Robert Lepage’s Scenographic Dramaturgy: The Aesthetic Signature at Work Melissa Poll Royal Holloway, University of London PhD in Drama & Theatre Studies 2014 Declaration of Authorship I, Melissa Poll, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: ______________________ Date: ________________________ Acknowledgements Foremost, I would like to thank my co-supervisors, Dr. Karen Fricker and Dr. Helen Gilbert for their ongoing support and dedication to my project from the initial scholarship proposal through the writing up process. Karen and Helen’s integrity, expertise and high standards have been an ongoing source of inspiration. I aspire to bring the same qualities to my future scholarly endeavours. I would also like to extend my thanks to Royal Holloway for supporting this project through a Reid Research Scholarship. Beyond my supervisory team, I am particularly grateful to David Williams for not only sharing his teaching expertise and classroom with me but also for many stimulating conversations that have fed my work. Thanks are due as well to Sophie Nield and Liz Schafer for generously sharing advice and feedback. My new friends, Dr. Keren Zaiontz, Dr. Emma Cox and Dani Phillipson have graciously offered their continued support and expertise, whether through conversations over coffee, walks along the Thames or on breaks at the college. To them, I would like to extend my sincerest thanks. I am grateful too to my classmates, particularly Alan Duffield, Joe McLoughlin and Jorge Pérez Falconi for their friendship, encouragement and unfailing availability to read drafts. Thank you to June, Lloyd and Holly Poll and Pat Law for their love and a lifetime of support. To my husband David and our little family, I am forever grateful. Je tiens à remercier Robert Lepage et son équipe à Ex Machina, notamment Michéline Beaulieu et Véronique St-Jacques. Pour Mara Gottler, un ami cher de Vancouver ainsi que le créatrice de costumes pour La Tempête et Le Rossignol et autres fables, merci. Abstract An inheritor of the scenic writing tradition established by theatre’s modern movement, director Robert Lepage’s scenography is his entry point when re-envisioning extant texts. When asked to detail his particular approach to staging, however, Lepage repeatedly defers to intuition, chaos and/or alchemy, positing that he has no method. My dissertation proposes a significant reversal to Lepage’s claims as they reference his adaptations of canonical works and theorizes his approach as a three-pronged ‘scenographic dramaturgy’, composed of historical-spatial mapping, architectonic scenography and bodies-in-motion. By examining a range of extant text productions mounted by Lepage, including La Tempête, a collaboration between Ex Machina and the Huron-Wendat Nation; Siegfried at the Metropolitan Opera; and The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, Ex Machina’s adaptation of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol, this project will detail how the three components of Lepage’s scenographic dramaturgy enable him to re-’write’ canonical works through highly physical and visual performance text. Table of Contents Table of Figures ..................................................................................................................... 1 Foreword ................................................................................................................................ 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 9 Chapter One: The Signature ................................................................................................. 35 Foundations ...................................................................................................................... 35 Lepage on Lepage ............................................................................................................ 41 Lineage ............................................................................................................................. 43 Architectonic Scenography .............................................................................................. 50 The Performing Body as Meaning-Maker ....................................................................... 54 Historical-Spatial Mapping .............................................................................................. 65 Chapter Two: Auteurs and Authority: Contextualizing Lepage’s Adaptations ................... 76 Emergence of the Auteur in Film and Theatre ................................................................. 76 A Note on Adaptation ...................................................................................................... 86 Forerunners: Peter Brook and Patrice Chéreau ................................................................ 87 Auteurship and Authority in the 1980s: JoAnne Akalaitis and Elisabeth LeCompte .... 100 Auteurs, Authenticity and Fidelity in Music .................................................................. 105 Chapter Three: Adapting ‘Le Grand Will’ in Wendake: Ex Machina and the Huron-Wendat Nation’s La Tempête .......................................................................................................... 109 Forerunners at home and abroad .................................................................................... 113 Lepage and Shakespeare ................................................................................................ 120 Context ........................................................................................................................... 122 La Tempête’s Historical-Spatial Mapping ..................................................................... 126 Architectonic Scenography ............................................................................................ 135 Imperial Resistance through Body Texts ....................................................................... 146 Chapter Four: Making Music Visible: Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Metropolitan Opera ............................................................................................................................................ 156 Wagner’s Evolving Aesthetic ........................................................................................ 159 Adolphe Appia’s Wagnerian Aesthetic .......................................................................... 167 Appia’s Inheritors ........................................................................................................... 172 Lepage’s Siegfried: A Twenty-first century Response to ‘Music Made Visible’ .......... 176 Historical-Spatial Mapping: An Uneasy Pairing of Convention and Innovation .......... 184 Bodies-in-motion: Singing Actors and Backstories through Body Doubles ................. 194 Reception & Conditions of Production .......................................................................... 213 Chapter Five: The Nightingale and Other Short Fables: Re-Authoring Atypical Opera .. 226 Making The Nightingale and Other Short Fables from Stravinsky’s Rossignol ........... 241 Historical-Spatial Mapping ............................................................................................ 245 Bodies-in-motion ............................................................................................................ 266 Architectonic Scenography ............................................................................................ 271 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 278 Works Cited ...................................................................................................................... 289 Table of Figures Figure 1. Lepage’s Extant Text Productions: 1983 - 2012 .................................................. 13 Figure 2. Lepage’s 2011 co-production of La Tempête with the Huron-Wendat Nation, featuring Alphonse (Steeve Gros-Louis), Ariel (Kathia Rock), Prospero (Jean Guy), Miranda (Chantal Dupuis), Ferdinand (Francis Roberge), Gonsalve (Normand Bissonnette), and Antonio (Frédérick Bouffard). (Photo: David Leclerc) ............................................... 119 Figure 3. Josephte Ourné c. 1840, oil on canvas by Joseph Légaré. Photo: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, © National Gallery of Canada ............................................................ 131 Figure 4. Miranda (Chantal Dupuis) and Ferdinand (Francis Roberge), La Tempête, 2011 (Photo: David Leclerc) ....................................................................................................... 134 Figure 5. Ariel (Kathia Rock) Prospero (Jean Guy), Miranda (Chantal Dupuis), and Ferdinand (Francis Roberge), La Tempête, 2011 (Photo: David Leclerc) ......................... 138 Figure 6. Members of the Sandokwa Dance Troupe and Ariel (Kathia Rock), La Tempête, 2011 (Photo: David Leclerc) .............................................................................................. 145 Figure 7. Étranglé or Trinculo (Jean-François Faber), Prospero (Jean Guy), Ariel (Kathia Rock) and Caliban (Marco Poulin), La Tempête, 2011 (Photo: David Leclerc) ............... 146 Figure 8. Design for Siegfried, 1875 (Josef Hoffmann) .................................................... 171 Figure 9. Siegfried, Act I, 1893 (Adolphe Appia)