「羅拔·莱帕赫」的話劇【藍龍】 / "The Blue Dragon" - A Play by Robert Lepage

1. Summary of the "Dragons Trilogy" and "The Blue Dragon":
(Source: YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYpC0aYe9ro&feature=related; French-English translation by lotusandcedar)

"... In the "Trilogy of the Dragons", Robert Lepage offers a fun and magical interpretation of the Chinese mythology in which the first three dragons (green, red and white) symbolize the first three seasons. With his recent production of The Blue Dragon, the cycle of the four seasons is now complete. The Blue Dragon is associated with winter and represents death and rebirth. It is invisible, lives under the snow, and manifests itself by lightning..."

2. "The Dragons Trilogy":
(Source: http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/theatre/the_dragons_trilogy/ )

"... In the beginning, there was nothing - or almost nothing. Six actors (including the director who had brought them together), two set designers and a producer, looking for the road to the Orient. A vacant lot turned into a parking, where imagination and memory would have to start digging.

In the beginning, there were three Chinatowns : one in Quebec City, in the 1930s, the backdrop to the Green Dragon symbolizing Springtime and Water; another in mid-20th Century Toronto, backdrop to the Red Dragon of Earth and Fire; a third, flourishing in Vancouver in the 1980s, where the autumnal and aerial White Dragon would deploy. There was an imaginary China, made of myth and a mess of miscellaneous rubbish : Tao, Yi King, Mah Jong, Tai Chi, Chinese laundries and Chinese Food, Tintin and the Blue Lotus, ying, yang, “chin chin”, and Made in Hong Kong. There was the story of aunt Marie-Paule, married to a Chinese man, a mother who had served in the CWACs, a parking watchman in his booth, and a glass sphere that played a Japanese melody.

In the beginning, there are Françoise and Jeanne. They are twelve and they are inseparable. They play shop with shoeboxes, using them to build a whole street, with boutiques and all. There is Lépine, the undertaker… There is Jeanne’s father’s barber shop, where she becomes fascinated with young Bédard’s red head, and where their eyes meet… There is old Wong’s laundry, where, on a cold night, William S. Crawford arrives, an Englishman hoping to set up shop in Quebec City…"

3. "The Blue Dragon":
(Source: http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/theatre/the_blue_dragon/)

"... Québécois director Robert Lepage’s characters are often travellers drawn to the revealing encounter with the other, the exotic, the unknown. Yet in all the stories Lepage has told through opera, film, or theatre, only one of his characters has ever gone away for good— Pierre Lamontagne, the central figure in The Dragons’ Trilogy, who departs as the play closes to study art in China.

Twenty years later, Lamontagne resurfaces in Shanghai’s Moganshan 50, a former industrial complex converted into an arts centre, now the heart of the contemporary Chinese art scene. Here he meets Claire Forêt, a Montreal ad executive, drawn like so many others to take advantage of the Chinese economic miracle. Claire, who had known Pierre in another life at art school, casts a decidedly western eye on his current existence. Through the shock of their rediscovery and confrontation, their common past opens an unexpected door to the future for both. Enter Xiao Ling, a Chinese artist exhibiting at Pierre’s gallery. As she faces wrenching choices, the young woman awakens hopes long buried in Claire. In the effervescent paradox that is modern China, the collision of these three characters brings about fundamental changes for each.

Co-written by Robert Lepage, winner of the 2007 Europe Theatre Prize, and his collaborator Marie Michaud (who also co-authored The Dragons’ Trilogy), and performed by Lepage, Michaud, and dancer Tai Wei Foo, The Blue Dragon bears all the hallmarks of Lepage’s original, brilliant, and highly visual style. As always, Lepage relies on the one inexhaustible resource the theatre possesses—the audience’s intelligence. ..."

4. Comments:

I really enjoyed the show at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Robert Lepage is famous for his stage setting and I was very impressed by all the light, sound and actions. Tai Wei Foo's dancing is beautifully choreographed and has a dream-like effect on stage. The story is fairly straight forward until the very end when the audience is presented with a surprising twist to the story. After watching "The Blue Dragon", I now really want to see "The Dragon Trilogy" !!

References:
* "Robert Lepage" Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepage,_Robert
* "Robert Lepage" La Caserne, Centre of Creation http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/robertlepage/
* "The Blue Dragon" La Caserne, Centre of Creation http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/theatre/the_blue_dragon/
* "The Blue Dragon" National Arts Centre http://www.nac-cna.ca/en/theatre/blue_dragon/video.asp