ABSTRACT
Robert Lepage is one of the world’s foremost theatre directors, and is widely regarded as a key contemporary performance visionary. He is a director, playwright/deviser, actor and multi-media artist whose performance practice combines various artistic forms, traditions and cultures. The theatre is only one of the media used by Lepage. He also works as a film auteur and directs opera, rock concerts, installations and large spectacle performances – notably his directing of KA in 2004, a $200 million production for the Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. Lepage connects popular culture with high-art aestheticism, through a visually engaging theatricality made for people dissatisfied with traditional textbased theatre. He challenges the audience’s understanding of the theatre performance as a finished and complete artistic act through his work-inprogress approach, which is developmental, open and one of continuous transformation. Consequently, Lepage views performance as rehearsal and rehearsal as performance – blurring the difference between the two, he often uses the term ‘open’ or ‘public rehearsal’ for performance.
