Robert Lepage

1994 National Arts Centre Award

Robert Lepage has restored what critics call "a sense of marvel" to theatre. Yet, he sees theatre as "a collaborative process...a collective art form" with his own role that of "establishing the ambiance to allow the feelings, intuitions and emotions to emerge." He developed these methods while with his hometown company, Théâtre Répère de Québec, whose successes including Polygraph, the award-winning The Dragon's Trilogy, and Tectonic Plates, have toured international festivals cementing Lepage's worldwide reputation. He directed a sensational A Midsummer Night's Dream at London's Royal National Theatre with his actors playing their love scenes in pools of mud.

His other contemporary stagings of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Macbeth and The Tempest as well as the Canadian Opera Company's provocative Ewartung and Bluebeard's Castle, have also met with unparalleled acclaim. Needles and Opium, a one-man show presented mainly from a harness suspended high over the stage, played to sold-out houses in Toronto, London, Paris and New York.

A multi-disciplinary, media-mixing artist who has achieved world stature, he maintains his home base in Quebec City from where, on stage and in film, he pursues the essence of this art, the quest for truth. "Truth is bliss," he says.