| Elizabeth has contributed to publications including Spunk Magazine, AM New York, Lincoln Center Review (Interview with Ben Cameron of TCG), Great Lakes Stages Magazine and Stage Directions Magazine
Great Lakes Stages Magazine
Article on Robert Lepage workshop at Northwestern University written by Elizabeth Lucas
EVANSTON, IL- "We're all going to draw". This is a theatre workshop? Robert Lepage unrolls two twelve-foot strips from a giant role of brown paper and lays them side by side. He instructs the sixteen actors to draw a map of the world in ten minutes. Go. A flurry of bodies descends onto the paper. Occasional giggles and squeaky markers sound as sixteen individual efforts coalesce into small groups, then to a unified effort. At the two-minutes-to-go mark chaos ensues. At the one-minute mark the scene is almost still. Stop. Lepage's reaction: "What a mess." He asks each to tell what they contributed to the unintelligible map. The answers range from the expected continents and place names to fantastical objects, phrases and fictional characters.
"Let's say we have a show to do and this is our material." Lepage breaks the actors into groups. He gives them five minutes to choose a character and place from the map and decide how to show it. Stop. The round one presentations are a disparate jumble of bizarre characters on non-sense journeys. When all groups finish, the exercise is repeated with three minutes of prep time using only the people and places from the last round. "Don't be afraid to rip off some else's ideas," he invites. In the second round of performances a set of icons begins to emerge. By the time the exercise is repeated a third time with one minute of preparation, characters have begun to develop.
This was the second section of Robert Lepage's recent day-long workshop for an enthusiastic crowd of students, professors and alumni at Northwestern University. Lepage's diverse talents and unusual approaches have brought international awards and acclaim to his productions, ranging from The Seven Streams of the River Ota, an eight hour epic on the holocausts of our century, to Peter Gabriel's 1993 concert tour. His film Le Confessional premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won three Genie Awards. Lepage's ongoing relationship with Performing Arts Chicago has brought him to the Midwest regularly.
This day he was on campus as the 1998 Hope Abelson Artist-in-Residence. Throughout the day's exercises, the soft-spoken French Canadian film and theatre director and actor revealed some of his methods and philosophies on the theatre to the beyond-capacity audience in the intimate Wallis Theatre.
What will theatre look like in the 21st century? His answer begins with a little history. He tells us that in this century there have been two ways of telling a story: the live interactive theatre, or the relatively new formats, film and television. As we head into the next century, the two are starting to merge into interactive film and multimedia theatre. As the artistic director of the well-funded theatre company Ex Machina in Quebec, Lepage has the opportunity to explore his fascination with this merger.
"What I am trying to retain is not technology, but a technological way of thinking... Theatre people are not curious enough about the way people think." Lepage's focus is not on the technology itself, but on how technology is changing the structure of the modern mind. Film captures the psychological and intimate and brings the audience into the room. Theatre has tried to imitate that. "Film does it better, so why not do something different on the stage." Lepage's aim is not to imitate film, but to integrate the new film vocabulary into stage approaches.
Does film diffuse the desire for the live actor? "No, the opposite is true. We like video games because we can interact with the man on the screen. We want film to be more live, more tangible." Lepage feels the artist has a responsibility to bring the audience closer to the performance. Rock concert producers chart the mental age of an expected audience as inversely proportional to the number of people who will be in it. They hang huge screens of the performer so they can fill 40,000 seats at a concert. When Lepage directed Peter Gabriel's concert, he fought against what he called a misuse of technology. Lepage filled the screens with complementary images and used a long ramp to bring Peter Gabriel closer to the audience. He likes to break the proscenium wall between "people who pay and people who do." He embraces the creative problem of how to decide how to bring audience close.
"However, an actor's training is still in two separate worlds." New forms in the theatre place new demands on the actor. Lepage chooses actors with the ability to develop characters, switch languages, add accents, and explore physical theatre who have the courage to do the unexpected. Lepage chooses the multi-lingual/many cultured group of actors because "that is what the world sounds like now."
His tendency towards non-text-based theatre is partially from training, and partially out of necessity. Quebec has developed a more physical approach to theatre to avoid limiting audience in a multi-cultural, bi-lingual environment. Lepage does not restrict himself to traditional forms of theatre. He claims his taste for theatricality came from outside the theatre. This is reflected by who and what he lists as his role models: rock concerts, Bausch, who brought theatre into the dance world, Lori Anderson, a performance artist and musician, Wooster Group, a deconstructionist theatre, and Julie Taymor, whose study of world theatre cultures has resulted in extraordinary ritual and puppetry in her productions.
Choosing an ensemble is only the beginning of a year long process for Lepage. He rehearses his ensembles in three-week rehearsal periods broken up by several months of independent thought and research. In this day of workshops, Lepage shared with us what he called the "fast food" version of this process. Four months was limited to a lunch break and three weeks became three hours.
The 16 actors started the morning with variations of familiar exercises focused on establishing trust in intuition and group consciousness. They examined the personal, subjective nature of time and space. They were encouraged to trust their bodies and their intuitive responses. "The idea is not to think." By developing a group sensibility and purpose, the exercises allow individuals to safely emerge.
The second part of the morning session was the map of the world, a continuation of these same ideas. Individual characteristics and concerns were integrated into the group history thru the map, giving the actors a common set of characters, places, and stories to build on. By reducing preparation time with each round, Lepage prevented the actors from getting stuck in strict organization and forced them to trust their own instinctual responses and each other. Layers were added to characters by multiple embodiments, until often used characters became complex beings with a history and a universal quality. The final round closed in on a set of characters and truths worth saving and developing.
In his regular rehearsal process, Lepage discards traditional dictatorial relationships with actors and writers for a system of collective collaboration. Everyone involved in a Lepage project, including actors, designers, writers, and film and multimedia technicians participates from the beginning stages in extended exercises like those he shared with us. He even invites the audience to be part of the process. Each three week period of work ends with a public rehearsal. Public rehearsals invite the audience into the writing process. "The audience really tells you what it's about. The actors are in too deep to know."
Our afternoon session started with a single object: a deck of cards. Lepage asked the audience to list the rules a deck of cards imposes. Besides the obvious color and number relationships, some unusual answers were thrown out: each card has a unifying side and differentiating side, combinations of lesser cards can be greater than a single highly valued card, you can cheat or quit. Lepage divides the actors into four groups. He gives them each a suit and a two minute caucus to decide what it means to be that suit and a particular face value within that suit. Each suit gives a short performance to demonstrate their individual and group identities. Lepage then shuffles the cards represented, chooses four randomly from the deck, and puts those actors into an improv. A series of improvs follows, out of which sets of relationships emerge.
The cards have provided allegiances, hierarchy, and a developing society based on associations in this invented world. In a few short hours we have gone from a map of the world down to a deck of cards and back to a map of our own invented world with streets, occupations, conflicts, and goals. We have widdled chaos down to a few central truths and expanded from a simple object to a complex society. From here, Robert Lepage would create a production.
"The work should impose itself. The length of a show depends on how far you can stretch a starting point." Eventually in Lepage's rehearsal process, actors cast themselves and scripts develop through improvisatory explorations. Metaphorical images are discovered by accident. Gradually designers add furniture and props into the process. Regular public rehearsals take place. Characters and situations are explored for a year or more before performance level arrives. Once it does the characters are still fresh, because the final form of the piece has only been in existence a few days. Robert Lepage's process is complete.
Elizabeth Lucas is a Director and Northwestern Alumnus |
