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 interme- dial 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 inter- media text is] constituted by two or more sign systems in such a way that the vi- sual, 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-me- dia 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, usu- ally 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 in- termedial 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 produc- tions that employs a revolutionary method based on two important as- pects: 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 compa- ny without the word ‘theatre’ in it, thus avoiding pinning his work down to one medi- um (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 cor- rupt 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 re- moved and replaced with new songs. The new version was first per- formed 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 prosti- tutes. 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 compos- ers 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 fa- mous 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 char- acters from the underworld with those of the dominant class, the capi- talist 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.