The Global Voyage of Robert Lepage

Abstract

Under a wash of pale blue light an actor in a tuxedo walks to the middle of the stage and steps into a sunken swimming pool filled thigh-high with water. A piano bench is lowered from the ceiling. The actor, playing Frederic Chopin, sits on the bench and is transported 40 feet straight up to a waiting grand piano which is suspended in midair and surrounded by enough chairs and music stands (painted blue to match the piano) for a small orchestra. Calmly, Chopin starts to play a piece by Chopin. This bold and playful image begins Tectonic Plates, the latest project of Quebec writer-director-actor Robert Lepage. As a work-in-progress (with collaborator/designer Michael Levine) the piece was seen in its first stage of creation at Harbourfront's du Maurier World Stage theatre festival in Toronto in June 1988. A native of Quebec City, Lepage graduated from le Conservatoire d'Art dramatique de Quebec in 1978. He then studied in Paris under Alain Knapp, a Swiss who emphasizes the idea of the acteur-createurhis students learn acting, directing, and writing. Lepage, who often acts in, directs, writes, and designs a piece, terms this approach global. Lepage has also enjoyed great success as an improv comedian in Quebec's Ligue Nationale d'Improvisation (LNI), where teams of improvisers dressed in hockey sweaters play off one another. This type of theatre, too, demands a multiplicity of talents. Lepage says: When you do the improvs you have to be a writer, an actor, a set designer, and a director. All at the same time. Before doing the improvs I was an actor or a playwright or a director (Hunt 1987:25). Another large influence on Lepage's work has been the REPERE cycles. Le Theatre Repere, founded by Jacques Lessard in I980 (Lepage joined in I98I and is now artistic director), was inspired by the RSVP Cycles, a creative method developed by Anna and Lawrence Halprin.1 The name Repere stands for: REsource, Participation, Evaluation, and REpresentation. The process begins by locating the resource for the creation. For example, in La trilogie des dragons (I985-I988), the initial idea was to do a show about the different Chinatowns across Canada; the resource was the parking lot in Quebec City which stands where that city's Chinatown once was. This resource was transformed into the set for the play. Three tons of sand and fine gravel were spread in a rectangle with a lamppost at one end and the parking lot attendant's booth at the other-a replica of what remains of Quebec City's Chinatown. Lepage and his