Activating simultaneity in performance exploring robert lepages working principles in the making of gaijin

ACTIVATING SIMULTANEITY IN PERFORMANCE: EXPLORING ROBERT LEPAGE’S WORKING PRINCIPLES IN THE MAKING OF GAIJIN Benjamin Knapton Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Research) Queensland University of Technology Creative Industries Faculty Performance Studies 2008 Acknowledgments This thesis is dedicated to the memory of Kathleen Tierney – a daughter, a mother, a wife, a grandmother and a musician You are dearly missed I would particularly like to thank my supervisors over the last two years including: Judith McLean, whose open, truthful and brave approach to life is an ongoing inspiration, Sandra Gattenhof, for her constant commitment to my research and her rigorous approach to academia, and David Fenton for his insightful and meticulous attention to all things performance I am extremely grateful to Brad Haseman for his continued support and interest in my work, which has always been so rich and fruitful, and Zane Trow for his perpetually insightful dialogue My deepest thank-you to Robert Lepage and the Ex Machina team The privilege they offered me was deepened by the genuine openness I encountered at Ex Machina Everyone in the team was so welcoming It is clear why such important work is created by this company I truly appreciate all that they gave me I would like to thank David Eastgate for his collaboration on the performance GAIJIN – his intelligence and eclectic skill is incredible An infinite thank-you to my family for their continued support and love My wonderful privileged life and this research would not have been possible without them Lastly, I would like to thank my best friend Natasha Budd for her ongoing support, brilliant mind, compassion and empathy that one can only hope will continue to spread TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT KEYWORDS STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP PROLOGUE: FOREGROUNDING PROCESS INTRODUCTION 11 1.1 METHODOLOGY 17 2.1 Discovering the bricoleur 19 2.2 Identifying as a constructivist 21 2.3 Practice-led strategy 24 2.4 Embodying methodology 26 CONTEXTUAL CONCEPTS 28 3.1 What is devised theatre? 30 3.1.2 Process 31 3.1.3 Collaboration 32 Concluding to begin again 34 UNDERSTANDING LIPSYNCH 35 4.1 4.1.1 4.2 Devised theatre 30 3.1.1 3.2 Overview 13 The process 38 The public rehearsal 48 Conclusion 51 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 53 5.1 Performance text 55 5.2 Simultaneity 57 5.3 Synaesthesia 62 5.4 Conclusion 63 GAIJIN 65 6.1 An overview of the work and the process of collaboration 66 6.2 Process 68 6.3 Conclusion 81 FINDINGS AND NEW DIRECTIONS 82 7.1 Activating simultaneity and synaesthesia 84 7.2 A theoretical offering 86 REFERENCES 89 APPENDICES 93 9.1 Interview with Robert Lepage 22/01/06 94 9.2 Support letter from Robert Lepage 110 9.3 Ethical Clearance Document 111 9.4 DVD of creative work GAIJIN 113 ABSTRACT In this research I have explored the performance making process of world renowned director Robert Lepage This exploration informed my own process, creating an original performance called GAIJIN, where my roles included producer / director / designer and co-writer The practice-led research strategy employed in this research has allowed me to navigate the sometimes slippery slope of connecting various performance discourses with the pragmatics of the performance making process The reason for this research is my strong interest in the director’s role and my affinity with the practice of Robert Lepage My observation of the performance making process of Robert Lepage prompted the creation of a conceptual framework informed by Hans-Thies Lehmann’s work Postdramatic Theatre These theoretical concerns were then further investigated in the creation of my own show This research process has uncovered a performance making process that foregrounds the working principles of simultaneity and synaesthesia, which together offer a changed conception of the performance text in live performance Simultaneity is a space of chaotic interaction where many resources are used to build a perpetually evolving performance text Synaesthesia is the type of navigation required – an engagement consisting of interrelated sense-impressions that uniquely connect the performance makers with the abundance of content and stimulus; they search for poetic connections and harmonious movement between the resources This engagement relies on intuitive playmaking where the artists must exhibit restraint and reserve to privilege the interaction of resources and observe the emerging performance This process has the potential to create a performance that is built by referential layers of theatrical signifiers and impressions This research offers an insight into the practices of Robert Lepage as well as a lens through which to view other unique devising processes It also offers a performance making language that is worthy of consideration by all performance makers, from directors to performers The significance of this process is its inherent qualities of innovation produced by all manner of art forms and resources interacting in a unique performance making space KEYWORDS The following is a list of keywords that appear within this exegesis or are associated with the exegesis topic These keywords have been listed for cataloguing purposes Collaboration, contemporary performance, devised theatre, interaction, intuition, performance making, performance text, postdramatic theatre, process, Robert Lepage, simultaneity, synaesthesia STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made Signed: …………………………… Date: …………………………… PROLOGUE: FOREGROUNDING PROCESS The need for this prologue comes from the nature of the content being presented in this research The performance making practice examined here emerges as a perpetually transformative discovery process that has repercussions for the manner in which it is discussed and the methodological approach I took In an environment of perpetual transformation my research foregrounds an open responsiveness which is apparent in the layout of this exegesis; continual revision and modification allows this research to mirror its content by being a perpetually transformative discovery process Here, I will briefly discuss the conflation of process and product in the performance making practice being explored in this research My understanding of the performance making process I was exploring became clearer when I discovered that a key attribute of Robert Lepage’s process, acknowledged by many theorists in different forms, is the notion of provisionality This term refers to “the assumption that all arrangements appear to have been adopted on the understanding that they may well be changed later It refers to the incomplete quality [of the work]…” (Haseman 1999, 3) Lepage recognises this when he says: There’s something terrible in our system which is called opening night: it’s a guillotine We try to pretend that doesn’t exist, we just try and fade into the performance area…we try not to decide ‘OK, opening night, so now this is officially a show’ It is never finished (Lepage 2006, l 110-115) Acknowledging that Lepage frequently presents his performance works in public arenas, this approach to performance making suggests a conflation of process and product where performances with audiences present are used as a tool inside the devising process Aleksandar Dundjerovic (1999) recognises this in his thesis on the theatricality of Robert Lepage when he comments on what he calls Lepage’s transformative mise-en-scene He suggests the “evolution of the ‘mise-en-scene’ is accepted as process rather than product… the performance is in a constant process of rehearsals” (1999, 4) The reason for this shift is Lepage’s unique process of devising; three or four week creative developments reoccurring over a number of years with public rehearsals at the end of each period Dundjerovic suggests “the mise-en-scene evolves with the audience response as part of its process through ‘open rehearsals’, making marginal the existing opposition between rehearsal and performance Thus performance becomes rehearsal…” (1999, 4) This conflation of process and product is of crucial importance to this research The conceptual framework outlined in Chapter Five is examining a process of making performance Far from dismissing the performance moment with an audience present, this research positions it as one part of an ongoing process 10 140 He was interested in doing ‘Waiting For Godot’ and Ionesco, but he was a man of his time, he 141 wrote for his time, I guess realising what was going on in this Communist ideal world that he 142 had wished for that was not so ideal And he wanted to move to Paris and wanted to be 143 influenced by other forms of theatre, and I’m sure that a lot of his rules or dogmas would have 144 continued but he probably would have adapted it, probably would have made it evolve And 145 one of the things was that he wrote and wrote the same things over, saying that a play is not a 146 museum piece, it should never gather dust, and if it’s not good or efficient or appropriate any 147 more, you flush it or completely cut it into pieces and something different with it And, of 148 course, after his death… if there’s dust in the world, it's at the Berliner Ensemble, maybe not 149 anymore today but for about 28 years, and everybody worked according to the method 150 151 It is the problem of translation – the fact that what he called the Verfremdungseffekt has been 152 translated by English by ‘alienation’ and in French by d'aliénation Now you have to know 153 that the people who publish Brecht’s plays in France, for example, a company called 154 ‘L’Arche’, and that’s owned by the Communist party of France, so of course the plays have 155 been translated and edited and the theories have been presented and translated according to a 156 certain vision of the world What Verfremdungseffekt means is the effect of strangeness That 157 could be anything as long as you make it interesting enough It’s life; I recognise life, but in a 158 strange manner, and that’s poetry, that’s art So it’s not a statement on theatre when we talk 159 about Verfremdungseffekt because art is interesting in general when it obtains that state of 160 strangeness So ‘alienation’ means many other things than this, and it’s been taught in 161 universities and theatre schools in a terrible manner And the same thing in French, 162 d'aliénation means at a distance, and it has nothing to with what Brecht did Of course, I 163 wasn’t there to see it, but now I bump into people who were there and who either worked with 164 or know what it was about and it’s actually much more sensuous, much more about poetry 165 and about life and more artistic than this intellectual concept of Verfremdungseffekt 166 99 167 Does that link to your idea of the actor not experiencing, necessarily, the emotion on stage, 168 but allowing that emotion to be felt in the audience instead? 169 170 Absolutely That’s where the emotion should be first, in the audience Now if that means that 171 on stage, sometimes, the actor has to feel some kind of emotion, why not? Any tool is good to 172 get what it is you want to convey across, but the important thing is to get the emotion in the 173 room And I have become very aggressive in that subject, because I think theatre, in general, 174 is bad these days, because of exactly that In theatre, schools and directors think that theatre is 175 the stage of emotion, the sport of emotion, that a good actor is an actor that emotes, but that’s 176 not true A good actor is somebody who is moving If he moves audiences then he’s a good 177 actor, and that notion is completely evacuated out of the theatre and stage right now So you 178 see a lot of narcissistic people who are all about themselves, and you see them suffer on stage 179 and they cry and they go through all these emotions, and you’re sitting there in the room and 180 you don’t get any of that and you even feel sometimes that you want to leave the room 181 because you’re kind of eavesdropping on someone else’s thing It’s very masturbatory I don’t 182 like that, maybe some people like that, but I’m not voyeur enough to get all my kicks just 183 from that, so that’s why sometimes I’m perceived as someone who’s against emotion I’m not 184 against emotion; on the contrary, I’m all for emotion, but in the room If you want to make 185 people cry, it’s the people in the room, not the people on stage 186 187 In an essay called ‘Machines of the Mind’, the author wrote: ‘Lepage’s narratives are 188 designed to draw spectators into the creative process But they are also intended to 189 destabilize and supplant conventional ways of thinking.’ I’m wondering if you could comment 190 on this 191 192 None of this is intentional, so you know Once again, Picasso said an artist’s job is find things 193 and then he goes looking for them, and that’s the same thing So I agree with this, but I 194 haven’t invented this, and I’m not conscious of this at the very start It is a quest for your own 100 195 identity, whatever work that you do, and trying to understand how you work And if you’re 196 honest in doing that, you will move people, you will draw an audience onboard They will 197 say, ‘I feel like that, too’ or ‘That was interesting’ or ‘He has a strange point of view’… I 198 believe in uniqueness, I don’t believe in being number one, so that means that however one 199 sees the world, whoever we are, it is a unique way of seeing the world And if you are honest 200 with that, if you’re not trying to produce other stereotypes and you’re not trying to please the 201 general point of view on things, you will give access to the audience to this special point of 202 view, which is unique because it’s yours And once again we are in a society that encourages 203 us to be number one, it’s all about being the best, about number one but no one encourages us 204 to be unique Now if you’re unique you are number one, you’re unique, you’re the best in 205 your category and that’s what interesting, I think, to really find what is unique about yourself 206 Everybody has something, and my work is just a series of exercises to find that Sometimes it 207 doesn’t work too well, but it’s an exercise on the self, and you know that at the other end the 208 audience is waiting for you to provide this unique way or a strange new way to look at things 209 But my goal is not for them to think that I’m original 210 211 Many of your works tend to be made up of various narratives that all contribute to a master 212 narrative What is the idea or rationale behind that? Is that a technique? 213 214 No, it’s not a technique, it’s just that you have to have confidence that when you start working 215 on a piece of work or a resource, whatever the starting point, you have to have confidence that 216 a river will appear and eventually that will break out into streams, and these streams 217 eventually somewhere go back to the primal, whatever it is, whether it’s the cloud that feeds 218 them or the sea You have to allow chaos to come into the room, because there cannot be 219 cosmos if there’s no chaos Chaos is chaos and cosmos is order, so you can not have a 220 coherent beautiful system that works if you don’t have chaos in the beginning You can not 221 make really invent anything from scratch We start by defining characters and a story line, 222 situation and we think we are going there and two days later we go there and we say, ‘What 101 223 happened to this?’ We have to trust that it will come back in this direction and we’re on this 224 bridge and we really get lost and it breaks again You have to just go for that, and eventually 225 the show tells you what to And it’s difficult, once again, in a world where we’re supposed 226 to be the people who know, the people who control, the leaders, the captain of the ship It’s 227 not about that It’s all about getting lost, and then eventually you get it You say, ‘Wait a 228 minute, we’ve been through here before, because remember that first character you did, well, 229 this could be his mother.’ It’s really obvious the underlines and the connections, and there is 230 an actual life that goes on without you Whatever it is that you have created has its own 231 system, and it just goes into all these extraordinary, beautiful things that are connecting, so 232 you’re there trying to find a path and eventually you draw a map and you go: OK, I think that 233 works, that now is connected, that makes perfect sense, that’s in the show…But this is a 234 hanging thread…What will we with it? Well, time will tell, and sometimes that answer 235 comes when we are in performance…way in performance and one night you go: this is where 236 this goes 237 238 Having worked that way many times, on a number of shows, have you ever found an 239 exploration technique, or way that keeps popping up? 240 241 We are trying to structure the work according to whatever comes out, so trying to leave it 242 open But, of course, there are some reoccurring things, partly because if I’m working at the 243 centre of this or with the same people we have a vocabulary that we have developed that 244 belongs to us But I think also that we work hand in hand with a technical team that is there 245 from day one, and we feel obligated to them because they need answers pretty quick 246 sometimes on buying something, or hiring, or setting something up So they always bring us 247 back down to earth and they have a system that is a bit more rigid than ours, so that helps But 248 we don’t really have a model, but we have a way of starting things, and we know there is a 249 place in the building where we live We have this big studio in Quebec City, and we have this 250 place and know the table is there, we have a board, we have all these little habits and know 102 251 that’s how it starts and after two weeks we’ll probably end up in this other little room where 252 they have this other thing So, yes, we have a maze that we are used to going through But 253 every new show surprises us After three, four days, suddenly there’s this world we never 254 thought we would enter and that often puts us in a place we have never been and asks us to 255 structure or work in ways we haven’t done before, so it’s a very, very strange process 256 257 When you find that place, does there tend to be a lot of research? Do you go into intensive 258 research times? 259 260 There is research but it happens as we are exploring It used to be, for example, when we did 261 ‘Seven Streams of the River Ota’, people would come in, there would be a lot of participants 262 It was a seven-hour show, so there was a lot of subject It was a lot about the 20th Century and 263 the wars and a lot about a time that we weren’t born, things that we haven’t experienced But 264 the way the research works is that there is so many people around In the case of the ‘Seven 265 Streams’ we had cardboard boxes and every day people would come in and say, ‘Well, I 266 found this book yesterday and remember the improv we did about the Balkans war, there’s 267 this guy who was actually in it.’ And we say, ‘Well, great, put it in the box.’ And we just pile 268 up stuff and these things come back out once in while when we need them, but it’s very, very 269 cumbersome when you go on tour with a show that’s not finished and have these big boxes to 270 carry around But then technology kicked in and since ‘Far Side of the Moon’ the technicians 271 are there and they all have power books and they’re wondering what they’re going to be doing 272 and I don’t know I’m sitting there at the end of the table with some collaborators, dramaturge 273 and a friend, just trying to explain and I’m too shy to go and improv, so we play around with 274 some chairs and on the second day I start to explain the character a little bit And they’re just 275 trying to kill time and they’re on the internet, so they research and Google their way 276 through the whole process, and after a week they found gazillions of things, of imagery So 277 whatever you say in an improv, you know, that map of the world you were talking about, well 278 I found here and a complete site about weather watch, and you just plug it in and project it on 103 279 the wall, and I improv with a map That’s how it works now, and we have assistants that when 280 you say something they’re taking notes and in the afternoon we have it They found it on a 281 website or they order it by UPS and the day after you have it, so it’s very, very fast, to a point 282 where you have to be careful what you say, because sometimes you overdo it but that’s how it 283 works if you want things to happen 284 285 There is one thing that we have developed and impose on co-producers also We rehearse 286 only in the morning and in the evening; we never rehearse in the afternoon There are all sorts 287 of reasons why and the first reason is because creative energy in the afternoon is zilch You 288 spend the afternoon digesting what you had for lunch There is absolutely nothing interesting 289 coming out of your mouth, and it’s heavy, and people want to go home So everything is more 290 efficient if you work only the mornings and the evening The energy of the mornings is 291 fantastic for improv and intuition and you can be very physical and in the evening there is 292 something that goes on that’s fantastic also What we impose to collaborators is that we 293 rehearse in the morning, evening, and in the afternoon they can what they want It’s almost 294 European in a sense They can almost have a siesta What happens is that whatever idea we 295 came up with in the morning the people in the workshops during the afternoon build it up, 296 they a mock-up, so we arrive in the evenings and we rehearse in it, and that happens all the 297 time, so it’s a real synergy So that has become so efficient at one point that we impose it on 298 everything we We’re based in Quebec City and because a lot of collaborators are from 299 Montréal, a three-hour drive, they want to go back home on the weekends On the Saturday 300 we rehearse from ten, instead of nine, to two in the afternoon, in one big chunk, then 301 everybody’s off We have exceptions, but otherwise it’s really becoming a way of working 302 So it has a very practical side to it but, personally, I haven’t verified this theory, but I think it 303 has a creative energy Tons of people will tell you the same thing: in the afternoon your brain 304 is dead 305 104 306 You work in extremely different environments from the rehearsal rooms of ‘The Dragon’s 307 Trilogy’, where one of your actors suggested, ‘It was the characters themselves who 308 improvised…we barely had control over what they had to say’ to your recent production in 309 Las Vegas with Cirque de Soleil What are the main changes in your directorial approach in 310 these different contexts? 311 312 It’s pretty much the same thing The difference is in the disciplines If you’re working with an 313 opera singer, an actor or an acrobat, they’re radically different when it comes to the training, 314 what it demands physically, so you have to adapt the way you work, you have to work around 315 those problems An actor is pretty much spontaneous; you could what you want in real 316 time An opera singer will say, ‘Let me learn it and let me place it’, and it takes time and it’s 317 highly technical Before any sound comes out, any meaning, any warmth, there’s an 318 incredibly long process, technical process When you are working with the circus it’s even 319 worse Everyone is very, very generous, it’s slave mentality, and they just want to stuff, 320 and you say, ‘Well, can you this?’ And they will go for a month to train and be able to give 321 it to you That imposes a way of working that is different every time and I try, I don’t always 322 succeed, in getting what I want or making it as efficient as I want, but I’ve pretty much been 323 able to transfer my way of working 324 325 With Cirque de Soleil did you have the performers in the room with you? Is that how you 326 started? 327 328 Pretty much, yes, 74, 75 performers So you don’t have the same intimacy Compare cooking 329 a turkey for 12 people and catering for 200 guests in a ballroom You can’t have the same 330 attention to 200 turkeys or 200 quails It’s a very, very different relationship that you have 331 It’s not that I try and create hierarchies, I create areas There is a group of people who will be 332 more concerned with different aspects of the show So I try to work in smaller groups and 333 from whatever they something comes out about the storyline or character, but it’s a much 105 334 longer process because you need more time, money, availability, and more time with the 335 audience also It means that the show, your performing will really take a couple of years 336 before it matures 337 338 You’ve just told me this project is no longer happening, but the theme park project where you 339 were collaborating with Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel, what was that idea 340 based on? 341 342 Peter came to Australia a long, long time ago on a tour and he found a quarry here and 343 thought that it would be great place to a theme park and somebody here in Australia said, 344 ‘Why don’t you come and a big theme park?’ And his idea of a theme park was something 345 where you would not come out of it alienated, in the sense that Disneyworld and these usual 346 theme parks, people come out of there and they don’t feel empowered They say, ‘Wow, what 347 was that? How did they that?’ They’re alienated They just spent their money and go back 348 home And he wanted to create a place where people come out of that and they are 349 empowered and say, ‘Wow, I know how this works’ or ‘I’ve got some idea for how to make 350 music’ So that was his idea, and, of course, he is a close friend of Brian Eno and Laurie, so 351 the three of them got together and said, ‘Well, why don’t we try and make this work?’ Except 352 they were looking for a piece of land that would have been offered to them It was supposed 353 to happen in England at one point, but that didn’t happen so they went to Barcelona because 354 for the Olympics the mayor of Barcelona gave them a section of Montjuic, which is this 355 mountain in the middle of Barcelona, because Barcelona suddenly had a lot of money because 356 of the Olympics So they started to put this into high gear and they did some official meetings 357 and tried to broaden the group, like Terry Gillian, to consult and come on board, [also] some 358 very old conceptual artists, from Prague, who had worked on previous world Expo’s It really 359 was an extraordinary group of people but it didn’t work out for Barcelona That was 1992 360 Also, because they’re very good artists but disorganised, and it happened that that year I was 361 performing in London, and Peter came and saw my work, we became friends, and started to 106 362 work with him and he embarked me into this process but it eventually fizzled out Artists are 363 good thinking machines but they have their own careers also, and it happened that at one 364 point Peter needed to go make a record, then Laurie, then Brian, so the whole thing just 365 fizzled 366 367 In an interview with John Tusa you said, ‘I am forcing myself to go toward the simplicity of 368 just standing there and speaking… theatre naturally brings you to the spoken word.’ Could 369 you explain this further? 370 371 It’s a difficult thing to explain because I don’t understand it well I’ve always been associated 372 with the visual theatre, theatre of images and objects, but in fact it starts with the word It 373 always starts with spoken improv and eventually we evacuate that We are in a world of 374 information where information comes through spoken word a lot, so suddenly image and form 375 and all of that, for an artist, seems to be a stronger more interesting way of conveying that 376 Now, or more recently, we are much more obsessed by imagery, much more obsessed by rock 377 videos Things are always put into image, or shape, or colour I have a tendency to go back to 378 the word because of that There is something about radio that is much more visual than visual 379 art There is something about radio that really enters your mind, enters your brain and how 380 music on its own, without the image of rock video, conveys your own personal images and 381 it’s a much stronger visual medium, so I’m slowly moving toward that 382 383 And right now the next big project is called Lipsynch, and we started rehearsing last month 384 actually, and it’s about the human voice, it’s about the spoken word It’s a bit of a shock for a 385 lot of people, because they think we are embarking on the next big visual project And maybe 386 it will be, probably will be, because it’s all about lip-synching, but I’m more and more 387 interested in that in theatre words incarnate themselves When Shakespeare, in ‘Romeo and 388 Juliet’, when he has Mercutio, when he is dying, say, ‘The plague on both your houses, the 389 plague on both your houses, The plague on both your houses’ Three times When you 107 390 translate this to German, or French, there is always this big debate, because in French we 391 don’t say things three times the same way, but it’s very important to that because in 392 Shakespeare’s times if you say that three times and it’s heard and it’s well said, it happens In 393 the play that’s the reason why the letter doesn’t what it needs to So things are not 394 repeated three times just for the sake of form, they’re spells When you speak in the theatre it 395 is a spell and it changes the world, to what extent I don’t know, but if you say something, 396 make a statement and it is clear and you are heard, words incarnate themselves Greeks 397 believed that In ‘The Tempest’, when Prospero says to Miranda, ‘Whatever you say to 398 Ferdinand, never say your name, never, never speak your name’ and from the moment she has 399 a slip of the tongue, that’s when all the problems start In the world of magic you never use 400 your name, because if you give your name to someone they can use it to whatever So 401 words and the importance of words and the ritual of theatre, these things mean how they’re 402 used So, for example, I don’t know what you’ll think when you see this new show It has 403 twice as much technology, but everyone is saying, ‘Oh my god, it’s so simplified’ because it’s 404 much more integrated, I guess It’s much more about words But I don’t think that you go 405 toward a more written theatre just because there’s more text I think you can also have less 406 text It’s the role of the text and the role the words play 407 408 You once called yourself a ‘gradualist’ This suggests that you are slowly working toward a 409 goal What you think it is? 410 411 It’s probably a goal that you never obtain I think it’s just the understanding of who you are I 412 connect this to my interest in geography; it was a bit of Utopia when I decided to go to the 413 Conservatoire because, first of all, I got accepted, and even if I was going to be, I never had 414 an image of myself as an artist beyond those studies So on the back burner I had this project 415 of being a geography teacher, and I’m trying to connect these two things together and say: 416 ‘what is my goal?’ And I think it was just to get out of your house and go and find yourself 417 somewhere else, it’s that quest in ‘The Alchemist’ where you’re probably sitting on your 108 418 treasure but you need to go to the desert and look for it and that’s pretty much what touring is 419 about There’s this whole thing about theatre being translation One of the mechanicals says to 420 Bottom, in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, you have been translated and he’s been 421 transformed into an ass; what is that word ‘translated’? It’s connected literally to when you 422 travel, how you translate who you are and what you need, in another language, in another 423 culture, another form? So it’s all about transformation I guess I what I because I want 424 to change, I want to be someone else, I want to be better So that’s, I think, what it is, and 425 because change is something that is perpetual, you never really obtain the shape that you’re 426 really are looking for, so I’m just running, trying to catch something, when in fact I’m also 427 running away from something 428 429 Robert Lepage, thank you very much 109 9.2 Support letter from Robert Lepage Quebec, February 23rd 2006 Support Letter / Benjamin Knapton To whom this may concern, This brief letter confirms Benjamin Knapton invitation to join our team as an observer as well as it acknowledges our support to him, in all the steps he is taking to obtain the necessary funding to make his venture to Quebec possible Mr Knapton is one of the few people selected personally by Robert Lepage to join his team as an observer This coveted position will allow Mr Knapton to study and comprehend new and avant-gardist theatrical artform by witnessing Mr Lepage's creation process, his "work in progress" It will be a pleasure for us to welcome Benjamin during our second creation period on the Lipsynch show in Quebec However, his stay in Quebec will be at his complete expenses We not provide accommodations, nor we provide transportation Mr Knapton must be autonomous Fortunately, we are situated in a part of town that has lots of hotels and restaurants We strongly hope that he will be able to gather the sum necessary to carry out his project The creation we have invited Mr Knapton to witness should take place in October 2006 We strongly believe his stay with us will prove to be most beneficial in his creative endeavor, as it has been for all our past observers Hoping this letter may have a positive effect on the deciding members of the committee, I thank you very much for your time Sincerely yours, Ève-Alexandra St-Laurent For Robert Lepage Stage and Film Director 110 9.3 Ethical Clearance Document 111 112 9.4 DVD of creative work GAIJIN Attached to back cover 113 ... to view the creation of a stage performance by Robert Lepage, the subsequent working principles identified from this process and the integration of these in my performance making process The importance... Accordingly, the outputs of this research have been organised in the following way: Written Component (50%) 14 Exegesis: Activating Simultaneity in Performance: Exploring Robert Lepage’s Working Principles. .. October, 2006 What is the impact of activating the observed working principles of Robert Lepage in my own creative process? This section consists of the creation of a one-person theatre show which