle Shakespeare’, programme, Prog_Cycle_Amsterdam (1992): n/p. EM archive. Coriolanus, Macbeth and The Tempest. 62 NAC, ‘Fontaine-aux-Moutons’, programme, Programme_Fontaine_Aix_ Moutons (1993): n/p. EM archive. 63 Bernatchez. 64 Théâtre Repère, ‘Lepage, Repère, et Shakespeare’, le Cycle Shakespeare programme, Prog_Cycle_Montréal (1992): 11. EM archive. 65 Goché, ‘Staging’, 73. 66 NAC, ‘Director’s Notes’, national CAPITALe nationale programme, Prog_ national_CAPITALeNationale (1993): n/p. EM archive. 67 Jen Harvie, Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 115. 68 Sonoyo Nishikawa, interview, Québec: 17 September 2016. Henceforth ‘Nishikawa’. 69 Julie Brodeur, Authentic Québec – Lanaudière and Mauricie, trans. J. Sweet (Montréal: Ulysses Travel Guides, 2013): 12. Available online: https://books. google.co.uk/books?id=YggFAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=Qu %C3%A9becois+patenteux&source=bl&ots=_XELgGxKHg&sig=I0b9dys MwKwUHY17er148kS9Uh0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4g4_-2dLPA

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hXkCsAKHRk3D68Q6AEIaDAJ#v=onepage&q=Qu%C3%A9becois%20 patenteux&f=false (accessed 11 October 2016). 70 Arika Okrent, ‘11 Mots Merveilleux Recently Added to the French Dictionary’, Mentalfloss.com, 31 May 2013. Available online: http:// mentalfloss.com/article/50881/11-mots-merveilleux-recently-added-frenchdictionary (accessed 11 October 2016). 71 Wiktionary ‘Patenteux’, Wiktionnaire, 16 August 2017. Available online: https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/patenteux (accessed 11 October 2016). 72 Ray Ellenwood, ‘The Passion of the Patenteux’, Espace Sculpture, no. 101 (Autumn 2012): 52. Available online: https://www.erudit.org/culture/ espace1041666/espace0317/67487ac.pdf (accessed 11 October 2016). 73 ‘Patenteux, bas culotte et bourrasser dans le dictionnaire’, dufrancaisaufrancais.com (n/d). Available online: http://www. dufrancaisaufrancais.com/patenteux-bas-culotte-et-bourrasser-dans-ledictionnaire/ (accessed 11 October 2016). My translation: ‘Un «patenteux» est un bricoleur ingénieux qui se débrouille avec des moyens de fortune. Ce mot a donné naissance à patente, un mot générique très utile pour dépeindre un objet difficile à nommer ou à décrire, un genre de bidule, de zinzin. Et au verbe patenter: . . . «Je t’ai patenté quelque chose en attendant, mais tu ferais mieux d’aller au plus vite chez un garagiste.»’ 74 Lepage2. 75 Jen Harvie, ‘Robert Lepage’, in Postmodernism: The Key Figures, eds Hans Bertens and Joseph Natoli (Massachusetts and Oxford: Blackwells, 2002), 227. 76 Lepage2.

Chapter 1 1 Nishikawa. 2 Lepage, CUNY. 3 Charest and Lepage, Connecting Flights, 45–6. 4 Lepage2. 5 Takahagi Hiroshi, ‘Shakespeare at the Globe in Tokyo: A Crossroads of World Theatre’, trans. C. Poulton, Canadian Theatre Review, no. 85 (1995): 39. 6 Alison McAlpine, ‘Robert Lepage’, in In Contact with the Gods?, eds Maria M. Delgado and Paul Heritage (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996), 137 and 136. 7 Robert Lepage, ‘Yin Yang, Transience and Writing for Theatre’, in The Seven Streams of the River Ota programme (London: National Theatre, 1996), 3. 8 Ibid. 9 The Japanese term for a survivor of the 1945 nuclear bombings by the United States.

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10 Takahagi, ‘Shakespeare’, 39. 11 Charest and Lepage, Connecting Flights, 45. 12 Robert Lepage, interview, Québec: 19 August 2013. Henceforth ‘Lepage1’. 13 Lepage2. 14 Lepage, Seven Streams [text], 1. 15 Kei Ishikawa, ‘Japanese Gardens: Talk by Kei Ishikawa’, Foyles bookshop, London, 24 May 2016. 16 Stéphan Bureau, Stéphan Bureau Rencontre Robert Lepage (Québec: Amérik Média, 2008), 193. My translation. 17 Lepage1. 18 Alexander Alland, Jr., ‘The Construction of Reality and Unreality in Japanese Theatre’, The Drama Review, vol. 23 no. 2 (1979): 4. 19 Ibid., 3. 20 Lepage, Seven Streams [text], 138–9. 21 Alland, ‘Construction of Reality’, 5. 22 Robert Cheesmond, ‘The Power of Darkness and the Power of Space’, Studies in Theatre Production, no. 2 (1990): 35. 23 Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers (Point Reyes: Imperfect Publishing, 2008), 11. 24 Mai Kanzake and Jennifer Wise, ‘The Japanese-Garden Aesthetics of Robert Lepage: Shukukei, Mitate, and Fusama-e in Seven Streams of the River Ota and Other Works’, Theatre Research International, vol. 38 no. 3 (2013): 197. My earlier conference paper on this theme (Invisible Presences, 2011) is referenced by Jane Koustas in Robert Lepage on the Toronto Stage: Language, Identity, Nation (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 97 – although both tone and argument are misrepresented negatively there. 25 Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi: Further Thoughts (Imperfect Publishing: Point Reyes, 2015), 65–75. 26 Bernatchez. 27 Robert Lepage in post-show discussion of The Seven Streams of the River Ota with Richard Eyre, 24 September 1996 (London: National Theatre Audio Archive, 1996). 28 Robert Lepage, interview with Karen Fricker, December 1995, cited in ‘Japan and the Seven Streams’, The Seven Streams of the River Ota programme (London: National Theatre, 1996), 5. 29 McAlpine, ‘Robert Lepage’, 131. 30 Jerri Daboo, ‘Removing the Writing from the Wall, and Then Removing the Wall’, Studies in Theatre and Performance, vol. 23, no. 2 (2003): 127. 31 Lepage, Seven Streams [text], 15. 32 Patrick Lonergan, ‘“The Laughter Will Come of Itself: the Tears are Inevitable”: Martin McDonagh, Globalisation, and Irish Theatre Criticism’, Modern Drama, vol. 47 no. 4 (2004): 643–4. Cited in Karen Fricker, ‘Cultural Relativism and Grounded Politics in Robert Lepage’s The Andersen Project’, Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 17, no. 2 (2007): 119–20. 33 Ibid., 120.

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34 Lepage, Seven Streams [text], 147. 35 Ibid., 145–7. 36 Charest and Lepage, Connecting Flights, 26. 37 Bernatchez. 38 Nishikawa. 39 Bernatchez. 40 McAlpine, ‘Robert Lepage’, 131. 41 Lepage3. 42 Charest and Lepage, Connecting Flights, 26. 43 Bernatchez. 44 Peder Bjurman, online interview, Québec: 19 September 2016. Henceforth ‘Bjurman’.

Chapter 2 1 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 42. 2 Robert Lepage, [Film] Dir. Jeremy Peter Allen (National Film Board of Canada, 2009). Available online: http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/ exmachina/gallery_video/#id=album-44&num=0 (accessed 8 January 2010). 3 Richard Eyre and Robert Lepage in post-show discussion of The Andersen Project (London: Barbican), 31 January 2006. 4 Michael J. Hood, ‘The Geometry of Miracles: Witnessing Chaos’, in Theater Sans Frontières, eds Joseph I. Donohoe Jr and Jane M. Koustas (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000), 145. 5 See James Reynolds, ‘Scenographic Acting and the Scenographic Body in the Work of Robert Lepage and Ex Machina’, Blue Pages: Journal for the Society of British Theatre Designers (December 2011). 6 Hood, ‘Witnessing Chaos’, 152. 7 Ibid., 139. 8 Charest and Lepage, Connecting Flights, 85. 9 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 42. 10 Peder Bjurman revealed this in conversation during rehearsals for L’Amour de Loin (November 2016). 11 Richard Paul Knowles, ‘From Dream to Machine: Peter Brook, Robert Lepage, and the Contemporary Shakespearean Director as (Post) Modernist’, Theatre Journal, vol. 50, no. 2 (1998): 200. 12 Marianne Ackerman, ‘Alanienouidet: Simultaneous Space and Action’, Canadian Theatre Review, no. 70 (1992): 34. 13 Mike Crang, ‘Time: Space’, in Spaces of Geographical Thought, eds Paul Cloke and Ron Johnston (London and Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2005), 204. 14 Andy Lavender, Hamlet in Pieces (London: Nick Hern Books, 2001), 123. 15 Steve Dixon, ‘Space, Metamorphosis and Extratemporality in the Theatre of Robert Lepage’, Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 17, no. 4 (2007): 503 and 502.

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16 Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London and New York: Routledge, 1980), 15 and 14. 17 Jacques Lecoq, in collaboration with Jean-Gabriel Carasso and Jean-Claude Lassias, The Moving Body: Teaching Creative Theatre, trans. David Bradby (London: Methuen, 2000), 156. 18 Dixon, ‘Space, Metamorphosis’, 514. 19 Ibid., 500. 20 Sylvie Bissonette, ‘Historical Interculturalism in Robert Lepage’s Elsinore’, Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 20, no. 1 (2010): 48. 21 Ibid. 22 David Bradby, ‘The Legacy of Lecoq’, in The Paris Jigsaw: Internationalism and the City’s Stages, eds David Bradby and Maria M. Delgado (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002), 84. 23 Ibid., 85. 24 Aleksandar Dundjerović, ‘The Multiple Crossings to The Far Side of the Moon: Transformative Mise En Scène’, Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 13 no. 2 (2003): 79. 25 Ibid., 69. 26 Ibid., 79. 27 Bernard Lavoie, ‘Conversations with Six Québécois Playwrights’, Canadian Theatre Review, no. 75 (1993): 30. 28 Richard Eyre and Robert Lepage in published post-show (28 May 1992) discussion Platform (London: National Theatre, 2003): 25. 29 Richard Eyre and Robert Lepage in post-show discussion (London: National Theatre Audio Archive), 10 January 1997. 30 Bissonette, ‘Historical Interculturalism’, 43 and 50. 31 Ibid., 50, 52 and 55. 32 Giovanni Fusetti and Suzy Wilson, ‘The Pedagogy of the Poetic Body’, in The Paris Jigsaw: Internationalism and the City’s Stages, eds David Bradby and Maria M. Delgado (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002), 96. 33 Virginie Magnat, ‘Devising Utopia, or Asking for the Moon’, Theatre Topics, vol. 15, no. 1 (2005): 77. 34 McAlpine, ‘Robert Lepage’, 144. 35 Ibid., 143. 36 Michael J. Sidnell, ‘Polygraph: Somatic Truth and an Art of Presence’, Canadian Theatre Review, vol. 64 (1990): 48. 37 Aleksandar Dundjerović, The Theatricality of Robert Lepage (Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), 180. 38 Ibid., 183. 39 Greg Giesekam, Staging the Screen: The Use of Film and Video in Theatre (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 233. 40 Paul Rae, ‘Where Is the Cosmopolitan Stage?’, Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 16, no. 1 (2006): 14.

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41 Ibid., 16. 42 Dixon, ‘Space, Metamorphosis’, 505. 43 Lepage2. 44 Dundjerović, ‘Multiple Crossings’, 69. 45 Christopher Innes, Machines of the Mind. Available online: http://130.63.63.23/crc/resources/essays/pdf/lepage.pdf (accessed 21 October 2016). 46 Lavender, Hamlet in Pieces, 100–1. 47 James Bunzli, ‘The Geography of Creation: Décalage as Impulse, Process and Outcome in the Theatre of Robert Lepage’, The Drama Review, vol. 43, no.1 (1999): 96. 48 Hood, ‘Witnessing Chaos’, 152. 49 Matt Trueman, ‘“People are interested in what I’m doing again”: Robert Lepage Interviewed’, The Spectator, 22 August 2015. Available online: http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/08/people-are-interestedin-what-im-doing-again-robert-lepage-interviewed/ (accessed 17 October 2016). 50 Bunzli, ‘Geography of Creation’, 83. 51 Le Confessional (1995), Le Polygraphe (1996), Nô (1998) and Possible Worlds (2000). 52 ‘Portrait of the Artist: Robert Lepage, Director’, Guardian, 7 December 2010: 23. 53 Digging for Miracles [Film], Dir. David Clermont-Beique. In Extremis. 2000. 54 Ibid. 55 Ex Machina, The Geometry of Miracles, programme, National Theatre (London, 1999). 56 Richard Eyre and Robert Lepage in post-show discussion of The Far Side of the Moon (London: National Theatre Audio Archive), 19 July 2001. 57 Ex Machina, ‘Ex Machina’. Available online: http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/ exmachina/ (accessed 12 January 2010). 58 Eyre and Lepage, 28 May 1992, 27. 59 Eyre and Lepage, 19 July 2001. 60 Charest and Lepage, Connecting Flights, 164. 61 Arnold Aronson, ‘Technology and Dramaturgical Development: Five Observations’, Theatre Research International, vol. 24, no. 2 (summer 1999): 192. 62 Lepage1. 63 Lepage, CUNY. 64 Lepage3. 65 Aristita L. Albacan, Intermediality and Spectatorship in the Theatre Work of Robert Lepage: The Solo Shows (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 276.

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Chapter 3 1 Ex Machina, ‘Tours’. Available online: http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/tour/ archives/ (accessed 7 November 2016). 2 In Spanish, La Celestina; La Celestine is the French variation used for the Stockholm co-production. The English version is known as The Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea. 3 Fouquet, Visual Laboratory, 84. This production again evidences Ex Machina collaborating with Québec tech – Gestion Son Image (Montréal); see Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 83. 4 André Morency, ‘Entrevue avec Robert Lepage’, Le Songe d’Une Nuit d’Été, programme (1995): 4. My translation: ‘Parmi les comédies du Shakespeare c’est quelle que je préfère. Bien qu’elle soit souvent montée comme une féerie assez légére, c’est une pièce qui, en raison de ses themes et malgre son humour est plutôt sombre. On y parle de la découverte l’amour,de la sexualité et de la beauté, mais aussi de la cruaute du destin, des trahisons sentimentales et de la laideur. Ce qui est remarquable,c’est qu’on recontre, au coeur d’une comédie, des éléments extrêmement douloureux. Lorsque j’ai monté la pièce a Londres, j’ai privilégié la noirceur, la souf-France et la, alors qu’ici, je crois avoir atteint un meilleur équilibre entre les contraires.’ EM archive. 5 See Chapter 2. 6 Fouquet, Visual Laboratory, 257. 7 Lepage3. 8 Melissa Poll, ‘Adapting “Le Grand Will” in Wendake: Ex Machina and the Huron-Wendat Nation’s La Tempete’, Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 35, no. 3 (2014): 347. 9 Robert Lepage, ‘Sobre La Celestina’, programme (2004): n/p. EM archive. 10 Bjurman. 11 Ibid. 12 Lepage3. Alongside his discovery of Japanese theatre in his second year at the Conservatoire, this was clearly a noteworthy, fertile period for Lepage. 13 Lepage, ‘Sobre La Celestina’. My translation: ‘Hace más o menos diez años, cuando era director artistico del Centro Nacional De Las Artes en Ottowa, le pedi Michel Garneau – gran poeta de la escena de Quebec – hacer una adaptación de la tragicomedia humanistica de Rojas. Posteriormente se me presento la opportunidad de montar la obra en una coproduccion con España . . . nos permitió tomar distancia y libertad para darle una nueva vitalidad al texto original. No se trataba de des-empolvar a gran clásico, sino de encontrarle a la obra una resonancia contemporánea.’ 14 Lepage3. 15 Lepage, ‘Sobre La Celestina’. 16 Lepage3. 17 Leanore Lieblein, ‘Pourquoi Shakespeare?’ Available online: http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca/

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essays/s_m_i_c_14_l_lieblein_pourquoi_shakespeare.pdf (accessed 1 July 2018). 18 Lepage3. 19 Ibid. 20 Lepage, ‘Sobre La Celestina’. 21 Lepage3. 22 Bjurman. 23 Lepage, ‘Sobre La Celestina’. 24 Bjurman. 25 Fernando De Rojas, Celestina (1499), trans. James Mabbe (1631). Available online: https://archive.org/stream/celestina00rojauoft/celestina00rojauoft_ djvu.txt (accessed 1 July 2018). 26 Lepage2. 27 Yves Laberge, ‘Robert Lepage’, in France and the Americas, eds Bill Marshall and Cristina Johnston (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005), 713. 28 David Stevens, ‘The Multiplication of Faust’, International Herald Tribune, 13 June 2001: n/p. EM archive. 29 Girls Kissing Tube, [Film] ‘Lepage and La Damnation de Faust at the Met videos’: n/d. EM archive. 30 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 70. 31 Ibid., 71. 32 Nishikawa created the work’s most recent design, for performances since 2008; previously, Maryse Gauthier (in 2001) had updated Guy Simard’s original design, for Paris. 33 Nishikawa. 34 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 70. 35 Metropolitan Opera 2009 cast list [publicity materials]. Quote listed as ‘Associated Press’. EM archive. 36 Stevens, ‘Multiplication of Faust’. 37 Fouquet, Visual Laboratory, 86. 38 Ibid., 135. 39 Ibid., 257. 40 Charest and Lepage, Connecting Flights, 88. 41 Hood, ‘Witnessing Chaos’. 42 Hélène Beauchamp, ‘The Repère Cycles: From Basic to Continuous Education’, Canadian Theatre Review, no. 78 (1994): 26. 43 Dundjerović, Theatricality, 251. ‘The Anderson Project’ (sic) is referenced seven times. 44 Ibid., xi. 45 Dundjerović, ‘Robert Lepage and Ex Machina’, 163. See Introduction; rather, it was Conservatoire tutor Marc Doré who first expounded the Lecoq principle of actor-creator to Lepage. 46 McAlpine, ‘Robert Lepage’, 133–4. 47 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 17.

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48 Lepage2. 49 Robert Lepage, ‘Director’s Note’, Lipsynch programme (London: Barbican, 2008): 6. 50 Bernatchez. 51 James Reynolds, ‘Robert Lepage and Authorial Process’, in Direction: Readings in Theatre Practice, by Simon Shepard (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 177. 52 Christie Carson, ‘Celebrity by Association: Tectonic Plates in Glasgow’, Canadian Theatre Review, vol. 74 (1993): 46. 53 Ibid., 49. 54 Ibid., 48–9. 55 Harvie, ‘Robert Lepage’, 229. 56 New York Times, 16 September 2011: n/p. EM archive. 57 Bernatchez. 58 Magnat, ‘Devising Utopia’, 76. 59 Christie Carson, ‘Collaboration, Translation, Interpretation’, New Theatre Quarterly, vol. IX (1993): 36. 60 Nishikawa. 61 Eyre and Lepage, 24 September 1996. 62 Carmen Fishwick, ‘Yellowface and racism against Asians is just as important as other prejudice’, The Guardian, 23 December 2015. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/23/ yellowface-discrimination-asians-prejudice-racism (accessed 1 July 2018). 63 Jen Harvie, ‘Transnationalism, Orientalism, and Cultural Tourism: La Trilogie des dragons and The Seven Streams of the River Ota’, in Theater Sans Frontières: Essays on the Dramatic Universe of Robert Lepage, eds Joseph I. Donohoe Jr and Jane M. Koustas (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000), 123. 64 Ibid., 124. 65 Nishikawa. 66 Harvie, ‘Transnationalism, Orientalism’, 123. 67 Koustas, Lepage on the Toronto Stage, 151. 68 Jeanne Bovet, ‘Identity and Universality: Multilingualism in Robert Lepage’s Theater’, in Theater Sans Frontières, eds Joseph I. Donohoe Jr and Jane M. Koustas (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000), 4. 69 Fricker, ‘Cultural Relativism’, 131. 70 Sherry Simon, ‘Vernaculars Abroad: The Travelling Theatre of Michel Tremblay and Robert Lepage’, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 4 (2000). Available online: http://catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/search~S22?/ tt/tt/501%2C945%2C967%2CB/c8561054144&FF=ttopia&1%2C1%2C%2C 1%2C0 (accessed 27 February 2010): 34. 71 Charest and Lepage, Connecting Flights, 29. 72 Lonergan, cited in Fricker, ‘Cultural Relativism’, 119–20. 73 Ibid., 120.

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74 Ibid. 75 Patrice Pavis, ‘Do We Have to Know Who We Do Theatre For?’ Performance Research, vol. 3, no. 1 (1998): 85. 76 Richard Schechner, ‘Audience Participation’, The Drama Review, vol. 15, no. 3a (1971): 75. 77 Ric Knowles, Reading the Material Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 91, 184. 78 Ibid., 43. 79 Lepage3. 80 Lepage2. 81 Lepage3. 82 Bernatchez. 83 Knowles, ‘Material Theatre’, 89. 84 Fricker, ‘Cultural Relativism’, 120. 85 Knowles, ‘Material Theatre’, 44 and 43. 86 Jennifer Harvie and Erin Hurley, ‘States of Play: Locating Québec in the Performances of Robert Lepage, Ex Machina, and the Cirque Du Soleil’, Theatre Journal, vol. 51, no. 3 (1999): 307. 87 Fouquet, Visual Laboratory, 62. My translation: ‘les jouets des dieux’. 88 Charest and Lepage, Connecting Flights, 17. 89 Giesekam, Staging the Screen, 218 and 219. 90 Ibid., 243. 91 Beliz Güçbilmez, ‘An Uncanny Theatricality: The Representation of the Offstage’, New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 2 (2007). 92 James Reynolds, ‘Hypermobility and Uncanny Praxis in Robert Lepage and Ex Machina’s Devised Solo Work’, Journal of Contemporary Drama and English, vol. 5, no. 1 (2017): 9. 93 Lib Taylor, ‘The “Unhomely” Stage’, Studies in Theatre and Performance, vol. 26, no. 3 (2006): 209. 94 Ibid., 219. 95 I develop these thoughts fully elsewhere: see endnote 92. 96 Taylor, ‘The “Unhomely” Stage’, 209. 97 Jacques Rancière, ‘On Art and Work’, in The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), 45. 98 The Guardian, ‘Portrait of the Artist: Robert Lepage, Director’ (7 December 2010): 23.

Chapter 4 1 Lepage2. 2 Don Shewey, ‘A Symbolic Nation Aspires to the International; a Bold Québecois Who Blends Art with Technology’, The New York Times, nytimes. com, 16 September 2001: n/p. EM archive.

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3 See Karen Fricker, ‘The Zero Hour of Cultural (Dis)-Unity: The Problem of Robert Lepage and Ex Machina’s Zulu Time’, trans. Rémy Charest, Globe: Revue Internationale D’ Etudes Québécoises, vol. 11, no. 2 (2008). 4 ‘Québec-New York 2001: Come See, We’re Waiting’, Convergence: The Magazine for Culture, no. 9 (Montréal): 20. 5 Bernard Tschumi, cited in Goché, ‘Staging’, 12. 6 Armitage, ‘From Miami’, 42. 7 Alberto Pérez-Gómez, ‘Architecture as a Performing Art: Two Analogical Reflections’, in Architecture as a Performing Art, eds Marcia F. Feuerstein and Gray Read (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 20–1. 8 ‘Québec-New York’, 10. 9 Shewey, ‘Symbolic Nation’. 10 Ibid. 11 Ex Machina, ‘Robert Lepage_Resume’. Available online: http://lacaserne.net/ cv/CV-ang.pdf (accessed 1 November 2016). 12 Shewey, ‘Symbolic Nation’. 13 Ibid. 14 ‘Québec-New York’, 20. 15 Harvie and Hurley, ‘States of Play’, 307. 16 ‘Québec-New York’, 20. 17 Ibid. 18 Shewey, ‘Symbolic Nation’. 19 Ibid. 20 Bernatchez. 21 Michael Crabb, ‘The fall and rise of Jeff Hall’, Toronto Star, 5 August 2011. Available online: https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2011/08/05/ the_fall_and_rise_of_jeff_hall.html (accessed 24 August 2017). 22 Robert Lévesque, cited in Pat Donnelly, ‘Economics vs Art’, The Gazette, 29 July 2000: n/p. EM archive. 23 Donnelly, ‘Economics vs Art’. 24 Ibid. 25 Dundjerović, Theatricality, 80. 26 Aleksandar Dundjerović, Robert Lepage (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 87. 27 Don Rubin, cited in Richard Paul Knowles, ‘CTR and Canadian Theatre Criticism: Constructing the Discipline’, Canadian Theatre Review, no. 79/80 (1994): 11. 28 Renate Usmiani, ‘The Classical Tradition in Contemporary Québécois Theatre: Patterns of Ambivalence’, Modern Drama, vol. 26, no. 3 (1983): 373. 29 Ex Machina, ‘Writers’, The Dragons’ Trilogy programme (London: Barbican, 2005): 17. Casault ‘died suddenly in New York City, just as the show was beginning to tour internationally, in the summer of 1987’. 30 Alexandra Perron, ‘La trilogie des dragons au féminin: pèlerinage au Périscope’, le Soleil, 29 September 2009: n/p. EM archive. My

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translation: ‘C’était une continuité avec notre formation. On avait les armes. On n’avait pas peur de ça.’ 31 Kate Taylor, ‘Trilogy Revives Brilliant Ideas’, The Globe and Mail, 5 June 2003, Available online: http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/reviews/the_ dragons_trilogy/the_globe_and_mail/ (accessed 12 January 2010). 32 Jill MacDougall, ‘Le Festival de Théâtre des Amériques, Montréal 1987’, The Drama Review, vol. 32, no. 1 (1988): 18. 33 Bureau, ‘Rencontre Robert Lepage’, 172. 34 Carson, ‘Collaboration’, 34. 35 Karen Fricker, ‘Robert Lepage: Product of Québec?’, in Staging Nationalism: Essays on Theatre and National Identity, ed. Kiki Gounaridou (Jefferson and London: McFarland and Company, 2005), 180. 36 Emily Shelton, ‘Resume’, The Talent Pool. Available online: http://resumes. breakdownexpress.com/514215-1333382 (accessed 4 November 2016). 37 Jean-Sébastien Côté, online interview, Québec: 28 September 2016. Henceforth ‘Côté’. 38 Victoria Laurie, ‘6 Hours of Cross-Cultural Magic in a Québec Car Park’, The Australian, 13 February 2006: n/p. EM archive. 39 Robin Usher, ‘Hume’s third Perth Festival, in the Year of the Dragon’, The Age, 14 February 2006: n/p. EM archive. 40 Lepage, CUNY. 41 Ex Machina, Métissages. Available online: http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/ other_projects/metissages/ (accessed 4 November 2016). 42 Ibid. 43 Lepage3. 44 Nicole Bridge, Architecture 101 (Avon: Adams Media, 2015), 190. 45 Ibid. 46 Lepage3. 47 Ibid. 48 Donnelly, ‘Economics vs Art’. 49 Lepage3. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Fricker, ‘Robert Lepage’, 177. 54 Lepage2. 55 Shewey, ‘Symbolic Nation’. 56 Lepage, ‘Résumé’. 57 Ex Machina, ‘Robert Lepage’. Available online: http://lacaserne.net/index2. php/robertlepage/ (accessed 17 January 2010). 58 Bernatchez. 59 Lepage1. 60 Lepage3. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid.

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63 Bjurman. 64 Eyre and Lepage, 19 July 2001. 65 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 22. My translation: ‘Cette manière unique de surimposer une trame intime et banale aux grands événements historiques est omniprésente dans les oeuvres de la compagnie’. 66 Ibid. 67 Lamontagne would later appear in the film Le Confessional (1995), and the fourth Dragon narrative, The Blue Dragon (2008). 68 Charest and Lepage, Connecting Flights, 34–5. 69 Laurie, ‘Cross-Cultural Magic’. 70 McAlpine, ‘Robert Lepage’, 135. 71 Nigel Hunt, ‘The Global Voyage of Robert Lepage’, The Drama Review, vol. 33, no. 2 (1989): 111. 72 See also James Reynolds, ‘Acting with Puppets and Objects: Representation and Perception in Robert Lepage’s The Far Side of the Moon’, Performance Research, vol. 12, no. 4 (2007). 73 David E. R. George, ‘Performance Epistemology’, Performance Research, vol. 1, no. 1 (1996): 21. 74 Taylor, ‘Trilogy Revives’.

Chapter 5   1 Lieblein, ‘Pourquoi Shakespeare?’ 2 Lepage1. 3 Lyn Gardner, ‘She was a big, vulgar woman with missing teeth who drank, had an affair with Trotsky and gobbled up life’, The Guardian, 14 October 2002. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2002/oct/14/ theatre.artsfeatures (accessed 7 November 2016). 4 Sophie Faucher, La Casa Azul, trans. Neil Bartlett (London: Oberon, 2002), 22–3. 5 Ibid., 31. 6 Gardner, ‘Vulgar woman’. 7 Ibid. 8 Nishikawa. 9 Faucher, La Casa Azul, 24. 10 Ibid., 30. 11 Ibid., 36. 12 Gardner, ‘Vulgar woman’. 13 Curiously, like Elsinore, the production is only addressed in the website archive of past tours. Available online: http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/tour/ archives/ (accessed 7 November 2016). 14 Jean St-Hilaire, ‘Plein les oreilles et la vue (Plenty for the ears and eyes)’, Le Soleil, 24 February 2004: n/p. EM archive.

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15 Ex Machina, ‘The Busker’s Opera’. Available online: http://lacaserne.net/ index2.php/theatre/the_buskers_opera/ (accessed 7 November 2016). 16 Stéphane Despatie, ‘Diversité Culturelle (Cultural Diversity)’, Voir (Montreal), 26 February 2004: n/p. EM archive. 17 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 42. 18 Lepage2. 19 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 42. 20 Graham Watts, ‘Who Was the Chevalier d’Eon?’ Eonnagata program (London: Sadlers Wells, n/d): 9. 21 P. Birnie, ‘The Dragon Leads Theatrical Magician Back to Vancouver’, VancouverSun.Com, 28 January 2010. Available online: http://www.kelowna. com/2010/01/28/the-dragon-leads-theatrical-magician-back-to-vancouverbetween-shows-with-new-yorks-metropolitan-opera-and-cirque-du-soleilquebecs-robert-lepage-sets-the-stage-for-the-blue-dragon-a-spin/ (accessed 1 February 2010). 22 Judith Mackrell, ‘Creating Eonnagata’, Eonnagata program (London: Sadlers Wells, February 2009): 8. EM archive. 23 Ibid., 10. 24 Ibid., 21–2. 25 Judith Mackrell, ‘This Week’s New Dance’, Guardian, 24 July 2010: n/p. EM archive. Tragically, McQueen would commit suicide in February 2010. 26 Eonnagata Storyboard: n/p. EM archive. 27 Mackrell, ‘This Week’s’. 28 Mackrell, ‘Creating Eonnagata’, 10. 29 Mackrell, ‘This Week’s’. 30 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 27. My translation: ‘C’est en refusant les cadres que nous avons élaboré notre démarche’. 31 Bunzli, ‘Geography of Creation’, 81. 32 Giesekam, Staging the Screen, 222. 33 Lieblein, ‘Pourquoi Shakespeare?’ 34 Bjurman. 35 Ibid. 36 McAlpine, ‘Robert Lepage’, 144. 37 Côté. 38 Peter Petralia, ‘Headspace: Architectural Space in the Brain’, Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 20, no. 1 (2010): 101. 39 Infinity curves are used by photographers to create pictures with an indefinite depth of background. These screens are concave but appear flat at a distance, hence the illusion. 40 Bjurman. 41 Charest, Connecting Flights, 164. 42 Elinor Fuchs, ‘Waiting for Recognition: An Aristotle for non-Aristotelian Drama’, Modern Drama, vol. 50, no. 4 (2007): 536.

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43 Ronald Vince, ‘The Aristotelian Theatrical Paradigm as Cultural-Historical Construct’, Theatre Research International, vol. 22, no. 1 (1997): 45. 44 David Carter, How to Write a Play (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), 18. 45 Ibid., 20. 46 Lepage3. 47 Armitage, ‘From Miami’. Sadly Fisher died in 2013. 48 Pierre Parisien, interview, Las Vegas: 25 March 2016. Henceforth ‘Parisien’. 49 Armitage, ‘From Miami, 42. 50 KÀ publicity flyer. 51 Lori Wilson, ‘KÀ’, LasThePlace.com, 30 July 2008: n/p. EM archive. 52 Cirque Du Soleil, ‘Grupo Vidanta and Cirque Du Soleil Expand Partnership to Create World’s First Entertainment Park Animated by Cirque Du Soleil’. Available online: https://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/press/news/2014/ grupo-vidanta-nueva-vallarta-entertainment-park-12-novembre-2014.aspx (accessed 3 December 2016). 53 Brad Auerbach, ‘Cirque du Soleil: KÀ’, Entertainment Today, 5 September 2008: n/p. EM archive. 54 Dany Bouchard, ‘3000 représentations’, Le Journal de Montréal, 31 March 2011: n/p. EM archive. 55 Nicolas Houlle, ‘Le Cirque Du Soleil et Lepage dans la Maison de Spiderman’, Le Soleil, 14 June 2012: n/p. EM archive. 56 Parisien. 57 Las Vegas Weekly Show Guide, 21–27 March 2016. 58 From foyer display materials, MGM Grand, Las Vegas. 59 Karen Fricker, ‘Le Goût Du Risque: KÀ de Robert Lepage et du Cirque Du Soleil’, L’Annuaire Théâtral, no. 45 (Spring 2009): 64. My translation: ‘codes dramaturgiques confus’. 60 Ibid., 63. My translation: ‘les productions du Cirque, incluant KA, masquent l’identite des artistes pour que le spectacle puisse continuer independamment’. 61 Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (Studio City: Michael Wiese, 2007),  xiii. Bjurman in particular brings these ideas into rehearsal, says Lepage (September 2016 interview). 62 The terms in this paragraph are drawn from Vogler. 63 Michael Joseph Gross, ‘Life and Death at Cirque du Soleil’, Vanity Fair, 29 May 2015. Available online: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/05/ life-and-death-at-cirque-du-soleil (accessed 1 July 2018). 64 Lepage1. 65 Charles Isherwood, ‘Fire, Acrobatics and Most of All, Hydraulics’, The New York Times, 5 February 2005: n/p. EM archive. 66 Bernatchez. 67 Lieblein, ‘Pourquoi Shakespeare?’

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Chapter 6 1 Bernatchez. 2 Letter of certification. Ex Machina’s official Guinness membership number is 200248. EM archive. 3 David Sokol, ‘Ex Machina Paints a Luminous Illusion’, Architectural Record, no. 5 (McGraw-Hill, May 2010): 105. EM archive. 4 Andrew King, ‘Le Moulin a Images: Making History for Québec City’s 400th’, Professional Lighting and Production (n/d): 27. EM archive. 5 Ibid., 26–7. 6 Sarah Barrell, ‘Even at the Age of 400, Québec’s Still Young at Heart’, The Independent, 13 July 2000: n/p. EM archive. 7 Fouquet, Visual Laboratory, 313. 8 Bjurman. 9 Credit sheet, The Image Mill (n/d). EM archive. 10 Blanchet, interview, Québec: 17 September 2016. Henceforth ‘Blanchet’. 11 Bernatchez. 12 Gilbert, ‘Reorientation’. 13 Lepage3. 14 Sokol, ‘Ex Machina Paints’, 105. Gagnon heads Québec company Ambiences Lighting and Visual Design, and previously collaborated on Elsinore and Zulu Time. 15 Robert Thicknesse, ‘All Eyes on Big Brother’, The Times, 29 April 2005: n/p. EM archive. 16 Ibid.; emphasis in the original. 17 David Mellor, ‘Lorin Maazel’s 1984’, The Mail on Sunday, 15 May 2005: n/p. EM archive 18 David Nice, ‘The Progress of a Rake’, The Rake’s Progress, Royal Opera House Programme (2007): 14. 19 Bernard Gilbert, ‘From Hogarth to Hollywood: Ex Machina and the Creative Process’, The Rake’s Progress, Royal Opera House Programme (2007): 36. 20 Mark Valencia, ‘The Rake’s Progress’, What’s on Stage, 23 January 2010. EM archive 21 Gilbert, ‘Hogarth to Hollywood’, 36. 22 Ibid., 39. 23 Ibid., 40. 24 Ibid., 41. 25 Ibid., 46. 26 Ibid., 48. 27 The Rake’s Progress (2007) was a co-production between Ex Machina, San Francisco Opera, Opéra National de Lyon, The Royal Opera (London), La Monnaie (Brussels) and Teatro Real (Madrid). Revivals were staged in Brussels and London (2009 and 2010, respectively), and la Scala in Milan also received the work on tour (2009).

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28 ‘ Ron Morissette, ‘A Scenic Concept for the Rake’s Progress’, Lighting and Sound: America (October 2007): 102–4. 29 Paul Masck, interview, New York: 17 November 2016. Henceforth, ‘Masck’. 30 Peter Gelb, interview, New York: 25 November 2016. Henceforth, ‘Gelb’. 31 Opera News, ‘Metropolitan Opera Cancels Live in HD Simulcast of John Adams’s Death of Klinghoffer’, Opera News, 17 June 2014. Available online: https://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2014/6/News/ Met_Klinghoffer_HD.html (accessed 12 October 2017). 32 Opera News, ‘Lust! Betrayal! Vengeance!’ Opera News (September 2008): 21. EM archive. 33 Ibid., 20. 34 Gelb. 35 Al Campbell, ‘Show Puts Modern Chinese Culture at Forefront of Olympiad in Vancouver’, English.News.cn, 12 February 2010. Available online: http:// news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2010-02/03/c_13161141.htm (accessed 7 December 2016). 36 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 60. 37 Gilbert, ‘Reorientation’. 38 Ibid. 39 Robert Cushman, ‘Theatre Review: Robert Lepage’s The Blue Dragon is a Potent Spectacle’, National Post (n/d): n/p. EM archive. 40 Campbell, ‘Show Puts’. 41 Gilbert, ‘Reorientation’. 42 A. C. Scott, The Classical Theatre of China (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957), 96. 43 Bob Verini, ‘The Blue Dragon’, Variety, 13 November 2008: n/p. EM archive. 44 Cushman, ‘Theatre Review’. 45 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 62. 46 Michel Gauthier, interview, Québec: 20 September 2016. Henceforth, ‘Gauthier’. 47 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 60. 48 Côté. 49 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 34. 50 Fricker, ‘Cultural Relativism’, 140. 51 Ilya Khodosh, ‘Lipsynch by Robert Lepage at BAM’, BerkshireReview.net, 11 October 2009: n/p. EM archive. 52 Bjurman. 53 Bernatchez. 54 Lepage2. 55 See Malcolm Gladwell, ‘In the Air’, The New Yorker, 12 May 2008. Available online: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/12/in-the-air (accessed 18 October 2017). The ‘phenomenon of simultaneous discovery . . . Turns out to be extremely common’. 56 Lepage2.

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Chapter 7 1 The Making of the Nightingale and Other Fables [Film], Dir. Canadian Opera Company (3 December 2009). EM archive. Lepage’s remarks in this section are from this film, unless otherwise indicated. 2 Viviane Paradis, interview, New York: 23 November 2017. Henceforth ‘Paradis’. 3 Tamara Bernstein, ‘Stravinsky: The Nightingale & Other Short Fables’, Globe and Mail, 19 October 2009: n/p. EM archive. 4 Robert Lepage, ‘Director’s Notes’, The Nightingale and Other Short Fables programme, 17 October–5 November 2009: n/p. EM archive. 5 Eric Domville, ‘Stravinsky: Ballet with Singing’, The Nightingale and Other Short Fables programme, Canadian Opera Company, 17 October–5 November 2009: n/p. EM archive. 6 Bernstein, ‘Stravinsky: The Nightingale’. 7 ‘Cirque Du Soleil’s Totem inspires awe but lacks cohesiveness’, The Straits Times. Available online: http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/ cirque-du-soleils-totem-inspires-awe-but-lacks-cohesiveness (accessed 18 October 2017). 8 Keith Watson, ‘Nature’s Finest Balancing Act’, Metro, 4 January 2011: n/p. EM archive. 9 See: People for the American Way, ‘Timeline: How Creationism Has Evolved’. Available online: http://www.pfaw.org/issues/religious-liberty/ timeline-how-creationism-has-evolved (accessed 19 December 2016). 10 Benedict Nightingale, ‘Robert Lepage on Spicing up Cirque Du Soleil’, The Times, 5 January 2011: n/p. EM archive. 11 Mark Shenton, ‘Taking Circus to New Heights’, Sunday Express, 9 January 2011: n/p. EM archive. 12 Charles Spencer, ‘Totem, Royal Albert Hall, Review’, The Telegraph, 6 January 2011: n/p. EM archive. 13 Charles Spencer, ‘Cirque Du Soleil, Albert Hall, Review’, The Telegraph, 6 January 2012: n/p. EM archive. 14 Marketwire [press release], ‘Cirque Du Soleil Returns to Washington with a New Big Top Show, Totem’, 13 April 2012: n/p. EM archive. 15 Shenton, ‘Taking Circus’. 16 Marketwire, ‘Cirque Du Soleil’; ‘52 performing artists from 19 countries’. 17 Nightingale, ‘Spicing up Cirque’. 18 Lepage, CUNY. 19 Nightingale, ‘Spicing up Cirque’. 20 Ibid. 21 Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7VNfvSCcBA (accessed 2 July 2018). 22 Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKg8RQSv4LE (accessed 2 July 2018).

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23 For a more in-depth treatment of related issues see Karen Fricker’s chapter on Totem in the book Cirque Global: Quebec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries (Montréal and Québec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016). 24 Shenton, ‘Taking Circus’. 25 Cate Kustanczy, ‘The Met Aims to Please Purists and Newbies Alike’, Digital Journal, 25 February 2012: n/p. EM archive. 26 Gelb. 27 Masck. 28 Paradis. 29 Masck. 30 Paradis. 31 Bernatchez. 32 Bernatchez. 33 Elena Park, ‘The Ring Transformed’, The Season Book 2010–11, The Metropolitan Opera (2010): 57. 34 Lepage3. 35 Lepage, CUNY 36 Lepage, ‘Director’s Notes’, The Nightingale. 37 Lepage, CUNY 38 Park, ‘The Ring Transformed’, 59. 39 August Ventura, ‘The Man Behind the Machine’, Opera News (May 2011): 16. EM archive. 40 F. Peter Phillips, ‘The New Met Ring: Robert Lepage’, Wagner Notes, vol. XXXIII, no. 5 (2010): n/p. EM archive. Phillips interviewed Lepage publicly (15 September 2010, Alley Theatre, New York) for the Wagner Society, before Das Rheingold opened the Metropolitan’s 2010/11 season on 27 September. 41 Ventura, ‘The Man Behind’, 16. 42 Ibid., 17. 43 Ibid., 16. 44 F. Peter Phillips, n/t, Wagner Notes, vol. XXXIII, no. 6 (2010): 3. EM archive. 45 Fred Cohn, ‘In Review: From around the World’, Opera News (December 2010): 59. 46 Ibid., 47. 47 Patrick Dillon, ‘New York’, Opera Canada, vol. LI (Winter 2010): 48. 48 Robert Levine, ‘The Met’s New Ring Cycle – Das Rheingold’, Opera Now, 9 October 2010: n/p. EM archive. 49 John Yohalem, ‘Das Rheingold, Metropolitan Opera’, Opera Today n/d: n/p. EM archive. 50 Patrick Dillon, ‘Opera in Review: New York’, Opera Canada, vol. LII (Summer 2011): 48. 51 Opera, vol. 63, no. 1, January 2012: n/p. EM archive. 52 Anthony Tommasini, ‘Wagner’s Horsewoman of Apocalypse’, The New York Times, 28 January 2012: n/p. EM archive.

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53 Ventura, ‘The Man Behind’, 17. 54 Lepage2. 55 Gelb. 56 Ventura, ‘The Man Behind’, 17. 57 Thirteen.org, ‘Great Performances at the Met: The Tempest’. Available online: http://www.thirteen.org/13pressroom/press-release/greatperformances-the-tempest/ (accessed 19 December 2016). 58 Masck. 59 Thirteen.org, ‘Great Performances’. 60 Lepage, CUNY. 61 Masck. 62 Lepage, CUNY. 63 Sybille Wilson, interview, New York: 19 November 2016. Henceforth ‘Wilson’. 64 Lepage, CUNY. 65 Wilson. 66 Eric C. Simpson and George Grella, ‘Top Ten Performances of 2016’, New York Classical Review, 22 December 2016. Available online: http:// newyorkclassicalreview.com/2016/12/top-ten-performances-of-2016/ (accessed 28 December 2016). 67 Bjurman mentions this during New York rehearsals for L’Amour de Loin. 68 Mark McLaren, ‘On the Birth of a 20th-Century Opera Masterpiece’, ZEALNYC, 30 November 2016. Available online: http://www.zealnyc.com/ on-the-birth-of-a-twentieth-century-operatic-masterpiece/ (accessed 28 December 2016). 69 Bernatchez. 70 Lepage3.

Chapter 8 1 John Pohl, ‘Robert Lepage Highlights First-Ever Digital Art Fest’, The Gazette, 20 April 2012: N/P. EM archive. 2 Marian Scott, ‘Virtual Reality Exhibition by Robert Lepage Marks Grande Bibliotèque’s First Decade’, Montréal Gazette, 23 October 2015. Available online: http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/library-at-night (accessed 29 December 2016). Triptych (2013) a noteworthy film based on material from Lipsynch (Dirs Robert Lepage and Pedro Pires) shows evolution from stage, to installation, to film. Lipsynch exemplifies Ex Machina’s willingness to push into their material until it is exhausted. 3 Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night (Canada: Alfred Knopf, 2006). 4 Scott, ‘Virtual Reality’. 5 Ibid.

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6 Jeanette Kelly, ‘Robert Lepage Virtual-Reality Show Fetes 10th Birthday of the Grande Bibliothèque’, CBC News, 27 October 2015. Available online: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/robert-lepagealberto-manguel-oculus-rift-virtual-reality-bibliotheque-nationalelibrary-1.3291148 (accessed 29 December 2016). 7 It transferred to Québec’s Museum of Civilisation (2017). 8 Kelly, ‘Robert Lepage’. 9 Scott, ‘Virtual Reality’: an idea ‘coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in 1989’. 10 Robert Lepage, ‘Director’s Note’, The Tempest programme, 1–30 July 2011: n/p. EM archive. 11 Alex Tremblay, ‘Une Tempête qui n’a pas complètement levé’, CHYZ.ca, 12 July 2011. EM archive. My translation and paraphrase: ‘Présentée à Wendake, la pièce prend un tout autre sens. Les liens avec l’histoire de l’Amérique sont riches et évocateurs . . . La participation de la troupe . . . constitue d’ailleurs l’un des points forts de cette production . . . découvrir au spectateur la richesse des traditions amérindiennes . . . Lepage propose une reflexion sur le sort réservé aux Amérindiens par les premiers arrivants en Amérique.’ 12 Cast information, The Tempest programme, 1–30 July 2011: n/p. EM archive. 13 Tremblay, ‘Une Tempête’. 14 Jean-Sebastien Brousseau, ‘La Tempête, une mise en scène de Robert Lepage en juillet 2011’, CanWest, 10 May 2011: EM archive. My translation and paraphrase: ‘Ce spectacle représente un levier exceptionnel pour Wendake, tant au plan touristique qu’économique. La notoriété de Robert Lepage et d’Ex Machina ne peut qu’avoir des retombées positives pour nous.’ 15 For a more extensive treatment of this production, see Melissa Poll’s book Robert Lepage’s Scenographic Dramaturgy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 16 Josianne Desloges, ‘Robert Lepage: une nouvelle création inspirée du jeu de cartes’, Le Soleil, 11 May 2011: n/p. EM archive. My translation and paraphrase: ‘il contient toute l’histoire du monde’: ‘Les cartes évoquent un paquet de thèmes: la bonne fortune, le jeu, le poker, le tarot, le monde politique, l’addiction’; ‘Cette traversée des cultures et des époques, à la fois différentes et liées entre elles, fait depuis longtemps partie des thèmes de prédilection du créateur.’ 17 Bjurman. 18 Ex Machina, Playing Cards: Hearts, programme (Essen, 29 September–5 October 2013): 7. 19 Ibid. 20 360° network, ‘360°-US_web PDF’: 8. Available online: http://www. theatres360.org/data/Files/360-US_web.pdf (accessed 7 January 2017). 21 360° was formed and led by six European venues – Madrid (Teatro Circo Price), Stockholm (Gazometres de Hjorthagen), London (Roundhouse),

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Copenhagen (Østre Gasværk Teater), Zagreb (Meštrović Pavilion), Châlonsen-Champagne (Le Cirque) – with seven associate venues across Québec, France, Italy, Holland and Sweden. 22 360° network, 8. 23 Ibid., 9: namely, France’s Ministry of Culture and Communication, the Champagne-Ardenne Région, the Marne Département, the Cités en Champagne Communauté d’Agglomérations, the European FEDER programme and the European Commission’s Culture Programme. 24 Desloges, ‘Robert Lepage’. ‘Il y a toujours un chiffre qui nous guide . . . Cette fois, c’est 12 parce qu’on croit que le spectacle aura 12 heures’. 25 Advocacy for unique architectures would be an objective shared by The Library at Night (2016). 26 360° network, 8. 27 Ibid., 12. 28 Gauthier. 29 Ibid. 30 Côté. 31 Bjurman. 32 The Making of the Nightingale and Other Fables [Film], Dir. Canadian Opera Company (3 December 2009). EM archive. 33 Lepage2. 34 Ibid. 35 Lepage, CUNY. 36 Bjurman. 37 Lepage3. 38 Lepage1. 39 Gauthier. 40 Lepage1. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Lepage2. 45 ‘Robert Lepage veut faire simple!’ Le Soleil, 11 January 2012: 37. EM archive. My translation: ‘Je m’intéresse de plus en plus à l’écriture et moins à la mise en scène’. 46 Lepage1. 47 Lepage2. 48 Lepage1. 49 Lepage2. 50 Caux and Gilbert, Ex Machina, 40. 51 Bernatchez. 52 360° network, 12. 53 John Coulbourn, ‘Success for Robert Lepage’s Spades in the Cards’, Toronto Sun, 14 June 2012: n/p. EM archive.

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54 St. Jacques shares these observations in conversation, during Frame by Frame workshops (September 2016). 55 Spades played fourteen cities – Montréal, São Paulo, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Moscow, Vienna, Paris, London, Amiens, Lyon, Châlons-enChampagne, Essen, Toronto and Madrid. In contrast, Hearts played six – Copenhagen, Montréal, Luxembourg, São Paulo, Châlons-en-Champagne and Essen. 56 Bernatchez. 57 Ex Machina, ‘Playing Cards: Spades (2012)’, Hearts programme, 9. 58 Bernatchez. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Maev Kennedy, ‘Robert Lepage’s 360° Play Takes a Theatrical Turn around Europe’, The Guardian, 19 January 2012: n/p. EM archive. 62 Marie-Joëlle Parent, ‘La Vie du Génie Robert Lepage’, TVA Nouvelles, 2 April 2012: n/p. EM archive.

Chapter 9 1 Choreographer Gillaume Côté explains the project’s inception, in conversation during workshops. 2 Lepage2. 3 Kain describes how the collaboration evolved, in conversation during workshops. 4 Lepage3. 5 Lepage, CUNY. 6 Lepage3. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Lepage2. 11 Blanchet. 12 See James Reynolds, ‘Lepage, Chaos, Needles, and Opium’, in Addiction and Performance, eds James Reynolds and Zoe Zontou (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). 13 Bjurman. 14 Geneviève Bouchard, ‘887, Avenue Murray’, Le Soleil arts magazine, 10 September 2016: 2. My translation: ‘Les point de depart du spectacle, c’etait vraiment le building’. 15 Goché, ‘Staging’, 73. 16 Geneviève Bouchard, ‘887: Les Joies de l’Auto Fiction’, Le Soleil arts magazine, 10 September 2016: 6. 17 Bouchard, ‘887, Avenue Murray’, 2.

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18 Ibid. My translation: ‘Toute la dynamique politique de l’ époque que se manifestait dans les différents foyer’. 19 Georgina Huljich and Marcelo Spina, ‘FYF RESIDENCIA’, in Architectural Shapes, ed. Josep Maria Minguet (Barcelona: Monsa, 2011), 67. 20 Ex Machina, 887 programme (London: Barbican, 2017), 4. 21 Natalie Rewa, ‘Animating Structures: Architectural Models in Performance’, in Performing Architectures: Projects, Practices, Pedagogies, eds Andrew Filmer and Juliet Rufford (London: Methuen, 2018), 157. 22 Ibid., 6. 23 Lepage, CUNY. 24 It is noteworthy that Lepage uses this term immediately after the publication in 2015 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) report, which addressed the rights of indigenous peoples. 25 Suzanne Keen, Narrative Form (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 12. 26 Ibid., 11. 27 Robert McKee, Story (London: Methuen, 1999). 28 Ibid., 309. 29 Ibid., 312. 30 Ibid., 379. 31 Ibid., 320. 32 Ibid., 43. 33 Ibid., 33. 34 Ibid., 181. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., 41. 37 Ibid., 35. 38 Ibid., 52–3. 39 Lepage3. 40 Paul Bourque, interview, Québec: 19 September 2016. 41 Lepage3. 42 Ibid. 43 Bernatchez. 44 Lepage3. 45 Lepage1. 46 Lepage3. 47 Ibid. 48 Bernatchez. 49 Lepage3. 50 Ibid. 51 Bernatchez. 52 Robert Lepage, ‘Le Mot du Metteur en Scène’, Carmen_Programme_ Montréal (1987): n/p. EM archive.

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Scott, A. C. The Classical Theatre of China. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957. Shewey, Don. ‘A Symbolic Nation Aspires to the International; a Bold Québecois Who Blends Art with Technology’. The New York Times, 16 September 2001: [n/p]. Sidnell, Michael J. ‘Polygraph: Somatic Truth and an Art of Presence’. Canadian Theatre Review, vol. 64 (1990): 45–65. Simon, Sherry. ‘Vernaculars Abroad: The Travelling Theatre of Michel Tremblay and Robert Lepage’. Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 4 (2000). Available online: http://catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/search~S22?/tt/ tt/501%2C945%2C967%2CB/c8561054144&FF=ttopia&1%2C1%2C%2C1 %2C0 (accessed 27 February 2010). Sokol, David. ‘Ex Machina Paints a Luminous Illusion’. Architectural Record, no. 5 (McGraw-Hill, May 2010): 105–07. Takahagi, Hiroshi. ‘Shakespeare at the Globe in Tokyo: A Crossroads of World Theatre’. Translated by C. Poulton, Canadian Theatre Review, no. 85 (1995): 38–41. Taylor, Lib. ‘The “UnHomely” Stage’. Studies in Theatre and Performance, vol. 26, no. 3 (2006): 205–20. Turner, Cathy. Dramaturgy and Architecture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Usmiani, Renate. ‘The Classical Tradition in Contemporary Québécois Theatre: Patterns of Ambivalence’. Modern Drama, vol. 26, no. 3 (1983): 368–381. Vince, Ronald. ‘The Aristotelian Theatrical Paradigm as Cultural-Historical Construct’. Theatre Research International, vol. 22, no. 1 (1997): 38–47. Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Studio City: Michael Wiese, 2007. Watts, Graham. ‘Who Was the Chevalier d’Eon?’ Eonnagata [programme], London, Sadler’s Wells (July 2010): 8–13.

List of interviews Bernatchez, Michel. 19 September 2016. Bjurman, Peder. 19 September 2016. Blanchet, Steve. 17 September 2016. Bourque, Paul. 18 September 2016. Côté, Jean-Sébastien. 28 September 2016. Gauthier, Michel. 20 September 2016. Gelb, Peter. 25 November 2016. Lepage, Robert. 19 August 2013: ‘Lepage1’. Lepage, Robert. 21 September 2016: ‘Lepage2’. Lepage, Robert. 18 November 2016: ‘Lepage3’.

232

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Bibliography

Masck, Paul. 17 November 2016. Nishikawa, Sonoyo. 17 September 2016. Paradis, Viviane. 23 November 2016. Parisien, Pierre. 25 March 2016. Wilson, Sybille. 19 November 2016.

List of performances and screenings Elsinore (no details; Peter Darling as Hamlet). DVD. The Seven Streams of the River Ota (Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York: 7 December 1996). DVD. The Geometry of Miracles (Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York: 3 December 1999). DVD. The Far Side of the Moon (National Theatre, London: July 2001; Barbican, London: 25 October 2003). La Casa Azul (Lyric Hammersmith, London: October 2002). The Dragon’s Trilogy (unspecified location: 6 June 2003). DVD. The Andersen Project (Barbican, London: 28 and 31 January, and 3 February 2006). Lipsynch (Northern Stage, Newcastle: 19 and 20 February 2007. Barbican, London: 6 September 2008). The Blue Dragon (CAEM, IV Festival de las Artes de Castilla y León, Salamanca: 7 and 8 June 2008. Barbican, London: 21 February 2011). The Rake’s Progress (Royal Opera House, London: 7 July 2008). Eonnagata (Sadler’s Wells, London: 8 March and 23 June 2009, 28 July 2010). Totem (Royal Albert Hall, London: 11 January 2011). Playing Cards: Spades (Roundhouse, London: 22 February and 2 March 2013). The Damnation of Faust (Grand Théâtre de Québec, Québec: 1 August 2013). The Image Mill (Québec City: August 2013). Playing Cards: Hearts (Salzlager, Welterbe Zollverein Essen: 5 October 2013). 887 (Lennox EICC, Edinburgh: 13 August 2015. Barbican, London: 3 and 10 June 2017). KÀ (MGM Grand, Las Vegas: 22 and 23 March 2016). Needles and Opium (Barbican, London: 9 and 16 July 2016). L’Amour de Loin (Metropolitan Opera dress rehearsal, New York: 28 November 2016. Met Opera Live, Barbican, London: 10 December 2016).

 233

Index Ableton Live 104–​5, 166 abstraction 102, 182–​3 Ackerman, Marianne 41 Adams, John 125 Adès, Thomas 142, 151 Africa 198 Alagic, Tea 49 Alanienouidet 41 Albacan, Aristita L. 52 Aldrin, Buzz 88 Alexandria 160 Alland, Alexander 27 Animal Farm 121 anti-​Semitism  125 architectural aesthetics 6–​8, 35, 42, 43, 56, 60, 105, 123, 126, 129, 147–​8, 160–​1, 163–​4, 177, 192, 194 architecting of performance 7, 25, 76–​7, 83,  185–​6 architecture as action 15, 24, 35, 42, 58, 61, 76, 85, 161, 190 architectural gesture 7, 26, 60, 95, 102, 191, 195 architectural style 38, 60 entertainment architecture 6, 79, 109, 118, 148 passage sequence 7, 15, 46, 85, 90, 190 spatial sound 105 symbolism 24, 153–​4, 192–​3 Andersen, Hans Christian 103, 105–​6, 108, 138 Dryad, The 105 Emperor’s Nightingale, The 138 Shadow, The 105 Andersen Project, The 68, 71, 97, 100, 103–​8, 126, 151 Anderson, Laurie 19 antihero 59, 98, 106, 122, 192 Apassionada 99

Arab world 55–​7, 155, 163, 167, 117 Arendt, Hannah 47 Aristotle 30, 106–​7 Aronson, Arnold 51 Asatru 148 audience 32–​3, 49, 59, 86, 117, 151,  196–​8 Auerbach, Brad 109 Aurora Borealis 120 authorship  64–​7 Avignon Festival 9 Bachmann, Philippe 163 Bacon, Josèphine 161 Barrell, Sarah 118 Beckett, Samuel 106 Beggar’s Opera, The 100 Bélair, Michel 97 Berlioz, Hector 53, 59 Bernatchez, Michel 10–​12, 14, 15–​17, 31, 64, 79, 88, 114–​15, 117, 120, 123, 133, 145–​6, 156–​7, 177–​9,  196–​8 Bernier, Eric 14 Bernstein, Tamara 139 Bissonnette, Normand 14 Bissonnette, Sylvie 44–​5 Bjurman, Peder 33–​4, 53, 55, 57, 75, 87–​91, 97, 103–​4, 106, 118–​20, 132, 155, 163–​4, 167–​8, 171, 172, 174, 189 Blanchet, Steve 16, 117, 119–​20, 133, 165, 183, 188–​9 Blankenship, Rebecca 54, 137, 147 Bluebeard’s Castle 54, 137 Blue Dragon, The 55, 68, 126–​30 Blue Lotus, The 130 Bouchard, Geneviève 190 Boucher, Etienne 183

234

234 Bourque, Paul 183, 196 Bovet, Jeanne 68 body 35, 40, 42–​8, 60–​1, 71, 101 Bonnier, Bernard 14 Book of Mormon, The 174 Borges, Jorge Luis 116 Bradby, David 44 Brassard, Marie 14, 32, 37, 68, 81 Brecht, Bertolt 14, 67, 72 Brook, Peter 8, 13, 16, 31, 71 Buddhism 89, 98 Bunzli, James 48, 103 Bureau, Stéphan 62 Busker’s Opera, The 100 Campbell, Joseph 113, 174 Canada Council for the Arts 13 Canadian Opera Company 54, 70,  137–​9 Canadian flag 192 Carrefour International de Théâtre 196 Carson, Christie 65–​6 Carter, David 107 Casault, Jean 81 Castelli, Richard 14 catharsis 30 Caux, Robert 82 Châlon-​en-​Champagne 126,  163 chaos 62 character  91–​2 Charest, Rémy 62 Chekhov International Theatre Festival 117 Chinoiserie 138 Circulations 12 Cirque du Soleil 6, 55, 69, 70, 79, 80, 108–​15, 140–​2,  156 Clarke, Joseph 7 Cocteau, Jean 186 Cohn, Fred 149 commodification 141 communion  47–​8 conceptual animation 39

Index concrete narrative. See narrative style Connecting Flights 25, 62 contradiction 4–​6, 13, 19, 23, 28–​30, 38, 47, 54, 59, 76, 91, 94, 101–​2, 127, 141, 149, 153, 155, 193, 198 convergence 90, 93–​5, 97, 102, 107, 114, 128, 132, 139, 169, 173 Côté, Guillaume 181–​6 Côté, Jean-​Sébastian 75, 82, 90, 104–​5, 130, 166 Côté, Lorraine 81 Coulbourn, John 178 Crabb, Michael 79 Crang, Mike 42 creationism 140 criticism 195 critics 32, 80, 87 Cultural Industry 80 cultural specificity 19, 67–​72, 111 Curry, Michael 138, 152 Cushman, Robert 127 Daboo, Jerri 29 Damnation of Faust, The 53–​4, 59–​61, 108,  124–​6 dance 40, 100–​3, 127, 181–​6 da Vinci, Leonardo 198 Davis, Miles 186 Death of Klinghoffer, The 125 De Roja, Ferdinand 53, 56–​7 de Sade, Marquis 181, 187 de Saint-​Exupéry, Antoine 181 design 42–​3, 89, 114, 125, 129–​30, 142, 147–​8, 150–​1, 162–​6, 168, 170–​1,  177 cube stage 34–​5, 108, 186, 187 entrance and exit 41–​2, 177 floor 37, 123 lighting 31, 153–​4, 185 objects 39, 41 projection 35, 164, 185–​6, 187 puppets 11, 138 sound 75, 82, 90, 104–​5, 130, 153, 155

 235

Index spatial metaphor 46, 138–​9 transitions 42, 103, 165 vertical space 45–​7 Desloges, Josianne 162–​3 Despatie, Stéphane 100 Digging for Miracles 49 Dillon, Patrick 149 Dion, Celine 178 Dixon, Steve 43, 47 Domville, Eric 139 Donnelly, Pat 80, 86 Donohoe Jr, Joseph I. 62 Doré, Marc 9–​10 Dragons’ Trilogy, The 12, 13, 67–​9, 75, 80–​3, 100, 126 drawing  167–​8 Dream Play, A  33–​5 Dundjerović, Aleksandar 44, 47, 48, 63, 80 Edinburgh Festival 32, 37, 48, 49 887 1, 49, 120, 182, 186, 188–​94,  195 Elam, Keir 43 Ellenwood, Ray 17 Elsinore 37, 41–​5, 47–​8, 54, 87, 108, 187 en Attendant 11 Eonnagata 89, 100–​3 Erwartung 54 Essen 165, 173, 177 ETC Paris 118 Eurydice 174 Ex Machina 61 casting 55, 67–​8, 111 collaboration 49, 62–​7, 70, 83, 90, 98, 104, 124–​5, 132–​3, 137, 142–​6, 152–​5, 161–​2, 167–​9, 181–​6,  188–​9 co-​production 34, 70, 86, 108, 115, 124, 138, 140–​57, 178 funding 14, 70–​1, 79–​80, 156–​7,  179 la Caserne 15–​17, 23, 50, 75, 80, 83,  195–​6

235

labour conditions 64–​5, 155, 157, 167 le Diamant 16, 51, 136, 179, 195–​8 mission statement 50–​1 model 31, 34, 53, 69–​70, 102, 110, 119, 133, 156, 188–​9, 197 pitching 87–​91, 98, 101, 119, 181 process 17, 25, 40, 62–​7, 77, 103–​4, 122–​3, 133–​4, 165–​77,  188–​9 programming  2–​4 praxis 5–​6, 141 three-​dimensional work 51 touring 10, 14, 56–​7, 63, 156, 159, 198 unions 16, 145–​6, 154–​5, 157 Ex Machina (book) 62–​4, 91, 100, 101, 128 experiment  69–​70 Eyre, Richard 50 Farago, Johnny 190–​1 Far Side of the Moon, The 18, 47, 75, 80, 87–​95, 165, 195 Faucher, Sophie 97–​8 Festival d’Automne 77 Festival d’Opéra de Québec 142 Festival Internacional de las Artes de Castilla y Leon 55 Festival Saito Kinen 53, 59, 125, 138 Fields, Syd 174 Fillion, Carl 14, 35, 42, 99, 121, 123, 147 Fisher, Mark (architect) 6, 108 Fisher, Mark (writer) 193 form 50–​1, 72 Fouquet, Ludovic 11, 61, 71, 118 Fradet-​Faguy, Félix 183 Frame by Frame 121, 123, 181–​6 Fricker, Karen 29, 68–​9, 71, 76, 82, 87, 112 Fragmentation 159 Front de Libération Nationale 172 Fuchs, Elinor 106 Fusetti, Giovanni 46

236

236

Index

Gabriel, Peter 7, 66, 79, 156 Gagnon, Christian 14 Gagnon, Martin 120 Garcia, Nuria 55 Gardner, Lyn 99 Garneau, Michel 14, 56–​7, 161 Gauthier, Michel 128–​30, 164–​6, 170, 177 Gautier, Alain 55 Gay, John 100 Gelb, Peter 124, 143, 147, 150–​1, 155 gender construction 45, 102 Geometry of Miracles, The 37–​41, 48, 49, 62, 85, 131 geo-​poetry 7, 23–​8, 51, 64, 87, 98, 122, 126, 147 George, David 94 Gesamkunstwerk  147–​8 Giesekam, Greg 47, 72, 103 Gignac, Marie 81, 104, 129, 131, 147 Gilbert, Bernard 122–​4, 144 globalization 71, 83 Goché, Peter P. 7 Goethe 59 Golden Mask Festival 88 Gosselinn, Michel 14 Grande Bibliotèque 160–​1 Granular Synthesis 77 Greco, Juliette 186 Guay, Catherine 145 Guggenheim Museum 38, 85 Guilfoyle, Tony 49, 179 Guillem, Sylvie 101–​3 Guinness Book of Records 117 Gurdjieff, George 38, 100 Guyard-​Guillot, Sarah 7 Hall, Jeff 7, 79 Halprin, Anna 12, 62 Halprin, Lawrence 12 Hanoi 138 Hamlet 41, 43, 45, 49, 174 Hamlet Collage 35, 41, 187 Harvie, Jen 16, 18, 65, 67–​8, 71

Hazel, Jean 164 Henson International Puppet Theatre Festival 87 Hentschlager, Kurt 77 Hispanic world 101, 163 Hogarth, William 122 Hood, Michael J. 39, 48–​9, 62 Horizontal Lines 185 Hughson, Barry 183 Hulls, Michael 101 Hunter, Kathryn 167, 176 Hurley, Erin 71 Huron-​Wendat Nation 142, 159, 161–​2 Iceland 86, 87, 147 I Ching 174 iconicity  111–​12 Image Mill, The 117–​21, 181, 188 improvization 11 incubation 133, 165, 196 indigenous culture 142, 159, 161–​2,  192 Innes, Christopher 48 Innu 161 intercultural theatre 25, 67–​8, 137, 139, 142, 161–​2, 163 intermediality 52 International Biennial of Digital Art 159 Isherwood, Christopher 114 Ishikawa, Kei 26 Jacinto, Jinny 55 Japan 19, 28, 49, 59, 61, 67–​8, 166 Hasadera Temple Library 160 Hiroshima  24–​5 Kyoto 26 Matsumoto 53, 59, 125 Ryōan-​ji  26 theatre 9, 23, 27–​8, 32, 60, 100, 101, 108–​9,  111 Tokyo Globe 15, 24, 54 wabi-​sabi 28 Zen 25–​30, 37

 237

Index Jean-​Sans-​Nom 54 Jesus of Montréal 41 Jubilee 110 Jung, Carl G. 113 KÀ 6–​7, 75, 108–​15, 146 Kahlo, Frida 98–​100 Kain, Karen 183 Kanata 9, 67 Kanzaki, Mai 28 katabasis 174 Keen, Suzanne 194 Kelly, Jeanette 160 Kenderdine, Sarah 159 Khodosh, Ilya 131 Kindertotenlieder 54 King, Andrew 118 Knapp, Alain 9–​10, 63 Knowles, Ric 41, 69, 71 Koren, Leonard 28 Koustas, Jane 62, 68 Kungliga Dramatiska 33, 53, 55 Kustanczy, Cate 143 La Casa Azul 75, 98–​100 La Celestine 53, 55–​9, 100 L’Allier, Jean-​Paul  15–​16 Lalonde, Michèle 190–​1, 193 Lamontagne, Pierre 91–​2, 126–​7 L’Amour de Loin 55, 152–​5 Lapierre, Jean 183 Larance, Nakota 142 la Scala 121, 152 Laurie, Victoria 82, 93 Las Vegas 55, 75, 86, 87, 108–​15,  122 L’ Attaque Quotidienne 10 Laurier, Angela 55 Lavender, Andy 43 Lavoie, Bernard 44 Leclerc, David 164 Leclerc, Virginie 166, 171 Lecoq, Jacques 9, 43–​6, 63, 131, 168 le Cycle Shakespeare 14

237

Lepage, Robert, 58, 64, 66–​7, 77, 86, 119, 133, 143, 154, 167, 173 acting 87, 91, 176–​7, 187 alopecia 188 architecture 192 drugs 188 early career 10–​14, 196 homosexuality 188 silence 86, 147 training 8–​10, 187 Lenin, V. I. 99 Le Printemps du Québec en France 77 Les Gros Becs 197 les Mains Salles 129 Lessard, Jacques 11, 62 Levac, Claude 97, 103–​4, 115 Lévesque, Robert 80 Levine, James 148 Levine, Robert 149 Library at Night, The 121, 159–​61 Lieblein, Leonore 56, 97 Life of Galileo 14 Lipsynch 68, 130–​2, 159 Little Prince, The 181 Lloyd Wright, Frank 37–​40, 85 Lonergan, Patrick 29, 68 Lope de Vega, Felix 14 Maalouf, Amin 153 Maazel, Lorin 117, 121 McAlpine, Alison 29, 32 Macbeth 56, 174 McCall, Gordon 13 MacDougall, Jill 81 McKee, Robert 194–​5 Mackrell, Judith 101–​2 McLaren, Norman 120, 181–​6 McLuhan, Marshall 19 McQueen, Alexander 101 magic  169–​70 Magnat, Virginie 46, 66 Mahler, Gustav 54 Maliphant, Russell 101–​3 Mandarin 68, 126, 141

238

238

Index

Manguel, Alberto 160–​1 Mannerism 15 Marxism 99 Masck, Paul 124, 143–​4, 151–​2 medieval 57, 155 Métissages 75, 83–​6, 155, 170, 186, 193 cross-​breeding 18–​19,  83–​4 Metropolitan Opera 60, 69, 70, 124–​6, 142–​55,  198 Meyerhold, Vsevolod 41, 100 Mexico  98–​100 MGM Grand 109, 112 Michaud, Marie 81, 127, 128 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A 14, 54 Mironov, Yevgeny 187–​8 Mnouchkine, Ariane 9, 29 Mona Lisa, The 198 Montréal  12–​13 Morris, Michael 12, 14, 80 multimedia 51–​2, 83 Mumford, Tamara 152–​13

Nightingale and Other Short Fables, The  137–​9 Nightingale, Benedict 140–​2 9 Act Film Structure 131 9/​11  79 1984 35, 117, 121 Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs 54 Nishikawa, Sonoyo 17, 23, 31–​2, 60, 66–​8, 99, 126 Nyman, Michael 54

Nagano, Kent 155 narrative style 81, 93–​4, 97, 99, 103, 106–​8, 110, 113, 128–​9, 131, 140, 153, 167, 170, 172–​4, 182, 189,  194–​5 classic plots 107 concrete narrative 27, 37–​52, 57, 76, 85, 90, 95, 97, 102–​3, 123, 113, 139, 147–​8, 153, 155, 165, 171, 174, 183, 198 film narrative 97, 174 and history 88, 91, 105, 167, 170–​2,  190 Nashman, Adam 55 National Arts Centre 14–​15, 56 National Ballet of Canada 70, 181–​7 National Theatre, London 14, 31, 54 Needles and Opium 14, 35, 41–​2, 53, 129, 139, 186 Neoliberal Art 141 New World, the 57, 162

Pan Am Games 197 Paradis, Viviane 124, 138, 143–​5 Paris 77 Parisien, Pierre 109–​12, 114 Park, Elena 147 pastiche 18 patenteux. See Québec Pavis, Patrice 47, 69 Payette, Thomas 183 Pérez-​Gómez, Alberto 7, 76 Perth Festival 82 Petralia, Peter 105 Phillips, F. Peter 149 Phillips, Suzanne 152, 154 play  168–​9 Playing Cards  162–​79 Clubs 179 Diamonds 179 Hearts 55, 87, 162–​78 Spades 55, 87, 177–​9 Plukker, Menno 14

Oculus Rift 160 Oedipus Rex 138 Onlyview 118 opera 60, 77, 121–​6, 139, 142–​56 Opéra de Paris Bastille 60, 105 Orientalism 67–​8, 75, 82, 111 Orpheus 153, 174 Orwell, George 121 Ottawa  14–​15 Owens, Eric 152, 154–​5 Ozawa, Seiji 125

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Index pluridisciplinary  51–​2 Poirier, Normand 14 politics 44–​5, 57–​9, 72, 83–​6, 197 Poll, Melissa 55 Polygraph 13, 41, 47 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space 188, 197 Prog Rock 6 proletariat 179 proposition 39, 91, 105, 128, 189 Québec 18, 44, 53, 56, 79, 97, 103, 121, 162, 164, 188–​94 Champlain, Samuel de 162 Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique 9, 31, 56, 62, 69, 81, 187, 192 Grey Nuns 190 je me souviens 193 language 17–​18, 56, 68 Musée de la Civilisation 75, 83–​6 1970s 11, 45, 81 Nuit De La Poesie 40 Anniversaire 190, 193 patenteux 17–​19, 35, 41, 50, 77, 90, 97, 103, 105, 118, 120, 129, 139, 152, 155, 157, 164, 165, 170,  185–​6 Québec City 31, 117–​21, 191, 196–​8 Quills 181, 187 Rae, Paul 47 Rake’s Progress, The  121–​4 Rancière, Jacques 72 Rapid Eye Movement 14 Read, Grey 7 reconciliation 141–​2,  193–​4 reflexive availability 29, 69 relational axis 94–​5, 107 Renaissance 55, 57, 155, 190 Richard Wagner Society of New York 149 Ring Cycle 126, 147–​51 Rivera, Diego 98

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Romeo and Juliette –​Two Solitudes 13 Ronfard, Jean-​Pierre  69–​70 Roseland Ballroom 78–​9 RSVP cycles 1, 12, 40, 62–​7, 123 Rubin, Don 80–​1 Ruhr Trienalle 165 Saariaho, Kaija 152 Saint-​Amand, Adèle 183 St. Jacques, Véronique 178 Salamanca 55 Salzburg Festival 152, 155 Sandokwa 142, 162 Sartre, Jean Paul 129 Saturday Night Taxi 10 scenographic acting 39, 41, 44–​5, 61, 101 Schechner, Richard 69 Scolnicov, Hannah 27 Scott, A. C. 127 Scott, Marian 161 SE Design and Fabrication 123 Sellars, Peter 152 semiotic condensation 93, 102, 128 Seven Streams of the River Ota 24–​33, 37, 41, 48, 66–​8, 71–​2, 195 Shakespeare, William 15 Shanghai 126 Shaw, Jeffrey 159 Shelton, Emily 82 Shenton, Mark 141 Shewey, Don 76, 77 Sidnell, Michael J. 47 Siegal, David 131 Simon Fraser University 128 Simon, Sherry 68 Sioui, Konrad 162 SketchUp 165 SLĀV 67 Socialism 126 Sokol, David 118 solo performance 41, 88, 104, 114 Solotech 118 songspiel 100

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Index

Speak White 190–1, 193 Spencer, Charles 140–1 Stalin, Josef 121 Stanislavski, Konstantin 187 Stevens, David 59, 61 Stockholm 33–4, 56–7 Story  194–5 Stratford Festival 70 Stravinsky, Igor 122, 137 Stufish 6, 109 Sydney Festival 101 Tai Chi 41, 100 Takahagi, Hiroshi 24–5 Takahashi, Noriko 111 tarot 174, 175 Taylor, Kate 81, 94 Taylor, Lib 72 Taymor, Julie 138 technology 44, 47–8, 71–2, 148, 150, 179 Tectonic Plates 14, 65 Tempest, The 142, 151–2, 159, 161–2 Théâtre du Soleil 9, 29, 70 Théâtre Hummm . . . 10–11 Théâtre Premier Acte 196 Théâtre Repère 11, 62 Théâtre Sans Frontières 131 Theatrum Mundi 163 Thicknesse, Robert 121 third place 161 3-​D 13, 54, 120, 145, 148, 159–60, 165 three-​hander 100–3, 115, 129, 186 360° International Network of Artistic Circular Venues 163–4, 179 Tommasini, Anthony 150, 151 Totem 79, 140–2 tourism 25, 121, 162 transcodification 43 Tremblay, Alex 162 Trotsky, Leon 99 trust 134 Tschumi, Bernard 76 Turner, Cathy 6

20,000 Leagues under the Sea 160 two solitudes 192 uncanny, the 72, 165 Usher, Robin 82 Usmiani, Renate 81 Valencia, Mark 122 Valhalla 149 Vancouver 88, 128 Ventura, August 148 Verne, Jules 160 video 145 Vienna 67 Vignola, Neilson 110, 121, 123, 140 Vince, Ronald 107 Vinci 12, 13, 41–2 Virtual Reality technology 159–61 Vogler, Christopher 112–13 voice 60 Wagner, Richard 125, 142, 147–51 Waleson, Heidi 152 Wardle, Irving 12 Watson, Keith 140 Wilson, Lori 109 Wilson, Suzy 46 Wilson, Sybille 121, 123, 137, 152–4, 176 Winkler, Ray 6, 109 Wise, Jennifer 28 world-alienation 47 wrestling  197–8 Wright, Doug 181 writing 166–9, 171, 174–7 Yohalem, John 149 Ysarca 55 Yusgéha 162 ziggurat  84–5 Zulu Time 47, 55, 71, 75, 76–80, 100, 178, 195 Zürich 77

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