Robert Lepage / Ex Machina: Revolutions in Theatrical Space

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 Quebec, 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.

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.

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 * Robert Lepage is one of theatre's greatest living artists. This book shows why. Engaging comprehensively and intimately with Lepage's huge range of work, it reveals his extraordinary theatrical inventiveness and deep political commitment. -- Jen Harvie, Queen Mary University of London In this provocative volume James Reynolds offers new ways of understanding Robert Lepage's approach to theatre-making, arguing persuasively that this approach must be understood in spatial and architectural terms. Making skillful use of interview material and behind-the-scenes access to several Ex Machina productions and co-productions, this book offers Lepage studies a much-needed kick in the pants. -- Karen Fricker, Brock University, Canada