Robert Lepage

Playwright

• Born: December 12, 1957
• Place of Birth: Quebec City, Quebec

Contribution: Robert Lepage is a playwright and director known for his creative, visionary, and multidisciplinary approach. His work draws on a variety of performance genres and disciplines, including drama, musical theater, puppetry, rock staging, and opera, and he has collaborated with artists the world over. A nonconformist, Lepage incorporates multimedia freely in his works and uses a bilingual approach. Many of his productions are inspired by political and theatrical history as well.

Early Life and Education

Lepage was born on December 12, 1957, in Quebec City, Quebec, to Germaine Robitaille and Ferdinand Lepage. His working-class household was completely bilingual; Lepage and his sister were brought up and educated as francophones, while his older adopted brother and sister were brought up and educated as anglophones.

At a young age, Lepage suffered from a rare form of alopecia, a disease that caused him to lose hair over his entire body. Shy and introverted during his teen years, Lepage was bullied by the other children at school; he often suffered from depression and had a breakdown after experimenting with drugs. Through his participation in mandatory high school drama classes at the Joseph-François Perreault High School, however, Lepage began to conquer his shyness.

Lepage finished high school at seventeen and entered the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique in Quebec City, where he studied theater from 1975 to 1978. He was heavily influenced by his teacher Jacques Lessard, then codirector of Le Théâtre Repère, founded by Lessard in 1980. After graduating, Lepage traveled briefly to Paris, France, where he participated in a three-week course at Alain Knapp’s theater school, known for emphasizing the many different creative roles of the stage artist.

Career

After returning to Quebec in 1978, Lepage, who had no solid career prospects at the time, teamed with former classmate Richard Fréchette to found Théâtre Hummm . . . , a performance company named after a well-known Canadian comic strip. Lepage served as actor, writer, and director for many creative endeavors related to the company. In 1982, Lepage joined the Théâtre Repère, later serving as artistic director. He left in 1989 to assume the role of artistic director of the National Arts Centre Théâtre Français in Ottawa, Ontario, a post he held until 1993.

In 1994, Lepage founded Ex Machina, a production company with an interdisciplinary approach. The company’s aim was to reinvent performances and create new artistic forms through a collaboration of actors, writers, set designers, opera singers, puppeteers, video artists, graphic designers, musicians, and others from the arts world. One year later, Lepage started the multimedia production company In Extremis Images with Daniel Langlois.

In 1997, Lepage became the founding artistic director of La Caserne, a production center in Quebec City where all Ex Machina productions are developed. The space, which holds up to three hundred people, can be used as a venue for stage performances and concerts.

Productions

Lepage’s first work for the Théâtre Repère, the 1984 production Circulations, a play in both French and English, toured throughout Canada and marked Lepage’s breakthrough on the Canadian stage. The following year, The Dragon’s Trilogy, which toured in more than thirty cities on three different continents, brought Lepage international acclaim. Subsequent productions included Vinci (1986), Lepage’s first one-man show; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1992); and The Far Side of the Moon (2000). When he directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lepage became the first North American to direct a Shakespearean performance at the Royal National Theatre in London.

In 1994, Lepage broke into the world of film by writing and directing The Confessional. This film was screened at the Cannes Festival Directors’ Fortnight and won numerous awards. Subsequent films written and directed by Lepage include Le Polygraphe (1996) and Possible Worlds (2000). He has also made several onscreen appearances as an actor over the years, starting with the 1989 film Jésus de Montréal and including The Far Side of the Moon (2003), which he adapted from his play of the same name, directed, and starred in. In 2012, he had a role in the science-fiction film Mars et Avril, the feature-film debut of producer and director Martin Villeneuve.

Lepage entered the world of opera with his 1993 staging of both Bluebeard’s Castle (by Béla Bartók) and Erwartung (by Arnold Schoenberg), a double bill, at the Canadian Opera Company. He also presided over a production of Hector Berlioz’sThe Damnation of Faust, which premiered in Japan in 1999 and was revived by the New York Metropolitan Opera in 2008. Lepage’s next production for the Metropolitan Opera was Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen), which premiered in four parts over three years: Das Rheingold in 2010, Die Walküre and Siegfried in 2011, and Götterdämmerung in 2012. The complete cycle premiered as a single show in spring 2012.

His next major work was an autobiographical play 887, which played in New York and Toronto between 2017 and 2019. The solo-stage performance garnered favorable reviews and was named a New York City Critics Pick.

Lepage's 2018 production of SLĀV at the Montreal International Jazz Festival sparked criticism for its use of White performers to sing songs associated with the Black slaves of the 1800s. These charges of cultural appropriation and resulting protests caused the sold-out show to be shut down. Another 2018 Lepage play, Kanata, nearly met the same fate. This play, about Canada's Indigenous people, also caused protests. However, it was ultimately allowed to be performed and was well-received by members of the Indigenous communities. In between these two contentiuous plays, Lepage also directed The Magic Flute, based on the music of Mozart.

He next returned to film work, appearing in The 12 Tasks of Imelda as the character Jean.

In 2023, Lepage once again turned to directing for the four-and-a-half-hour long tribute to Canadian painter Jean Paul Riopelle. Entitled Le projet Riopelle, the play's release was timed to coordinate with what would have been the painter's 100th birthday.

Awards

Lepage has received many awards, including the 2003 Denise Pelletier Prize and the 2009 Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for lifetime artistic achievement in theater. He was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 1994 and was promoted to companion of the Order of Canada in 2009.

Bibliography

Lepage, Robert. “Robert Lepage Canoes and Cooks in Quebec.” Interview by Javier Espinoza. Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones, 18 Feb. 2011. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.

Nestruck, J. Kelly. "Le projet Riopelle: Hannah Gadsby could learn a thing or two from Robert Lepage." Globe and Mail, 10 June 2023, www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/theatre-and-performance/article-le-projet-riopelle-hannah-gadsby-could-learn-a-thing-or-two-from/. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.

O’Mahony, John. “Aerial Views.” Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 22 June 2001. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.

“Robert Lepage.” Ex Machina. Ex Machina, n.d. exmachina.ca/en/robert-lepage. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024..

Wakin, Daniel J. “The Met’s Ring after Oiling.” New York Times. New York Times, 22 Apr. 2012. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.

Zenari, Vivian. “Robert Lepage.” Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences: Canadian Writers. Athabasca U, 11 Oct. 2012. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.