Robert Lepage, Canada’s leading experimental theatre artist, whose work explicitly echoes Cocteau and the symbolists, as well as paralleling Robert Wilson, has recently increasingly turned to popular forms, starting by designing rock tours for Peter Gabriel (1993, 2002), and progressing to extensive collaborations with Cirque du Soleil, in particular his 2004 production of KA in Las Vegas and the 2011 Totem, which has toured both the US and Canada.
Analysis of these performances illuminates both the post-modern features of this unlikely connection, and the ways in which it has transformed both the avant-garde and popular art. Lepage has introduced story lines and mythological themes to a cutting-edge circus company (who focus solely on human performers, rejecting the use of animals) whole adopting their clown symbolism and extreme acrobatic choreography. The effects can be shown as both metatheatrical and verging on pastiche. This integration also suggests the wider significance of popular cultural forms.
Time permitting, comparison could be made with both the clown imagery and the updating of modern classics in the theatre works of Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s parodist treatment of Ibsen’s plays – Dolls House 2006, Olso; John Gabriel Borkman, Berlin 2011), and Roberto Ciulli’s circus interpretations of Brecht (1992) and Büchner (2004) at Theater-am-Ruhr.
The talk will be illustrated by images and possibly Youtube video.
About the presenterChristopher Innes
CHRISTOPHER INNES, Distinguished Research Professor at York University, Toronto; Research Professor at Copenhagen University, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and Royal Society of Arts (UK), Canada Research Chair in Performance and Culture. Visiting Professor in Cambridge; Australia, Japan; Germany. Author of 15 books – translated into eight languages – and 140 articles, his most recent books are Carnival: Theory and Practice, edited together with Brigitte Bogar (2012), Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing (2013).