March 16, 2012 | Theatre,

The Creator of THE ANDERSEN PROJECT: Robert Lepage

By Alyssa Mulligan

ROBERT LEPAGE

Born:  December 12, 1957

Hometown:  Quebec City

Career Highlights:

• In 1982 he joined Théâtre Repère
• In 1985 The Dragon’s Trilogy won him immediate international attention
• Artistic director of the National Arts Centre’s Théâtre français in Ottawa from 1989 to 1993
• In 1994, Lepage founded the multidisciplinary production company, Ex Machina
• In 1994, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada”for his particularly imaginative and innovative work”
• For Quebec City’s 400th anniversary in 2008, Robert Lepage and Ex Machina created the largest architectural projection ever achieved: The Image Mill
• Lepage has been involved in many different art forms including directing a Peter Gabriel music tour, producing art exhibits and directing two Cirque du Soleil shows

Interesting Facts:

• At age five, he was diagnosed with a rare form of alopecia, which caused complete hair loss over his whole body.
• As a teenager he struggled with depression, and turned to drama classes to conquer his shyness.
• Lepage’s first interest was actually geography, which he says still influences how he creates work and his interest in touring and cross-cultural interactions
• Studied at Québec City’s Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique for three years before studying in Paris with Alain Knapp’s theatre school
• Still a self-proclaimed “shy person” despite performing many one-man shows
• When asking collaborators for help creating a name for his new theatre company, he had one condition: the name could not contain the word theatre
• The Andersen Project is both based on the biography of Hans Christian Anderson and the autobiography of Robert Lepage

Quotes:

“I think I’m what you may call an interdisciplinary artist, which is very, very complex and very, it’s more, it’s a fashionable term but I’d say it describes what I do quite well… I like being kind of vague in… how I define myself, and I believe in chaos very much. I believe that the only real invention comes out of chaos, and so it’s better not to know who you are, where you are when you start off if you want to accomplish something good.”  (BBC Radio interview with John Tusa; read more & listen to the rest of the interview here.)

“I think theatre naturally brings you to the spoken word, but you have to be ready for that and, and if it takes a whole career to get there then, and, and I prefer that because I think that unfortunately the word is too often the starting point of theatre and, and that gives way to one kind of theatrical expression. I think an image could also trigger theatrical expression and maybe the word is the final thing.”

“[Hans Christian Andersen] writes children’s tales, and we have an image of this tall, naive nerd who is inoffensive and all about fantasy, and actually he was very much about sexual fantasies.”

Make sure to catch Robert Lepage’s latest one-man show The Andersen Project MARCH 24-APRIL 1 at the Cutler Majestic Theatre.