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Full Description
Robert Lepage/Ex Machina: Revolutions in Theatrical Space provides an ideal introduction to one of our most innovative companies - and a much-needed and timely reappraisal of Lepage's oeuvre. International, interdisciplinary and intercultural to the core, Ex Machina have negotiated some of the most complex creative and cultural challenges of our time. This book maps the story of that journey by analysing the full spectrum of their richly varied work. Through a comprehensive historiography of productions since 1994, Robert Lepage/Ex Machina offers a detailed picture of the relationship between director and company, while connecting Ex Machina to culturally specific features of Québec, and its theatre. This book reveals for the first time how overlooked aspects of creativity and culture shaped the company's early work, while installing a dynamic interplay between director and company that would spark a unique and ongoing evolution of praxis. Central to this re-evaluation of practice is the book's identification of an architectural aesthetic at the heart of Ex Machina's work, an aesthetic which provides its artistic and political centres of gravity. Moreover, this architectural aesthetic powers the emergence of concrete narrative as a new and distinctive mode of theatrical storytelling - uniting story and space, body and technology, content and form - and demanding that we discover the politics of these performances in the energetic gestures of theatre design, and space itself. Drawing on extensive interviews with Lepage, Ex Machina personnel and collaborative partners, Robert Lepage/Ex Machina calls upon us to revise both our creative and critical perceptions of this vital and distinctive practice.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Genesis
Ex Machina in brief
Revolutions in theatrical space
Architectural aesthetics
The road to Ex Machina
Learning curves
Foundations: la Caserne and the patenteux
Part One: Foundations and Stepping Stones (1994-1999)
Introduction
Chapter One: Lepagean Aesthetics
Discovering Japan's geo-poetry: Seven Streams of the River Ota
Turning the power of space into theatre
Contradiction as aesthetic key
Flagships
Counterpoint: A Dream Play
Chapter Two: Making Concrete Narratives
Ground work: The Geometry of Miracles
Concrete poetry
Making Narrative Concrete: Elsinore
Scenographic acting and the body politic
Concrete narratives - sublime effects
Critical condition
Form as cultural expression
Chapter Three: Critical Themes
Evolution
Turning point: the importance of Celestine
Class, contradiction and the antihero
The Damnation of Faust in Japan
Process, collaboration, authorship and directing
Cultural difference, cultural specificity
Part Two: Choosing All Directions (2000-2008)
Introduction
Chapter Four: Upgrades
Zulu Time: Q for Québec
Upgrading the Trilogy
The importance of Métissages
Making The Far Side of the Moon
Dramatic devices and the architecture of convergence
Chapter Five: Québec Stories
Art and politics: La Casa Azul and The Busker's Opera
Dance with three hands: Eonnagata
Narrative terms: the story of the story of the storyteller
KÀ: entertainment architecture
Writing the myth
Reading the circus
Chapter Six: New Ways
The Image Mill: all roads lead to home
Opera on tour: 1984 and The Rake's Progress
Ex Machina at the Metropolitan Opera
The Blue Dragon: character, culture and concrete narrative
Lipsynch: staging the scream
Process in process
Part Three: Starting Points (2008-2018)
Introduction
Chapter Seven: Critical Relationships
The Nightingale and Other Short Fables
Totem: evolving through the gift shop
Collaboration: Ex Machina and the Metropolitan Opera
Wagner, architectural aesthetics, and Der Ring des Nibelungen
Reviewing the Ring
The Tempest and L'Amour de Loin
Paying for art
Chapter Eight: Brave New Worlds
Virtual reality: The Library at Night
The Tempest: collaborating the nation
Hearts design
Writing Hearts
Concrete Hearts
Writing
Bet on red
Chapter Nine: Beginning
Frame by Frame
Upgrades
Making 887
Taking the narrative turn
Le Diamant
Coda
Notes
Bibliography
Index
