ABSTRACT
The second epilogue brings the 2014 study up to date to 2019 by describing and illustrating at length the Soleil’s two productions from the second half of the decade: A Room in India (Une chambre en Inde, 2016) and Kanata: the First Episode (Controversy), 2018. A Room in India, collectively created, plays back as a farce a catalogue of past and current concerns: how to do theatre in very difficult times, how as Western artists to adapt Eastern forms (here terukkuttu), how to speak to issues of terrorism and indoctrination, of ecological disaster and brutality towards women. Kanata, conceived of and directed by Robert Lepage – the first time another director has worked with the Soleil’s some 35 actors – was meant to be a three-part epic on the history of Canada’s First Nations people. Controversial and contested, the production was never performed in North America, but inflected for its Paris opening to take on the question of cultural appropriation. This chapter also sketches out the many ways in which the Soleil welcomes and encourages young companies, including break-out companies from its own ranks; it gestures to the Nomadic Schools the Soleil is now running in many different places in the world.
