Intermediality in the Theatre of Robert Lepage

Thaïs Flores Nogueira Diniz

This essay opens by defining the kinds of texts that combine different semiotic systems and media in Robert Lepage’s theatrical production, The Busker’s Opera. It explores the recycling of earlier material, such as score and lyrics to John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1728), and the music and scenic innovations from Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s Dreigroschenoper (1928). It also describes the intermedial strategies and processes used by Lepage to show how these are at work in a totally intermedial theatrical experience.

As Claus Clüver has stated in his article “Intermediality and Interarts Studies”, the concept of “intermedia” signs or texts, along with those of “multimedia” and “mixed-media” texts, forms part of the instruments operated by a transdisciplinary field dedicated to the study of “intermediality.” […] Intermediality must be seen as a comprehensive phenomenon that includes all the relations, topics, and issues traditionally investigated by interarts studies. It concerns such transmedial pheno- mena as narrativity, parody, and the implied reader/listener/viewer as well as the intermedial aspects of the intertextualities inherent in individual texts – and the in- evitably intermedial character of each medium. (2007: 19; 32) A great number of cultural productions of our time are made up of texts of various types which can be interconnected in many ways in one and the same production. In 1992 Clüver proposed that three basic types of interrelation in such texts can be distinguished, and he fur- nished brief definitions of the three, which he repeated in his article of 2007: A multimedia text comprises separable and individually coherent texts in different media, while the complex signs in different media contained in a mixed-media text would not be coherent or self-sufficient outside of that context. [… An intermedia text is] constituted by two or more sign systems in such a way that the visual, musical, verbal, kinetic, or performative aspects of its signs cannot be sepa- rated or disunited. (Ibid.: 25) An illustrated book is a multimedia text; a comic strip is a mixed-media text; calligrams are intermedia texts. Leo H. Hoek schematized these categories with regard to word and image relations in 1995 (cf. 77), a schema which was slightly modified by Eric Vos in 1997 (cf. 327); Clüver presented it as a diagram in 2007 (cf. 26). This schema

232 Thaïs Flores Nogueira Diniz

indicates that, while all three types are received simultaneously, this is not true of the text production. The elements in a text constituted by different media and juxtaposed in a multimedia text are separable and often produced separately (such as a book and its illustrations), while the text and the visual representations combined in a comic strip, usually distinct elements that require the presence of the other to make sense, are produced simultaneously. So are the text and its visual shape fused in a calligram, where the text acquires its specific mean- ing only from that shape, and the visual form, if it were made up of lines and not of those words, would signify an object or nothing much at all. In actual cultural productions, these three types of texts are quite frequently combined. That is certainly true of the staging of plays and even more so of operas, especially when considering the many medial resources employed in contemporary theater. The above considerations have led me to think about how to char- acterize Robert Lepage’s The Busker’s Opera, first produced in 2002. I intend to describe the resources used by Lepage, that is, the media employed in the work’s production, including some of the strategies used as well as the effects achieved by these in order to explore the intermedial character of the production. In this analysis, Lepage’s work will be considered in three aspects: intertextuality, adaptation, and the interaction between the many media involved. The Canadian Robert Lepage (b. 1975) is considered by critics as one of the most prolific and daring directors today. Together with his team, he has created Ex Machina1, a center for multicultural productions that employs a revolutionary method based on two important aspects: the ‘recycling’ of already existing works and the meshing of types of performance art and new technologies.

1 The name Ex Machina was chosen because Lepage wanted a name for the company without the word ‘theatre’ in it, thus avoiding pinning his work down to one medium (see Ex Machina 2009) Intermediality in the Theatre of Robert Lepage 233

I. Recycling an Earlier Work

The Busker’s Opera is a free adaptation of John Gay’s (1685–1732) masterpiece The Beggar’s Opera (1728), a ‘ballad opera’2 that was a sensation in its day because it was simultaneously a satire of the corrupt government at the beginning of the eighteenth century in England and a parody of the Italian opera that had recently come into vogue. Originally, Lepage’s piece relied more heavily on Bertolt Brecht’s (1898–1956) and Kurt Weill’s (1900–1950) adaptation of Gay’s piece, Die Dreigroschenoper (‘The Threepenny Opera’, 1928), as the title of the first production in Quebec in 2002 attests, when it was called Die Dreigroschenoper Songspiel3. But because Brecht’s and Weill’s heirs denied Lepage the right to convert Die Dreigroschenoper into a satire of the music industry (see Fondevila 2005), the work was recast as an adaptation of The Beggar’s Opera and renamed The Busker’s Opera4, and some songs, like Weill’s “Moritat von Mackie Messer”, were removed and replaced with new songs. The new version was first performed in Montréal in February 2004. The music of Gay’s comic play was based on popular songs, some of which had been used previously in other plays, for which he wrote new lyrics5. The characters belong to the criminal underworld: thieves, highway robbers, murderers, receivers, corrupt policemen, and prostitutes. However, they dress, and in many ways, act like nobility. The plot revolves around two groups of outlaws: one headed by Macheath, an elegant highwayman, who seduces Polly, Peachum’s daughter. Peachum is the head of a second group of outlaws, and assisted by Lockit the jailor, he controls crime in the city, receiving both payment

2 “A sort of burlesque opera which flourished on the English stage for several years following the appearance of Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. [… It] told its story in songs set to old tunes.” (Holman/Harmon, eds. 1992: 45) 3 It premiered in May 2002 as part of the Carrefour International de Théâtre de Québec with the title Die Dreigroschenoper Songspiel and was based mainly on Brecht’s and Weill’s Dreigroschenoper. 4 ‘Busker’ means an itinerant musician. 5 Some of the tunes included were those by such well-known composers as Henry Purcell and Georg Friedrich Händel, among others. The German immigrant Johann Christoph Pepusch (1667–1752), who had been one of the foremost leading composers of the pasticcio opera, harmonized the tunes for The Beggar’s Opera (cf. Abraham 1985: 450, 370). 234 Thaïs Flores Nogueira Diniz

for the imprisonments and hangings carried out and bribes from the bandits. When he discovers the relationship between Macheath and his daughter, Peachum decides to kill two birds with one stone: to receive a reward for denouncing his son-in-law and to get rid of him at the same time. Macheath manages to escape, assisted by another woman, Lucy, Lockit’s daughter who is pregnant with his child. Macheath is then arrested again, betrayed by the prostitutes he visits instead of es- caping. Ready to die, tired of being fought over by women, at the last moment Macheath is allowed a reprieve by the fictional author of the text, a beggar who appears at the beginning and the end of the play. For almost three hundred years, the play has enjoyed international prestige and been the inspiration for many adaptations, the most famous being Die Dreigroschenoper. In 1978 Brazilian audiences re- lished Chico Buarque de Hollanda’s Ópera do Malandro6. Brecht’s and Weill’s Dreigroschenoper opened in Berlin in 1928. Their adaptation shifts the action to the nineteenth century and rein- forces the satiric identification of the actions and attitudes of the characters from the underworld with those of the dominant class, the capitalist bourgeoisie. Much of the basic plot remains the same, except that Peachum controls the beggars of London, and his shop assigns them the stations where to beg and provides them with the appropriate apparel. There is also a scene showing the secret wedding of Peach- um’s daughter, Polly, to Macheath, in which she receives the gift of a bed as well as many other stolen objects, all with the blessings of Sheriff Tiger Brown, a former companion of Macheath’s in the war and now chief of police in London. Brecht has expanded Polly’s role, by having her inform her husband about her parents’ plans to get rid of the thief by arresting him and thereby hinder their marriage. Brecht also has Macheath instruct her about running the business in his ab- sence; she remains the leader of his gang after he is arrested. Brecht also expanded the role of the prostitute Jenny, who betrays Macheath twice. Similar to Gay’s piece, in the prison there is a like encounter between Polly and Lucy, here the sheriff’s daughter; Lucy helps Mac- heath escape. As a consequence, Peachum threatens Tiger Brown with the beggars’ disturbance of the coronation ceremonies should he choose to protect Macheath. Macheath is finally arrested again and

6 Chico Buarque’s work can be seen as a true innovation in the performing arts in Brazil, while at the same time serving the purpose of commenting on the Brazilian social and political situation in the late 1970s during the reign of the military regime. Intermediality in the Theatre of Robert Lepage 235

brought to the gallows, since his gang has not been able to get the money to save him. The piece ends with a monologue by Peachum, who steps out of his role as ring leader of the beggars to comment that, since this is an opera and not real life, Macheath will be saved. At that moment, an order arrives from the Queen forgiving Macheath and appointing him to knighthood. While Macheath rejoices, Peach- um, stepping out of his role as the ring leader of the beggars, com- ments that this would be impossible in real life. The German adaptation pushes Gay’s satire even further by under- lining Brecht’s idea that theater should lead to a critical reflection on life. Brecht’s play blames capitalist society for the criminal underworld that Gay presented merely as a mirror-image satire of eighteenth-century aristocracy. So Brecht transforms Macheath into a morally ambiguous hero, highlights the parallels between Polly and Lucy, and replaces the jailer Lockit with Sheriff Jackie Brown, who protects his former army buddy’s criminal activity in exchange for a percentage of his spoils. Lepage’s adaptation retains the basic plot found in both previous works7: the anti-hero has two women fighting over him; some names, like Macheath and Peachum, Lucy and Polly, Jenny and Lockit, re- mind us of the previous works in which the story is also told through music. In all the versions the main theme is ‘the impossibility of draw- ing the line between lawfulness and criminality and of showing the true transgressors, found indifferently among criminals and those in power’ (cf. Oliveira 1999: 24 [my translation]). However, in most other respects Lepage’s adaptation is more radical, both in theme and in genre. Instead of being drawn from the criminal underworld, the characters in The Busker’s Opera belong to the world of the music industry: musicians seeking fame, fans, agents, lawyers, representatives of foundations, and even prostitutes. The highway bandit Macheath has become a rock star, the lead singer of a band, who tries to rise to the top in a music industry that looks suspiciously like the sordid underworld of Brecht’s and Weill’s Dreigroschenoper. Mr. Peachum is an artist’s agent; his wife Cécile, a grotesque character, plays in musicals;

7 For this analysis, I am using a DVD recording of the actual performance from 25 June 2005 at Zellerbach Playhouse on University of California campus at Berkeley and the script (a manuscript) for the play, which was produced and provided by Ex Machina. 236 Thaïs Flores Nogueira Diniz

and his daughter Polly is a disc jockey who performs magic with the turntables. Macheath, to whom Polly is also secretly married, is a skirt chaser, with conquests such as the downtrodden Jenny Diver and Lucy, the daughter of Lockit, a prosperous lawyer and public defender who makes a deal with Peachum to arrest the ‘Don Juan’ for infring- ing on a copyright. The musicians travel first from London to New York in search of new opportunities, then on to Atlantic City, where the hero escapes arrest, then to New Orleans, and finally to Huntsville, Texas, the location of a prison famous for its executions, where Mac- heath is caught again and condemned to die. Fittingly, he is offered a “killer burger”8, the last meal for condemned convicts. His ‘crime’ is simply that of parodying other people’s compositions (as does the play in which he appears). Unlike his namesakes in The Beggar’s Opera and Die Dreigroschenoper, he is executed in Lepage’s adaptation. While retaining similar plotlines, each version of the work depicts a different moment in history and different cultural and political val- ues. Gay’s takes aim at the passionate interest the English upper clas- ses showed for Italian opera and, dealing with social inequality through the comparison of low-class thieves and prostitutes with aris- tocrats and the bourgeoisie, simultaneously attacks the Whig states- man Robert Walpole in the person of Macheath. As the Beggar says at the end: Had the play remain’d, as I at first intended, it would have carried a most excel- lent moral: ‘Twould have shown that the lower sort of people have their vices in a degree as well as the rich. And that they are punish’d for them. (Gay 1999: 57) Die Dreigroschenoper, though still set in London, but in the next century, recalls Berlin in the 1920s, when the vacuum of its shattered culture eagerly embrace[d] the new influences, especially the intrigue of American movies and jazz, with a decadent zest fuelled by the desperation of a crashed economy and social unrest (Gutmann 2004: paragraph 1). But the ideological thrust here is not American. It is aimed at denigrat- ing capitalist society. This is communicated ironically through the fi- nal ‘message’ given by none other than Peachum, which advocates to- lerance for injustice. Set in our day, Lepage’s adaptation explores the merciless attitude of the (global) music industry – dominated by copyright and other cor-

8 “Killer Burger” is the title of scene thirty-four in the script. The whole episode, without song but accompanied by the percussion, represents Macheath’s last meal. Intermediality in the Theatre of Robert Lepage 237

porate considerations – which swallows up artists and hinders artistic freedom. By having Macheath condemned and executed for his use of other artists’ compositions, Lepage may be subtly referring to Brecht, who is famous for the practice of reusing other artists’ works, but whose own heirs did not allow the Canadian playwright to use the score from the Dreigroschenoper in The Busker’s Opera. The new version of the work, which recycles Brecht’s model instead of using its songs and lyrics, is thus consistent with what Brecht has done and can be seen as a satirical answer to Brecht’s and Weill’s heirs, whose attitudes would have led to their champion’s execution in the busker’s world. Thus, using similar themes, each work satirizes conditions particular to its contemporary world and has a different political aim. A significant shift in Lepage’s recycling of the original model can be seen in the use he makes of Gay’s text and music, and in the staging of The Busker’s Opera. He has added a video screen, which may also affect our designation of the work’s genre. As Gay and Brecht and Weill did, Lepage calls his work an ‘opera’. In fact, all three works that we have discussed use as a generic foil the traditional idea of opera as a theatrical enactment of a dramatic plot primarily or ex- clusively told by music performed by singers/actors, frequently a cho- rus, and an orchestra, which is usually placed in an orchestra pit that separates the stage from the audience. Not infrequently, opera also includes dance. Over the centuries, opera has undergone many changes in dramatic orientation, style, and conventions, and it has developed a number of distinct genres. As we have seen, Gay’s work parodies a particular genre – Italian opera. Brecht and Weill, whose Dreigrosch- enoper premiered in a theater with a few instrumentalists placed on the stage, challenged prevailing notions both of theater and of opera. Even more daring, Lepage’s production, with its intertextual references both to the two older versions, evoked by its title and its plot, and also to a multitude of other musical compositions and media, may be considered to establish a new quasi-operatic genre exactly because it ‘recycles’ the music of its earliest model. What distinguishes his approach is a radical use of the stage. While Gay’s Beggar’s Opera established the new genre of the ballad opera, it remains the only really notable example. Poking accu- rate fun at the prevailing fashion in Italian opera, Gay cut the standard five acts of comedy to the three common in opera and filled forty-five fast-paced scenes of spoken dialogue with sixty-nine familiar tunes for which he had written new lyrics. Thus, the tune of “Oh London Is a 238 Thaïs Flores Nogueira Diniz

Fair Town” was heard as “Our Polly is a Sad Slut”. The music was based on broadside ballads, operatic arias, church hymns, and popular songs, some still popular today, among them “A Fox May Steal Your Hens, Sir”, “Over the Hills and Far Away”, “Lilli Burlero”, “I Once Loved a Lass”, “Bessy Bell”, and “Greensleeves”. The tunes were ar- ranged by the composer Johann Christoph Pepusch, who also wrote the overture to the piece. Die Dreigroschenoper contains many of the major elements of Brecht’s developing concept of ‘epic theater’, especially the constant references to the stage as such, which, for the audience of the time, supposedly helped achieve the desired distancing effect. Thus, the scenery is recognized as scenery, and besides the visible placement of the small orchestra on the stage, there are placards and a change of lighting to announce the performance of a song, which disrupts the dramatic action. The predominantly polite and educated language (which would be inconsistent with many of the characters) contains street slang, tired clichés, and a mix of Biblical quotations. Weill’s music is also modeled upon tunes of ballads and popular songs, church hymns, and operatic arias; it “abruptly shifts among classics, popular dance tunes and jazz” (Gutmann 2004: paragraph 6). The discordant mesh of jazz, folk, and avant-garde music added to the play’s unexpected popular appeal, a reaction contrary to Brecht’s intention. Among the opera’s twenty songs we can list “Morgenchoral des Peachum” (“Peach- um’s Morning Anthem”), the only song directly taken from The Beg- gar’s Opera, and the famous “Moritat von Mackie Messer” (“Mack the Knife”), reused later by Chico Buarque in his Ópera do Malan- dro9, and which has become a jazz standard. Rather than ‘opera’, the piece might have been called a ‘Songspiel’, like Brecht’s and Weill’s Little Mahagonny Songspiel of 1928 and a few later works by Weill. The term, which describes a play with a succession of songs linked by spoken dialogue, is a version of ‘Singspiel’, the eighteenth-century German equivalent of ballad opera. Lepage’s Busker’s Opera may indeed be defined as a ‘Songspiel’, as the original title, Die Dreigroschenoper Songspiel indicates. Differ- ently from the Brecht/Weill adaptation, almost all the lyrics and melodies were borrowed from Gay, but they do not all appear in the same

9 Otherwise, all lyrics and melodies are Chico Buarque’s own and were especially composed for this play. In this sense, Buarque’s Ópera differs from Gay/Pepusch’s and Brecht/Weill’s. Intermediality in the Theatre of Robert Lepage 239

order, and some are sung by other characters than in Gay’s piece. What Lepage’s team did was to change the rhythm, style, and manner of performance of the songs, especially during the musicians’ trip, in which each musical style employed has been made famous by the city where the troupe is performing. What is truly different – although it may be seen as an extension of the staging of the Dreigroschenoper – is the use and exploration of many media, an achievement which ex- plodes the generic implications of ‘Songspiel’ and even of ‘opera’.

II. The Radical Use of the Stage: Meshing Media and Types of Performance

Lepage has often incorporated the technological richness offered by the contemporary world in his productions for the stage. On its web page, Ex Machina is described as a laboratory that mixes the performing with the recording arts: […] a multidisciplinary company bringing together actors, writers, set designers, technicians, opera singers, puppeteers, computer graphic designers, video artists, film producers, contortionists and musicians (Anonymous 2006). Any spectacle performed by the company takes intermediality far be- yond the traditional mixing of media in productions for the dramatic or operatic stage. The Busker’s Opera relies heavily on video as a medium, but there is no version of the production specifically designed for video. The company keeps some videos of performances available for research. The one I have relied on is a DVD recording from a performance in the United States in 200510. In a number of respects the 2005 production extended the innovative uses Brecht had made of the stage: a small orchestra is placed on the proscenium stage, at the back of which there is a raised platform where the musicians/actors sometimes perform; all the actors sing, but not all of them are professional singers; moreover, they all play instruments. As an extension of Brecht’s idea of using posters on the stage, the Ex Machina performance includes a video screen onto which texts and live video recordings are projected. While Brecht changed the colour of the lighting for each song, the Canadian

10 Some photos of the performance can be found at http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/ theatre/the_buskers_opera [08/22/2008]. 240 Thaïs Flores Nogueira Diniz

production shines spotlights on the actor who is performing at the moment. The most prominent feature of the stage design is the use of two re- versible and movable props shaped as telephone booths. These take the role of actual phone booths or alternatively, when the eight sides of the booths are flattened out, they form a prison wall with barred windows behind which Macheath can be seen by the other characters and the audience. Additionally, the eight sides of both booths can form the walls of a room equipped with peepholes through which a stage audience watches the action downstage. These ‘booths’ are placed at the center of a circular revolving part of the stage, which is transformed into a peep show, a cabaret, and a prison. There is little scenery besides the platform at the back and these versatile booths, which remain on stage most of the time, and create a symbolic space for the intrusion of the media into our lives as well as a place where the characters look both inward and outward. The video screen that is suspended above the stage can be pushed to the side by the actors or it can be moved mechanically. It looks like a television screen and functions as a show bill and also as a place where visual commentaries on the action are projected: sometimes it features verbal texts (lyrics, legends, and speeches, occasionally in different languages); at other moments, musicians are in the spotlight, and their image is simultaneously projected on the screen, duplicating the action and its perception by the audience. The screen’s movement creates displacements by hiding or magnifying scenes or explaining details; sometimes it comes downstage to focus on the characters’ movements or parts of the scene. To illustrate Lepage’s use of the above-mentioned elements and strategies, I will describe two episodes from The Busker’s Opera, “Duo d’adieu” and “Duo de la jalousie”, which are announced by their respective titles projected on the screen. “Duo d’adieu” occurs at the end of the first act, after the initial encounter between Polly and Macheath, with “a few days later” projected onto the video screen on the forestage. The scene is the equivalent of the closing scene (scene thirteen) of Gay’s first act, Macheath’s parting from Polly. Lepage uses two of its songs, Air XVI, “Over the Hills and Far Away”, and Air XVIII, “O the Broom” with the lyrics “The miser thus a shilling sees”; characteristically, Macheath compares the situation of leaving Polly with having to part with a shilling, while Polly compares Macheath’s departure to the loss of a favorite sparrow. As stated above, Lepage has retained both the lyrics and the Intermediality in the Theatre of Robert Lepage 241

melodies, even while changing the rhythm and style of the music. While the actors are singing, the lyrics are simultaneously projected onto the video screen. The setting involves the two telephone booths placed side by side in front of the platform on which the musicians are seated. Macheath is standing inside the booth on the right. Even though his whole body is visible, only the upper part is shown on the screen. Inside the left booth the audience can see the upper part of a woman dressed as a bride. We identify her as Polly. From her phone Polly asks her beloved where he is going, and he answers “America”. At that moment Polly and Macheath begin singing. During this exchange, the audience sees both the actual booths on the stage and their projections on the screen. The flat screen with the image of the respective characters and lyrics of his or her songs moves from one booth to the other to highlight the change of singers and the isolation of the respective characters. The camera, which is not visible, alter- nates between the booths with a pendular movement, but stops for a few seconds between them. In this scene we initially see only the word “telephone” written on the actual booths. With the movement of both the revolving part of the stage and the camera, the word “telephone” disappears, and there remains only part of it − “one” –, which refers to the fact that each, especially Polly, is alone. In another moment, the word “phone” remains, perhaps to be read as a noun, or as a verb, an invitation. After the song and a dialogue, Macheath walks away, leaving Polly alone in her booth. At the end of the scene, the image on the screen of Macheath walking away gradually turns into that of a plane, indicating his departure with his band to New York where the action then takes place. The second episode under analysis, “Duo de la jalousie”11, depicts the moment when the protagonist has been arrested and Lucy and Polly fight over his love. The walls of the booths now function as a prison; Macheath is visible behind the bars and witnesses the women’s exchange. This moment corresponds to the end of the thirteenth scene in the second act of Gay’s Opera, with the two women singing Gay’s lyrics to the tune of Air XXXVIII, “Good Morrow”, which has again been changed in rhythm and style. The lyrics are as follows:

11 On the DVD this part is not called “Duo de la jalousie” as in the script, but is en- titled “Duet of crime” in the DVD and is announced by a text projected onto the video screen. 242 Thaïs Flores Nogueira Diniz

Lucy: Why how now, Saucy Jade? Sure the wench is tipsy! How can you see me made The scoff of such cheap trade? She’s nothing but a gypsy; Saucy Jade! (script) This is Polly’s response: Polly: Why how now, Madame Flirt? If thus you must chatter, And are for flinging dirt, Let’s see what’s up your skirt And who then best can splatter; Madame Flirt! (script) Interestingly, Lucy wears Arabic garments and sings first in English, then in Arabic. Polly is dressed in Israeli garments and sings her response first in English and then in Hebrew. In both cases, the lyrics appear on the screen in English and then in Arabic and in Hebrew, respectively. At the end of the duet, both women hurl violent words at each other, which are represented by graphic signs similar to those in cartoon balloons; then they both dance in the style of the music of the countries they represent. These intermedial resources – music, chore- ography, costume, scenery, speeches, and other signs – create a refer- ence to the Arab-Israeli conflict: this comic representation may be un- derstood as a metaphor of their bitter quarrel, possibly triggered by the word “gypsy” in Gay’s lyrics. Depending on one’s interpretation, one can also read this scene as a satirical comment on the international conflict. Macheath watches the scene, which he finally seems to en- joy, as another manifestation of the women’s rivalry over him. The visual and auditory effects of the play as a whole are compel- ling because we see and hear all the action through different media op- erating simultaneously: video images, actors performing on the mov- ing stage or on the platform at the back, instrumental music and songs played by the actors/musicians in plain sight. A good deal of the audience’s attention is taken up by these metatheatrical aspects, as if the interactive media in constant movement and transformation have a role of their own to play in this production. Intermediality in the Theatre of Robert Lepage 243

III. Towards a Totally Intermedial Theater

The episodes roughly described here serve to exemplify the processes and strategies employed by Robert Lepage. The Busker’s Opera is a representative example of the works produced by Lepage and Ex Machina; it is characterized by its recovery and recycling or reinscrip- tion of earlier works in its plots and musical resources, as well as by its inventive employment of the traditional theater media and a number of new media. The Busker’s Opera was designed for stage production, there is also a DVD that can be accessed separately. Although what the audience sees and hears both on the stage and on the screen is a predominantly mixed-media text (which, in the projected lettering of the various languages, even includes intermedia texts), the performance itself is clearly a multimedia work. Combining different visual, verbal, linguistic, and musical strategies with new technologies which enhance the theatrical experience, Lepage has created an intermedial theater whose effects are dependent upon the intertextual and multi- medial transpositions and effects. The interactive combination of all these medial resources in constant metamorphosis, which can be seen as the production’s most re- markable characteristic, raises questions about the generic assignation expressed by its title. As The Busker’s Opera signals the work’s strong intertextual connection to its two major models and sources, it also invites its audience to relate it to an opera, a genre from which its conception and staging appear to be fairly far removed. But in this re- spect it continues the example set by Brecht’s and Weill’s Dreigro- schenoper, to which it remains profoundly committed in spite of the imposed strictures that led to a return to Gay’s Beggar’s Opera and the ‘recycling’ of its plot, characters, lyrics, and tunes. Expanding the scenic means used by Brecht and Weill to create a totally intermedial theater that employs twenty-first century techniques and themes has made this production into a stimulating theatrical event appealing to contemporary sensibilities.

References

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