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Performing Arts General

Robert Lepage on the Toronto Stage

Language, Identity, Nation

by (author) Jane Koustas

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
May 2016
Category
General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773546745
    Publish Date
    Jun 2016
    List Price
    $115.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773546752
    Publish Date
    Jun 2016
    List Price
    $37.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773598690
    Publish Date
    May 2016
    List Price
    $110.00

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Description

A leader in theatre production for a global community, Robert Lepage - actor, cineaste, and director - revolutionized the Toronto theatre scene from the 1980s onwards by challenging conventional notions of language, identity, and national belonging. Exploring Lepage’s twenty-five-year history on the Toronto stage, Jane Koustas analyzes his importance in the Canadian and international theatre scenes.

Outlining the reasons behind Lepage’s success in Toronto, Koustas skilfully engages with a wide range of journalistic and scholarly texts, moving between French and English critical reception of his work. For Lepage, Toronto offered the best of both worlds: he could remain an ardent Quebecer while being welcomed as a fellow Canadian. Lepage, raised in a bilingual family, brought to his Toronto productions an understanding of English and Canadian culture that resisted presenting French against English and the rest of Canada versus Quebec. Instead, he took Toronto audiences on a global theatre voyage that transformed traditional geopolitical, cultural, and linguistic boundaries and questioned identity.

Investigating the relationship between Quebec’s master dramaturge and Toronto, a burgeoning cosmopolitan city determined to be a global cultural capital, Robert Lepage on the Toronto Stage analyzes the success of one of the few Québécois artists to have achieved fame in English Canada.

About the author

Jane Koustas, professor of French at Brock University, was the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin. She is the co-editor, with Christl Verduyn, of Canadian Studies: Past, Present, Praxis and, with Joe Donohoe, of Robert Lepage: Théàtre sans frontières: Essays on the Dramatic Universe of Robert Lepage. She is the author of Les belles étrangères : Canadians in Paris.

Jane Koustas' profile page

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