EIF Conversations 3: Robert Lepage

Robert Lepage has received international recognition for his versatile theatrical talent as a playwright, actor, and director.

Raised in Quebec, Canada, he studied at Quebec City’s Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique from 1975 to 1978 and later joined workshops at Alain Knapp's theatre school in Paris.

Lepage returned to Canada and joined Théâtre Repère in 1980, where he created a series of award-winning plays. His work has pioneered the use of technology and has diverted from classic stage direction, as illustrated by 887.

The production is an autobiographical study into the validity and nature of memory in a digital age when we are constantly saturated by images archiving our daily lives and mediating our experiences. Lepage describes the show as "a dive into the waters of my past".

The apartment block on 887 Murray Avenue, Lepage’s childhood home in Quebec, is represented on stage as a giant dolls' house inhabited by shadow puppets. Lepage had a lonely childhood, developing alopecia at the age of six and later suffering from panic attacks and agoraphobia.

For Lepage, theatre became an integral form of masquerading. The play not only deals with his memories of isolation, but also questions Québécois identity that troubled the Province in the 1970s, when unemployment and nationalist discontent were on the rise.

To interrogate such issues, Lepage sees theatre as a critical form of dialogue between actors and audience members, describing it as a "spectacle of intelligence" whereby information is creatively presented for an audience to digest.