Robert Lepage

Robert Lepage (born December 12, 1957) is a Canadian playwright, actor, film director, and stage director.

Early life

Lepage was raised in Quebec City. At age five, he was diagnosed with a rare form of alopecia, which caused complete hair loss over his whole body."History meets personal history for Robert Lepage"
''Toronto Star'', November 12, 2010. He also struggled with clinical depression in his teens as he came to terms with being gay.

Between 1975 and 1978, he studied theatre at Quebec City's Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique. He subsequently participated in workshops at Alain Knapp's theatre school in Paris, France.

Theatrical career

After coming back to Quebec City, Lepage wrote, directed and played in a few independent productions and joined Théâtre Repère in 1980. With that company, he created ''Circulations'' (1984), which was presented across Canada and won an award as best Canadian production during La Quinzaine Internationale de Théâtre de Québec. The following year, he created ''The Dragons' Trilogy'' and immediately received international recognition. ''Vinci'' (1986), ''Polygraphe'' (1987–1990) and ''Tectonic Plates'' (1988–1990) followed and were also toured around the world.

Lepage was the artistic director of the National Arts Centre's Théâtre français in Ottawa from 1989 to 1993, and continued to stage plays. His productions of '' Needles and Opium'', ''Coriolanus'', ''Macbeth'', '' The Tempest'' and ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' were all created in that period.

In 1994, Lepage founded Ex Machina, a multidisciplinary production company, for which he is artistic director. Lepage and Ex Machina have toured a number of productions internationally to critical and popular acclaim, including '' The Seven Streams of the River Ota'' (1994) and ''Elsinore'' (1995). Lepage was invited in 1994 to direct August Strindberg's ''A Dream Play'' at Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, Sweden. It premiered in the fall of 1994 and guest played in the spring of 1995 in Glasgow Scotland. '' Geometry of Miracles'' (1998) and '' The Far Side of the Moon'' (french: La Face cachée de la lune, 2000), a solo show in which he juxtaposed the Cold War competition of the Americans and the Soviets in the Space Race with the story of two Québécois brothers—one straight, one gay—and their competitive relationship after their mother's death. It won four trophies at le Gala des Masques, a Time Out Award and the Evening Standard Award. In 2003 '' The Far Side of the Moon'' was adapted by Lepage—who plays both brothers—into a film of the same name.

Lepage has directed five other feature films: ''The Confessional (Le Confessionnal)'' (1995), ''Polygraph (Le Polygraphe)'' (1996), '' Nô'' (1998), ''Possible Worlds'' (2000) and ''Triptych (Triptyque)'' (2013) (the latter co-directed by Pedro Pires), and has acted in films by other directors, including ''Jesus of Montreal (Jésus de Montréal)'' (1989) and ''Stardom'' (2001) by Denys Arcand. He has also been involved in music productions, being the stage director for the Secret World Tour by Peter Gabriel in 1993/1994, and the subsequent Growing Up tour in 2003/2004. He directed a number of operas, including ''Bluebeard's Castle'' and ''Erwartung'' at the Canadian Opera Company, ''The Damnation of Faust'' in Japan and Paris, and Lorin Maazel's '' 1984'' at the Royal Opera House in London in 2005. Finally, Cirque du Soleil asked him to create the permanent Las Vegas show named '' Kà'' at the MGM Grand in 2005.

''The Andersen Project'' is his last solo play, based on the life and works of Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, and his tale "The Dryad"; it was presented by Lepage himself in ten countries, and later starred Yves Jacques.

''Lipsynch'', his large-canvas work, premiered in its first version in Newcastle upon Tyne's Northern Stage in February 2007 in its five-hour version; it has since been lengthened to nine hours. Three scenes of ''Lipsynch'' were later adapted to create the installation ''FRAGMENTATION'' (2011) by Richard Castelli and Volker Kuchelmeister for the stereoscopic system ReACTOR, designed by Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw. Walking around the hexagonal base of the device, the viewer can see the same scenes filmed from different angles.

He also staged Igor Stravinsky's ''The Rake's Progress'', which was presented in Brussels' Opéra de la Monnaie in April 2007 and San Francisco War Memorial Opera House in November 2007.

In 2008, Lepage and Ex Machina created ''The Image Mill'', celebrating the 400th anniversary of Quebec City. For forty nights, a forty minute show was displayed by the banks of Bassin Louise, using the huge surface of the Bunge grain elevators as a giant screen. It was at the time the biggest outdoor architectural projection in the world.

In November 2008, Lepage directed a staged version of Hector Berlioz' ''The Damnation of Faust'' at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In February, 2009, Lepage premiered a new work entitled ''Eonnagata'' at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, UK. For this project he collaborated with the dancers Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant, fashion designer Alexander McQueen, lighting designer Michael Hulls and sound designer Jean-Sébastien Côté.

His production of Stravinsky's ''The Rake's Progress'', conducted by Christopher Hogwood, was re-released at the Teatro Real, Madrid, in January 2009.

In spring 2009, Lepage presented ''The Blue Dragon'' (''Le Dragon Bleu''), a sequel to his '' Dragons' Trilogy'', in which he reprised (more than twenty years later) the role of Pierre Lamontagne, a Québécois artist who lives in China.

In fall 2009, Lepage directed ''The Nightingale and Other Short Fables'', an operatic staging of short works by Stravinsky blending hand shadow puppetry, Kabuki theatre, Chinese opera and Vietnamese Water puppetry. The Canadian Opera Company in Toronto premiered the work.

Lepage then wrote and directed ''Totem'', Cirque du Soleil's next touring show, and began work on a new production of ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' by Richard Wagner for the Metropolitan Opera of New York. The series was presented in installments during the 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 seasons – ''Das Rheingold'' and ''Die Walküre'' were premiered during the 2010/2011 season, ''Siegfried'' premiered on October 27, 2011, and ''Götterdämmerung'' premiered on January 27, 2012. Lepage's complete ''Ring'' cycle premiered in April 2012. The Metropolitan Opera had to install steel reinforcements under the stage in order to support LePage's roughly 45 tonne set. Lepage was featured in a 2012 documentary about the Met ''Ring'' production, '' Wagner's Dream''.

In 2012, Lepage appeared as a hologram in Martin Villeneuve's '' Mars et Avril'', a science fiction film based on the graphic novels of the same name.

Lepage's autobiographical "memory play" ''887'' played in New York City (as "New York Critics Pick") and Toronto in 2017 and 2019. In an associated interview, he calls himself a "lukewarm separatist".

In 2018, Lepage launched '' SLĀV'' at the Montreal Jazz Festival; Betty Bonifassi's creation was so controversial that it was cancelled due to public protest - with the charge that white people singing the songs of black 19th-century slaves constituted cultural appropriation.''The Globe and Mail'': Montreal jazz festival cancels, apologizes for Robert Lepage slave-song show
/ref> The show caused public protest on the basis of this accusation. Lepage's next production, ''Kanata'', planned for Paris in December 2018, presenting Europeans' first settlement of Canada, was cancelled in July, 2018, after complaints from members of the Indigenous community led to his financial backers' withdrawal. Although the show was initially canceled, it was finally be presented in December 2018 and received support from Indigenous communities.

Lepage's production of Mozart's ''The Magic Flute'' was presented in Quebec in July and August 2018 and there are plans to bring it to the Metropolitan Opera.

At the International Shakespeare Festival 2022 in Craiova, praising him for his innovative spirit and unique creativity, theatre scholar Octavian Saiu described Lepage as one of the true masters of contemporary theatre.

In 2022, Robert Lepage came back to the big screen in Martin Villeneuve's '' The 12 Tasks of Imelda'', co-starring Ginette Reno and Michel Barrette, in which he plays Martin and Denis Villeneuve's father Jean, a notary.

Plays

* ''Le Dragon bleu (The Blue Dragon)''
* ''Lipsynch''
* ''Le Projet Andersen (The Andersen Project)''
* ''Busker's Opera''
* ''La Face cachée de la lune (The Far Side of the Moon)''
* ''La Casa Azul''
* ''Zulu Time''
* ''La Tempête (The Tempest)''
* ''La Géométrie des miracles (Geometry of Miracles)''
* ''Les Sept Branches de la Rivière Ota (The Seven Streams of the River Ota)''
* ''Elseneur (Elsinor)''
* ''Les Aiguilles et l'Opium (Needles and Opium)''
* ''Les Plaques tectoniques (Tectonic Plates)''
* ''La Trilogie des Dragons (The Dragons' Trilogy)''
* ''Le Polygraphe (Polygraph)''
* ''Vinci''
* ''Circulations''
* ''Eonnagatta''
* ''887''
* ''SLĀV''
* ''Frame by Frame''

Filmography

Actor

* 1989: ''Jesus of Montreal (Jésus de Montréal)''
* 1990: ''Ding et Dong, le film