The Visual Laboratory of Robert Lepage

Description

For more than three decades, Robert Lepage's dynamic multimedia performance works have been produced on stages worldwide. Celebrated for his bold, visionary aesthetic, Lepage has received several high-profile commissions in recent years, including two Peter Gabriel world tours, Cirque du Soleil's Ka in Las Vegas, a dramatic staging of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and Lorin Maazel's 1984 at London's Royal Opera House. Despite Lepage's prolificacy and his status as one of the pioneers of new media performance, little critical writing has been published about his work, particularly in English. Ludovic Fouquet's The Visual Laboratory of Robert Lepage, translated for the first time into English, thus presents much-needed in-depth analysis of Lepage's strategies and practices. The book's title references the experimentation so integral to Lepage's creative process and the ways in which Lepage has always been attuned to the synergistic possibilities when art encounters science and technology. Whether as a playwright, actor, film director, or stage director, he is forever in search of new mutations of form and expression, and his unexpected narratives often write themselves out of discoveries he makes when staging a piece indeed stagecraft often guides story in Lepage's creative realm. This illustrated volume will be of keen interest for theater practitioners of all kinds, from set designers to directors, from academics to fans. Ludovic Fouquet is a visual artist, actor, teacher, director, and founder of the company Songes mecaniques (Mechanical Dreams) in Blois, France. Fouquet earned his PhD studying Robert Lepage's work and its relationship with technology. Rhonda Mullins is a Governor General's Award winning French-to-English translator, writer, and editor.

Ludovic Fouquet is a visual artist, actor, teacher, director, and founder of the company songes mecaniques (Mechanical Dreams in Blois, France), as well as for various projects and theatrical events (Mobilis Productions, Lille, France; Palazzo Farnese, Rome). In addition, he has collaborated as an interpreter with the trapeze company Le Tourbillon (created 2005). Independent works include two multimedia projects that combine sounds and images with dance and trapeze acrobatics. Collaborating with Benedict Bradel, Fouquet created L'invention de la " giraffe " (Theatre National de Chaillot, June 2005), a show comparing cinema and theater. After training as an actor and dancer, Fouquet earned his PhD studying the practice of Robert Lepage and its relationship to technology. Fouquet edited La trilogie des dragons (The Dragons' Trilogy, published in French by L'instant meme, Quebec, 2005), and developed a photographic monograph of this work. In addition to frequent speaking engagements at French universities (Amiens, Brest), Fouquet contributes regularly to numerous theater and contemporary art magazines (Cahiers de Theatre, JEU, ETC Montreal, theatre-contemporain.net ). He divides his time between life in France and in Quebec. Rhonda Mullins is a French-to-English translator, writer, and editor. As a literary translator, Rhonda has translated a number of works of non-fiction and was a finalist for the 2007 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation for the book The Decline of the Hollywood Empire by Herve Fischer. And the Birds Rained Down, her translation of the novel Il Pleuvait des Oiseaux by Jocelyne Saucier, was released by Coach House Books in October 2012. Rhonda holds an M.A. in Media Studies from Concordia University, as well as a B.A. in Communications and a B.Sc. in Political Science from the University of Ottawa, and has studied and taught translation at McGill University.