Robert Lepage / Ex Machina: Revolutions in Theatrical Space

by James Reynolds, Mark Taylor-Batty (Editor), Enoch Brater (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474276580
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	02/07/2019
Series:	Methuen Drama Engage
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	586 KB

About the Author

Dr James Reynolds is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at Kingston University, London, UK. His Ph.D. research at Queen Mary, University of London investigated performance practices in Robert Lepage's devised theatre. His publications include Howard Barker's Theatre: Wrestling with Catastrophe (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015) co-edited with Andy W. Smith, and Addiction and Performance (2014), co-edited with Zoe Zontou.
Dr James Reynolds was formerly a lecturer in Drama at Kingston University in London. He has also taught at Queen Mary, University of London, and Rose Bruford College. His Ph.D. research at Queen Mary investigated performance practices in Robert Lepage's devised theatre. Published work explores Howard Barker's direction of his own plays, Lepage's work with objects, the cinematic adaptation of graphic novels, applied theatre and the relationship between addiction and performance.
Mark Taylor-Batty is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and Deputy Head of School in the School of English at the University of Leeds, UK. His previous publications include The Theatre of Harold Pinter (Bloomsbury, 2014), About Pinter: The Playwright and the Work (Faber and Faber, 2005), Roger Blin: Collaborations and Methodologies (Peter Lang, 2007) and, he co-authored with his wife, Juliette Taylor-Batty, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (Continuum, 2009).
Enoch Brater is the Kenneth T. Rowe Collegiate Professor of Dramatic Literature, Professor of English and Theater at the University of Michigan and the series editor of Methuen Drama's Miller scholarly editions. He has written extensively on the work of Samuel Beckett and Arthur Miller.

Enoch Brater is the Kenneth T. Rowe Collegiate Professor of Dramatic Literature, Professor of English and Theater at the University of Michigan. He is series editor of Methuen Drama's Arthur Miller scholarly editions, and with Mark Taylor-Batty of Methuen Drama's Engage series. He has written extensively on the work of Samuel Beckett and Arthur Miller.

Table of 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

Editorial Reviews

"The 'revolutions' in the title of this exhaustively researched study refer at first glance to the immense impact Robert Lepage has had on international theatre culture through the works he has produced with the team of designers, scenographers, architects, project managers, dramaturgs, performers, and technicians he has assembled in his Quebec City-based company, Ex Machina ... Reynolds's personal observations of Lepage in rehearsal are detailed and revelatory." - Theatre Journal

From the Publisher