Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION Machina PART ONE PUPPET THEATRE AND QUARRY: TWO MODELS AS A HORIZON Theatre of the object A puppet theatre set The Seven Streams of the River Ota The cube The actor as puppet? The shadow and the quarry PART TWO THE HORIZON OF THE IMAGINATION: TECHNOLOGICAL ECHOES The imago First echo: light technology "Theatre beings in a quarry and we light a fire" Creator of shadows Between shadow and light: the mirror Technological experiments Second echo: photography Photography as a reference Photography as an index Photography as a metaphor for the psychic apparatus Third echo: cinema A film narrative A movie set A cinematic gaze Fourth echo: video From the monitor to the movie screen Video and the mirror Video palimpsest Fifth echo: a virtual environment: the ultimate palimpsest? The modeling route The digitization route The palimpsest space Sixth echo: sound technology The issues of amplification Sound technology, or the art of accompaniment Sound technology: a new sort of protagonist PART THREE THE BREACH IN THE HORIZON: ECHOES OF CHAOS Lepage's practice: from resource to system The resource: the heart and focal point of the rehearsal From openness to vertigo: Lepage's approach Intervals and overlaps in phases of work Lepage's stage: a multicultural space Gazing into the unknown Miscegenation The stage: a space for unlikely encounters Orientalism and multimedia: a new baroque? A baroque-dominated reading of the Orient Tension and spatial organization: the ultimate embodiment of the baroque Vertical ambiguity PART FOUR THE HORIZON IN CONCLUSION Appendix 1: Robert Lepage shows mentioned in this book Appendix 2: Chronology of Robert Lepage's creations Bibliography

Promotional Information

Display at the Talonbooks booth at the American Theatre Association for Higher Education Annual Conference in Orlando, FL, in August 2013 Display at the Talonbooks booth at the Canadian Associaton for Theatre Research Conference Advertisement in American Theatre Magazine and Publishers Weekly Online social media campaign: LibraryThing, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Tumblr Publicity and promotion in conjunction with the author's speaking engagements

About the Author

Ludovic Fouquet is a visual artist, actor, teacher, director, and founder of the company songes mecaniques (Mechanical Dreams in Blois, France), as well as for various projects and theatrical events (Mobilis Productions, Lille, France; Palazzo Farnese, Rome). In addition, he has collaborated as an interpreter with the trapeze company Le Tourbillon (created 2005). Independent works include two multimedia projects that combine sounds and images with dance and trapeze acrobatics. Collaborating with Benedict Bradel, Fouquet created L'invention de la " giraffe " (Theatre National de Chaillot, June 2005), a show comparing cinema and theater. After training as an actor and dancer, Fouquet earned his PhD studying the practice of Robert Lepage and its relationship to technology. Fouquet edited La trilogie des dragons (The Dragons' Trilogy, published in French by L'instant meme, Quebec, 2005), and developed a photographic monograph of this work. In addition to frequent speaking engagements at French universities (Amiens, Brest), Fouquet contributes regularly to numerous theater and contemporary art magazines (Cahiers de Theatre, JEU, ETC Montreal, theatre-contemporain.net ). He divides his time between life in France and in Quebec. Rhonda Mullins is a French-to-English translator, writer, and editor. As a literary translator, Rhonda has translated a number of works of non-fiction and was a finalist for the 2007 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation for the book The Decline of the Hollywood Empire by Herve Fischer. And the Birds Rained Down, her translation of the novel Il Pleuvait des Oiseaux by Jocelyne Saucier, was released by Coach House Books in October 2012. Rhonda holds an M.A. in Media Studies from Concordia University, as well as a B.A. in Communications and a B.Sc. in Political Science from the University of Ottawa, and has studied and taught translation at McGill University.

Reviews

“Fouquet’s impressively detailed observations reveal the alchemy taking place in Lepage’s ‘visual laboratory,’ as well as key influences that have driven his innovative, imagistic theatre from its beginnings … This book both reintroduces Lepage to scholarship and reminds us of the central position Lepage occupies in contemporary theatre practice.”
– James Reynolds

“The Visual Laboratory of Robert Lepage is essential reading for anybody interested in new-media performance and represents a valuable next step in the research of Lepage’s theatricality.”
– Aleksander Saŝa Dundjerovic

“This book will be of great value to those interested in understanding the evolution of Lepage’s creativity, as well as to artists, teachers, and students making their own work with Lepage’s practice as inspiration.”
– Karen Fricker

“Ludovic Fouquet, in addition to being an avid spectator at many of Robert Lepage’s shows in Quebec and Europe, has been a privileged witness to the working sessions of the prolific playwright and attended many hours of rehearsal during research for this book.”
– Louise Vigeant, JEU: revue de théâtre

“In illuminating Lepage’s methods of creation (where the text often appears only at the end of a process of collective improvisation), [Fouquet] explores the wealth of the playwright’s work as well as his occasional failures.”
– Marie Labrecque, author of Une longue, longue marche