Robert Lepage’s now celebrated production ofThe Dragons’ Trilogyopened in its first version at the Implanthéâtre in Quebec City in 1985 . At the beginning of the play, the characters voices are heard in the dark, whispering and translating “I have never been in China …” into three different languages: English, French, and Cantonese.¹ This motif opens the stage for fantasies and illusions about unknown, imaginary, and distant places where people exist in a plurality of languages. Journeys, flight, and dislocation – but wanting to connect – are key concerns in Lepage’s approach to theatre. In 1995, he gave a series...

Lepage’s approach to directing differs significantly from that of many other established theatre directors, particularly in the way he uses random events and accidents, inviting chaos and a certain spontaneous, often childlike playfulness into the theatrical space. Lepage tries to find a new order by provoking disorder. The absence of a fixed structure is deliberate. Because his performances are flexible, open to change, and developed over time, it is impossible to critically investigate Lepage’s practice through traditional (either textual or performance) analysis. Lepage admits he is especially “drawn to plays in which the characters are transformed, but also to plays...

When Lepage joined Théâtre Repère, he was an actor devising small-scale performances and touring local schools and cultural centres. In fact, at the beginning of his career, he pursued acting work whenever he had a chance as an actor-puppeteer and performer in short sketches and improvisations, as well as taking a small role in a television series. His first critical recognition came in 1984, when, at the Ligue nationale d’improvisation, he won the O’Keefe Trophy for the actor awarded the most stars, as well as the Pierre-Curzi for the recruit of the year. A year later, he wrote, directed, and...

The Dragons’ Trilogyis an epic production that defined the style of Lepage’s theatricality. The story covers most of the twentieth century, three generations, and seven time zones; the production started with open rehearsals and developed into three performance cycles to produce the first version in 1987; and then, into a second version in 2003 — altogether spanning about twenty years. The common denominator in Lepage’smise en scène, and the one that is strikingly visible inTrilogy, is the resource. The first three cycles ofTrilogyevolved over three years, from 1985 to 1987. The last of its initial three...

From Lepage’s early days as a theatre practitioner, he believed that the language of the stage starts with space and the ways the performers’ action defines it. In Lepage’s theatricality, space becomes a dynamic process of perpetual movement and change, incorporating physical objects, technologies, and various art forms. Without relying on an existing text, his devised projects transform the space into an environment for the discovery of the performance. The physicality of this theatre space is extended to include cinematic and photographic visual imagery and the interplay of the performer and various new technologies. However, at the centre of the...

Lepage’s work reflects Richard Schechner’s view that theatre is a collective experience where a play is the outcome, not of one or two characters, but of a group of performers in a collective interplay.¹ In the devising process, the performer becomes involved in several processes simultaneously. As Alison Oddey observes, this “often includes improvisation, research, and discussion.”² Typically, devised theatre develops performance with a specific audience in mind. Those in the audience are not only exposed to a creative process but also become participants and collaborators in that process. Generally, in devised performance, the absence of text necessitates the audience...

Whereas the main focus of this analysis has been Lepage’s original collectively devised performance, he is also an accomplished director of established texts. The texts he has directed, whether those of Shakespeare, Strindberg, or Brecht, are within the recognized Western theatre and literary canon. Yet, hismise en scènehas an independent quality, its own aesthetic, and a theatrical language developed independently of the forms and structures of both the literary canon and its recognized theatrical interpretations. The playwright whose work Lepage has staged most often is Shakespeare, returning again and again to the same Shakespearean texts to, as Lepage...

Any discussion of Lepage’s theatricality must include his use of live multimedia theatre. For Andy Lavender, “Lepage is a pioneer of mixed media performance, in particular involving video and slide projections in his shows.”¹ In fact, Lepage creates amise en scènethat is in-between the various media — from slides and puppetry to digital video and robotics. This is because his theatricality exploits multimedia and new technology as yet more creative stimuli. In his productions, recorded visual and sound imagery allow the live action to intervene and, in a symbiotic way, connect humanity and the machine. This may suggest that...

There is no conclusion to this book. Or, rather, with a live creative process as prolific as Lepage’s theatricality, there can be no conclusion in the traditional sense. A growing body of scholarly work has emerged on performance practice and the creative process in theatre, and undoubtedly scholars will continue to study and critically investigate Lepage’s art for a long time to come. At the time of writing, in the summer of 2006, Robert Lepage was, as ever, simultaneously occupied with a variety of projects. He was touringThe Anderson Projectand a new version ofThe Dragons’ Trilogy, as...