The quality of Robert Lapage's influence as a director from the audience / Spectator in shaping the mise-en-scène

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

A member of theatre faculty of Azad University – Central Tehran

Abstract









As a director, Robert Lepage is keen to employ an international and unfinished creativity in his creation methodology, a process by which the performer-author/actor-creator, in combination with the audience’s reaction, is used as part of the development of his mise-en-scène. The audience’s pleasure is also controlled and formed in some specific and significant elements of Lepage’s mise-en-scène. In this paper, I explore the ways in which the audience impacts Lepage’s mise-en-scène, and discuss the relationship between audiences and his performers. In Lepage’s theatricality and mise-en-scène, there are some specific tools and devices such as image, music, physical expression, a collage of different languages, film, pop and projection videos, internet, advertisement, painting, digital technology, slide, camera for live feedback or parallel images, visual arts and audio images occurring simultaneously. These elements are adjusted by the audience’s attendance. Lepage believes that the audience now has a new way of listening to stories, a new way of digesting stories, a new way of understanding stories. This is managed by Technical Presence as a way of thinking about the roles and functions of a theatre audience, and how the audience can be used and engaged and become more than just an onlooker. Increasingly, Lepage’s mise-en-scenes are based on the dramaturgy of visual images, rather than verbal language, to engage the audience. However, diverse languages are added to his theatricality (some lines) during his tours to different countries. All of these communicative tools/ features engage with the audiences to serve as a unifying factor to tell stories that bring people together.
The audience’s expectations and comments affect Lepage’s mise-en-scène in two ways:
(i) An indirect association with the audiences through the performers’ suggestions and comments;
(ii) A direct association with the actual and public audiences.
However different signs are prevalent in different cultures which can lead, using Lepage’s method, to comprehension. Therefore, it is important to understand the codes and meanings of the cultures in each individual audience who would be dependent on particular experiences. The backgrounds of codes and events, attached to the cultures, are vital to finding content and further understanding. Regardless of the difficulty of understanding different languages in different countries, Lepage attempts to establish an understandable language through a variety of associations with international audiences, his performers and their cultures. In contrast to Barba’s and Brook’s approaches, Lepage attempts to receive the actual audience’s expectations openly. His work is on the process of developing during each night’s performance. On the one side, Lepage’s approach is close to Boal’s approach, and both are in a direct association with audiences. However, Lepage does not request the audience’s collaboration physically or in participation. For Lepage, the opening night is the beginning of rehearsals and performing is the rehearsal process. This is why he uses the term open or public rehearsal for performance. It seems there is no end in developing Lepage’s mise-en-scène unless Lepage decides to end his show. Overall, there are nine ways in which the audience impacts Lepage’s

Keywords

References

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پی نوشت ها
Journal of Fine Arts: Performing Arts & Music
Volume 26, Issue 1
March 2021
Pages 45-57

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