Lepage on Lepage

Lepage on Lepage

• Father
  On Elsinore (Lepage's Hamlet show):  "It . . . assembles in a single-person all the aspects of the universe of Elsinore."
  "Besides this notion assembling and my interest in the text, the death of my own father in 1992 also renewed my longstanding interest in Hamlet.  I found myself, in a certain way, haunted by the ghost of my own father, and I was called to question my relationship with my mother, my brother, heredity, . .  ." Charest 173
   
• Duality
   
• the East as mirror
  My fascination with the East also helps me to understand the West.  For many years now, the former has helped me understand the latter.  How can you understand the West, the culture of the twentieth century, when you're a Quebecer with virtually no cultural means at your disposal to interpret the world?  You need a mirror, and one of my first mirrors was the East.  In Seven Streams, mirrors are pervasive.  They help to funnel Jana Capek's memory, bringing her back to Theresienstadt, the Czech concentration camp.  We also have the reverse, the complete lack of mirrors in the life of a hibakusha [Nozomi]. . . Charest 36
   
• Lepage's meta-theatre:

  
  1. The Tempest
  "From Rehearsal to Stage: With The Tempest, . .  . , Robert Lepage introduced within the Shakespeare play the idea of a play's creative process by gradually shifting from the setting of a rehearsal room [left] to a fully costumed production [right], giving a new twist to the often perceived relationship between Prospero and the author of the play" Charest
   

  2. The Traces of Time:
  "Making different times and places overlap on stage has been a trademark of Robert Lepage's directing.  At one point in Seven Stream, several people sit in parallel times in a tiny common bathroom, which also serves as a photographer's darkroom, as though their presence were actually a trace of their past presence.  Charest

  

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Reference:
Remy Charest. Robert Lepage: Connecting Flights.  (Conversation with Remy Charest.)  Trans. Wanda Romer Taylor.  UK: Methuen, 1995.