Robert LePage’s Dragon Trilogy
I am very excited about the Dragon Trilogy coming to the Barbican.
I believe it is fair to say that Lepage’s work and particularly this key piece has deeply influenced modern theatre.
One can see it in works from Improbable and Complicite, although Complicite was first formed before the Dragon Trilogy was performed.
First staged around 1985, when stil in his 20′s. It’s a six-hour play divided into three acts, spanning over three decades, three Canadian cities and three languages. The play follows the lives of two Quebec girls, centring on themes of war, exile and cultural identity.
It’s almost “monsterism-plus” !
From Lepage’s site:
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…
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About me
I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.
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Recent Work
Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).
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Nakamitsu
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Yellow Gentlemen
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Mr. Lepage, I am a Spanish actor that I live in Barcelona and am very interested in being able to study with you, want to put in touch with you, thank you.
Josep Mª LLaveria Planelles
jmllaveria@hotmail.com Barcelona (Spain) 08/05/07