Top 70 Robert Lepage Quotes

Opera should be a place for art forms to meet. I’ve worked a lot with Peter Gabriel; his music isn’t operatic, but he creates big, popular gatherings to which architecture, dance, and music are all invited.

During the tour of ‘Circulations,’ we spent a lot of time in Canadian Chinatowns. I was fascinated by the idea that you can cross the road and enter this dream world, this vision of China.

I was brought up by a father and mother who were radically different.

If you decide to work with the opera world, chances are there are going to be people who resist that.

I always thought I was more of a mommy‘s boy, because she was charming, talkative, a great storyteller. But as I dug back into my past, I realized I am exactly like my father on so many levels, although I never thought I inherited anything from him.

Technology can become a crutch. Sometimes it’s there just to hide behind when you’re shy of what you’re trying to say.

People talk about fantastic memories of childhood, but I remember children being cruel to me and wanting to come out of childhood as soon as possible because I knew adults were generally more contained in their cruelty.

I enjoy juggling four or five different projects in the air and finding connections and disconnections between them.

Usually, on Broadway or in Hollywood, you come up with a project, and you have to convince the producers that it’s safe.

You’re only as good as your last movie, period. It’s a business.

In Grade 2, when we had to do a presentation in front of the class, I’d always do things about Ireland or Italy. I could draw maps; I could name all the capitals: I was completely drawn to other lands. I discovered with time that it’s a thirst for other people, for otherness, for something fascinating and mysterious.

The real writing of a piece comes only when you are performing it. It is why I like theatre. In film and TV, the image is locked forever, but in theatre, there is constant change; each performance is part of the writing process.

I like doing very small, intimate things in the morning and then, in the afternoon, to be working on something in a big stadium.

All of Vegas is false. There’s a false Paris, a false Venice, a false Baghdad – in fact, all of the early Vegas aesthetic is Baghdad, which is also the irony. It’s ‘Aladdin,’ the sands, ‘One Thousand and One Nights.’

We have a tendency in Quebec – and I include myself in this – to describe ourselves using the past. We’re always nostalgic.

I’ve always been a little scared of technology, which is why I explore it.

Theatre is different. We can spend two weeks around a table talking about subtext. In opera, there is a score, and people already know their parts. And they move differently. I find all this liberating.

My taste comes from when I was 12 years old and saw Genesis or Laurie Anderson or some performance artist who had put paint on himself. I’ve seen a lot of theater, but that’s not what woke up my taste to become a director; nontheatrical things were much more theatrical than the theater I was seeing.

I will always demand the right for theatre to talk about anything and anyone. Without exception. None.

Everybody loves Vegas, and everybody puts it down, especially intellectuals and artists. We have to rub our feet on it, but we’re all secretly thrilled to be there.

It’s obvious that any new show comes with its share of blunders, misfires, and bad choices.

My naivety is to assume people will think there’s compassion and solidarity in wanting to play someone even though we are not them.

People think that it is negative, but in fact, chaos can be very fertile.

Theater originated with technology. People forget that.

I’m a follower of people not necessarily connected with the theater.

We should never overestimate an audience‘s culture, but we should never underestimate their intelligence.

I’m trying to tell history with a capital H through histories with a small h. It moves people, because you know in your own personal relationships, your own story, there’s an echo to a much larger reality.

I think theatre must be an event, an experience, not compete with cinema. When people are able to download stories on Netflix, you need to give them a good reason to jump into the car and drive two hours. It has to be something you can only see in the theatre, and it has to be worth it.

I was a privileged observer to be there when Celine Dion opened at Caesars Palace and then the second Gulf War started. It was an odd thing to see the impact both events had on Vegas. The place was riding high after Celine, but overnight, once war was declared, it was deserted.

Making art in big cities is often frustrating and difficult. It’s why artists are drawn to smaller places.

In real life, I am not a lonely person; I have lots of good friends and am active socially. But there are certain aspects of my life when I have felt very alone, utterly alone, and one of them is when I am performing on my own.

If Darwin‘s theories are true, then we have within us the physical memory of when we were fish or apes.

Chaos is a good thing.

I need to have many things cooking at the same time.

For me, theater will always be very, very much alive, but not necessarily in the theatrical tradition.

My father had barely any education. He could hardly write or count. But his great pride was that he was perfectly bilingual. In the household, he entertained this idea that we had to speak both languages.

Nothing is worse than having your dreams come true.

When we did ‘The Dragons‘ Trilogy,’ China was a big, mysterious piece of rock that we never thought would even move. It was impenetrable, impossible to deal with.

I don’t think there is any kind of magic about what I do. All of the connections are there, somewhere in the subconscious or in the collective unconscious. If I let the elements speak to each other, then these coincidences will happen. And they do happen. They happen all the time.

Artists always try to make something that is going to be relevant and up-to-the-minute.

I never went through a gender identity problem, but I did with my sexuality.

In everything I’ve done, I’ve always tried to make room for indigenous people, to include them.

I’m not good at doing show business; I’m a theatre person. I don’t reveal anything about my life.

The first ‘Ring’ in Bayreuth was about the poetical world, the mythological world.

There’s not a system better than another. There are some people better than others. I’m not anti-democracy, but there’s no real system yet that has proven itself to be the right one.

Opera needs a major makeover; the large opera houses are too in thrall to their conservative patrons.

I’m not good at entertainment. I don’t give myself to all the interviews, game shows, or talk shows.

In Las Vegas, you confront yourself with your darkest desires, because they’re all possible there.

The same critics who destroyed ‘Seven Streams‘ when we opened in Edinburgh – and yes, it was horrible – called it one of the most important shows of the 21st century six years later in London.

The thing that’s interesting about Trump is that when you read ‘Coriolanus,’ you’d be tempted to draw parallels. But I don’t do that.

The safety prospects in ‘Ka’ are the highest in the world.

Of course theater will always be associated intimately to literature, but the themes or whatever have to penetrate you by the senses. Theater is a sensuous experience, and that’s its main difference from film or any other dramatic art.

If you’re going to do a show about somebody who dumped you, it’s much richer if you have three characters dealing with different aspects of that theme. There is more space for people to identify with it.

Vegas is a testing ground for the human soul. What are our values, especially in a time of crisis? Work with Cirque du Soleil, and you learn that quickly. The former socialist street performers who now throw parties by the pool with Brazilian models, oh yes!

Opera is a very stimulating place to work, and I believe it offers the most intense theatrical experience possible.

Why is it that I can remember so easily the lyrics to the opening theme song of ‘Gilligan’s Island?’ Why do I remember these trivial things, and I can’t remember the names of important collaborators?

The first time someone stood up in front of the fire and told the story while illustrating it with shadows on the walls of the quarry, that was the birth of theater.

There’s nothing sadder than when things happen the way you’ve planned them, because we don’t have a lot of imagination, you know.

I never thought of my father when I was growing up. Truly. He was a strong, silent man who worked hard to support his family.

Writing is very much perceived as something distinct from performance. I don’t see it like that.

I never questioned if I was effeminate or not. That didn’t matter in the theatre.

When I went into the conservatory at 17, then I was able to open up and accept everything about myself and show my feminine side as well as my masculine.

I remember my first review in London said I was the next Peter Brook. I said: ‘No way. I’m not Peter Brook. I don’t have the maturity, the experience, the intelligence. Don’t burden me.’

A lot of people hated every moment of my ‘Ring.’ And a lot of people who had never been to an opera bought subscriptions to the next season.

Vegas is the city of temptation. I think, perhaps, it is an experiment by NASA. If we’re going to send people to Mars, how will we create false economies and cultures to satisfy them? Vegas has the answer. People go there when they’ve nothing left to lose.

The great advantage of the circus, and the reason it is so popular, is really the ideal combination of art and sport. It’s the ideal art form, in a certain way, if you want to be accessible.

Without meaning to sound crass, I’ve never had any psychological… help. It’s because I feel my work is so revealing about who I am and what I am trying to understand about myself. It’s a therapeutic process.

A puppet, for example, is just a piece of wood, a couple of rivets, but put them together, and if you know how to do it, and the audience’s imagination joins in with this, then a miracle will come out of that machine. That is what we and the audience do in the theatre – we create miracles in that space.

I can’t really define myself as a dramatist or as an actor or as someone who is interested in music.

Sylvie Guillem is the best dancer in the world.