The Visual Laboratory of Robert Lepage

Investigates the influence of technology and visual art in the work of Robert Lepage, leading figure on the international stage.

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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.