Connecting Flights (review)

Connecting Flights. By Robert Lepage in conversation with Rémy Charest. Translated by Wanda Romer Taylor. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1998; pp. xi + 196. $15.95.

Connecting Flights is an absorbing introduction to the ideas and inspirations of Canadian theatre artist Robert Lepage. The book is based on conversations between Lepage and Rémy Charest, many of which occurred while the two men were literally in transit--on a train trip to Montreal, or a taxi ride to the Stockholm airport. This caught-on-the-run aspect itself gives clues about the nature of Lepage's life and art. World-renowned for productions such as The Dragons' Trilogy, Tectonic Plates, and The Seven Streams of the River Ota, Lepage is a semi-nomadic figure, somewhat better appreciated abroad than he is in his native Québec. He is a sought-after director whose work is dynamically international in more than one sense: habitually multi-lingual and cross-cultural in form, his productions involve complex forms of cultural exchange even before they begin their extensive overseas tours.

Lepage prefers working collaboratively, allowing the content of his shows to emerge through group problem-solving and serendipity. In this respect the volume's English-translation title is doubly apropos. (The original French version was published as Quelques zones de liberté in Québec in 1995.) Lepage's ingenuity is partly a matter of working out how to be in five places at once; mostly, though, it is a matter of forging networks among numerous individual and collective flights of imagination. Crossing as many literal and figurative boundaries as he does, Lepage deliberately courts chaos in his working methods. "Constraint and disorder act as stimulants," he says (88). Not surprisingly, he seldom lacks for new technical challenges. It is amusing to hear him recall a fraught cross-cultural moment during the first rehearsals for a show in Berlin. Gradually realizing that his cast wanted a more forceful approach than he was comfortable providing, he managed to persuade his assistant director to do the required yelling instead. He uses the account, however, not to reinforce entrenched notions about Germany and authority, but to make inquiry into the country's shifting social and political landscape.

Anecdotes constitute a great deal of the book's intrigue and charm. Besides reflecting back on his fifteen-year body of work in theatre, Lepage also provides glimpses of his formative years. As a young boy growing up in Québec City, Lepage used to take rides with his father who worked as a taxi driver-cum-tour guide. During long trips his father would pass the time with clients by improvising and embellishing stories about the city and its landmarks. In this way motion and story-telling were connected for Robert at an early age. Lepage recounts how in his teenage years a harrowing drug encounter preceded a depression that lasted nearly two years. His mode of recovery arrived when his sister pressured him--against his protests and tears--into trying out for a high school play. His first success on stage galvanized his energies and ambitions. He became so eager to continue his training that, although he was underage and lacked a high-school diploma, he managed to bluff his way into the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique. Only then did he discover what a high ratio of "charlatans" and taskmasters were on the faculty. Even so, he depicts one teacher, Marc Doré, as a "genuine father figure" not only to himself but to many others who have also gone on to distinguished careers in Québec theatre (144).

The book is conversational not only in form but in tone. It is much more like an extended and thematized series of program notes than an official career retrospective. In its perambulatory way the book allows Lepage to explore patterns and undercurrents in his approach to theatre as well as life. He talks about creating the one-man show Elsinore, based on Hamlet, while still haunted by the death of his father. He shares his...