Robert Lepage’s Scenographic

Dramaturgy 1st ed. Edition Melissa Poll

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/robert-lepages-scenographic-dramaturgy-1st-ed-editi
on-melissa-poll/
 adaptation in
theatre and
performance

robert
lepage’s
scenographic
dramaturgy
the aesthetic signature at work

MELISSA POLL
Adaptation in Theatre and Performance

Series Editors
Vicky Angelaki
Department of Film, Theatre & Television
University of Reading
Reading, UK

Kara Reilly
Department of Drama
University of Exeter
Exeter, UK
The series addresses the various ways in which adaptation boldly takes on
the contemporary context, working to rationalise it in dialogue with the
past and involving the audience in a shared discourse with narratives that
form part of our artistic and literary but also social and historical constitu-
tion. We approach this form of representation as a way of responding and
adapting to the conditions, challenges, aspirations and points of reference
at a particular historical moment, fostering a bond between theatre and
society.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14373
 Melissa Poll

Robert Lepage’s
Scenographic
Dramaturgy
The Aesthetic Signature at Work
Melissa Poll
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC, Canada

Adaptation in Theatre and Performance

ISBN 978-3-319-73367-8    ISBN 978-3-319-73368-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73368-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018943394

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Bryn Terfel as Wotan in Der Ring des Nibelungen, 2011, Metropolitan
Opera/Ex Machina, © Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

Foremost, I would like to thank Karen Fricker and Helen Gilbert for their
ongoing support and dedication to this book from the outset. Karen and
Helen’s integrity, expertise and high standards have been an ongoing
source of inspiration. I aspire to bring the same qualities to my future
scholarly endeavours. I am also grateful to David Williams for not only
sharing his teaching expertise and classroom with me but also for many
stimulating conversations that have fed my work.
Emma Cox, Dani Phillipson and Liz Schafer have graciously offered
their support and expertise. To them, I would like to extend my sincerest
thanks. I am also grateful to Alan Duffield, Joe McLoughlin and Jorge
Pérez Falconi for their encouragement and unfailing availability to read
drafts.
Thank you to June, Lloyd and Holly Poll and Pat Law for their love
and a lifetime of support. To my husband David and my son Jameson, I
am forever grateful.
Je tiens à remercier Robert Lepage et son équipe à Ex Machina, notam-
ment Michéline Beaulieu et Véronique St-Jacques. Pour Mara Gottler,
une chère amie de Vancouver, ainsi que la créatrice de costumes pour La
Tempête et Le Rossignol et autres fables, merci.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction   1

2 Scenographic Dramaturgy & Auteuring Adaptations  19

3 The Nightingale and Other Short Fables: Co-authoring

Atypical Opera  51

4 Adapting Wagner’s Siegfried: Making Music Visible at

the Metropolitan Opera  89

5 ‘Le Grand Will’ in Wendake: Ex Machina and the Huron-­

Wendat Nation’s La Tempête 123

6 Auto-adaptations: Re-‘Writing’ The Dragons’ Trilogy

and Needles and Opium for the Twenty-First Century 151

7 Conclusion 185

Index 195

vii
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Lepage’s extant text productions: 1983–2013 14

Fig. 2.1 The Damnation of Faust featuring Marcello Giordani (Faust)
and John Relyea (Mephistopheles), Metropolitan Opera,
2008, photo: Ken Howard 27
Fig. 2.2 Bluebeard’s Castle featuring John Relyea (Bluebeard) and
Malgorzata Walewska (Judith), Seattle Opera, 2009, photo:
Rozarii Lynch 31
Fig. 2.3 Erwartung featuring Susan Marie Pierson (The Woman),
Noam Markus (The Lover) and Mark Johnson (The
Psychiatrist), Seattle Opera, 2009, photo: Rozarii Lynch 35
Fig. 3.1 The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, Canadian Opera
Company/Ex Machina, 2009, photo: Michael Cooper 52
Fig. 3.2 ‘Short Fables/Women’ rendering, The Nightingale and Other
Short Fables, 2009, by Mara Gottler 65
Fig. 3.3 ‘The Fox/Men’ rendering, The Nightingale and Other Short
Fables, 2009, by Mara Gottler 66
Fig. 3.4 ‘Emperor’ rendering and fabric swatches, The Nightingale and
Other Short Fables, 2009, by Mara Gottler 67
Fig. 3.5 ‘Nightingale’ rendering and fabric swatches, The Nightingale
and Other Short Fables, 2009, by Mara Gottler 68
Fig. 3.6 ‘Nightingale/Male Chorus’ rendering and fabric swatches, The
Nightingale and Other Short Fables, 2009, by Mara Gottler 69
Fig. 3.7 ‘Nightingale/Female Chorus’ rendering and fabric swatches,
The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, 2009, by Mara
Gottler70

ix
x List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Siegfried scenic storyboard, 2011, Metropolitan Opera/Ex

Machina, by Carl Fillion 95
Fig. 4.2 Mime’s workshop, Siegfried, 2011, Metropolitan Opera/Ex
Machina, Carl Fillion 96
Fig. 4.3 The Dragon/Fafner dies, with Fafner (Hans-Peter König) and
Siegfried (Jay Hunter-Morris), Siegfried, 2011, Metropolitan
Opera/Ex Machina, photo: Ken Howard 98
Fig. 4.4 Alberich (Eric Owens) and Wotan/The Wanderer (Bryn
Terfel), Siegfried, 2011, Metropolitan Opera/Ex Machina,
photo: Ken Howard 107
Fig. 5.1 ‘Josephte Ourné’, c. 1840, oil on canvas by Joseph Légaré,
photo: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, © National
Gallery of Canada 130
Fig. 5.2 ‘Ariel’ rendering, La Tempête, 2011, by Mara Gottler 131
Fig. 5.3 Miranda (Chantal Dupuis) and Ferdinand (Francis Roberge),
La Tempête, 2011, photo: David Leclerc 133
Fig. 5.4 Ariel (Kathia Rock), Prospero (Jean Guy), Miranda (Chantal
Dupuis) and Ferdinand (Francis Roberge), La Tempête, 2011,
photo: David Leclerc 134
Fig. 5.5 Members of the Sandokwa Dance Troupe and Ariel (Kathia
Rock), La Tempête, 2011, photo: David Leclerc 140
Fig. 6.1 Pierre Lamontagne’s calligraphy (with Robert Lepage), The
Blue Dragon, 2008, Ex Machina, photo: David Leclerc 161
Fig. 6.2 Pierre (Robert Lepage) at Xiao Ling’s ‘selfie’ exhibit
(Tai Wei Foo), The Blue Dragon, 2008, Ex Machina,
photo: David Leclerc 164
Fig. 6.3 ‘Selfie’ of Xiao Ling (Tai Wei Foo), The Blue Dragon, 2008,
Ex Machina, photo: David Leclerc 164
Fig. 6.4 The Huang Pu River, The Blue Dragon, 2008, Ex Machina,
photo: David Leclerc 166
Fig. 6.5 Pierre Lamontagne (Robert Lepage)/Tattoo, The Blue
Dragon, 2008, Ex Machina, photo: David Leclerc 167
Fig. 6.6 Set, Needles and Opium, 2013, Ex Machina, by Carl Fillion 170
Fig. 6.7 Miles Davis (Wellesley Robertson III) descends into Juliette
Gréco’s bathtub, Needles and Opium, 2013, Ex Machina,
photo: Nicola-Frank Vachon 173
Fig. 6.8 Trumpet parts, with Wellesley Robertson III as Miles Davis,
Needles and Opium, 2013, Ex Machina, photo: Nicola-Frank
Vachon175
Fig. 6.9 Heroin, with Wellesley Robertson III as Miles Davis, Needles
and Opium, 2013, Ex Machina, photo: Nicola-Frank Vachon 176
 List of Figures 
   xi

Fig. 6.10 Miles Davis’s New York (Wellesley Robertson III), Needles
and Opium, 2013, Ex Machina, photo: Nicola-Frank Vachon 177
Fig. 6.11 Jean Cocteau’s New York (Marc Labrèche), Needles and
Opium, 2013, Ex Machina, photo: Nicola-Frank Vachon 178
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Renowned Québécois director, actor and playwright Robert Lepage is

among the most influential performance makers of our time. He first
earned widespread acclaim with the international tours of his devised pro-
ductions, including the ensemble piece The Dragons’ Trilogy (1985),
which uses innovative scenography to craft twentieth-century stories
unfolding across three Canadian Chinatowns, and Needles and Opium
(1991), a highly physical and visual solo show that interweaves the 1949
reverse pilgrimages of Jean Cocteau (to New York) and Miles Davis (to
Paris) with a Québécois artist’s quest to self-actualize in Europe. Lepage
has collaborated with the largest theatrical producer in the world, Cirque
du Soleil, creating Totem and the one-hundred-and-sixty-five-million-
dollar Las Vegas production Kà (Fink 2004). He is also the first North
American director to stage a Shakespeare production at London’s
National Theatre—1992’s irreverent A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
which saw the playing space surrounded by a narrow pool and drenched
in mud. A sought-after opera director whose work has appeared at the
Metropolitan Opera and London’s Royal Opera House, Lepage has also
made successful forays into filmmaking as a director and screenwriter (Le
Confessional, Triptych). His global contributions to culture have been rec-
ognized through international awards ranging from the Europe Theatre
Prize and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Eugene McDermott
Award to his admission into the Order of Canada and France’s Ordre des

© The Author(s) 2018 1

M. Poll, Robert Lepage’s Scenographic Dramaturgy, Adaptation
in Theatre and Performance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73368-5_1
2 M. POLL

Arts et des Lettres. By extending his talents to re-envisioning extant opera

and theatre texts, while continuing to produce devised productions that
use evocative scenography to explore the complexities of personal and
cultural crossings (such as The Far Side of the Moon, The Andersen Project
and Lipsynch), Lepage has secured a position among our era’s foremost
theatre innovators.
This study takes Lepage’s adaptations as its topic, examining the ways
in which he employs scenography to reinvigorate and reconfigure existing
works, such as Hector Berlioz’s rarely produced opera The Damnation of
Faust, which, as staged at the Metropolitan Opera in 2008, represented
the opera house’s first digitally interactive production. In the first scene,
an elderly Faust appears in his library, lamenting his solitary existence.
Faust’s isolation is underlined as a digitally projected wall of books is
replaced by video footage featuring a grey sky populated by a flock of
black birds. Worn by the performer playing Faust, motion sensors register
shifts in the singer’s voice and body, enabling his pitch, pace and move-
ment to dictate the birds’ trajectory (Wakin 2008). As the music swells
and Faust’s lament becomes particularly plaintive, the flock of birds
expands and moves upwards, disappearing into the bleak sky; this interac-
tive sequence mimics the singer’s dynamic and melodic trajectory, while
also suggesting that Faust is desperate to escape his isolation. In a later
scene, Lepage offers a counter-narrative to Berlioz’s triumphant and cel-
ebratory ‘Hungarian March’. War’s futility is emphasized as the female
chorus members’ musical tribute to their absent partners is accompanied
by scenography representing death as a routine facet of battle. Portrayed
from an aerial perspective, soldiers on cables repeatedly march into battle
by walking vertically up the set’s back scrim, only to fall lifelessly into their
lovers’ laps after a series of gunshots are heard. Through this scenography,
Lepage’s production goes against the text (and score) to counter conven-
tional interpretations of this scene, thus re-‘writing’ an extant work by
offering spectators an embodied and uncommon (albeit not unique) read-
ing—the heroics of war are easily superseded by the banality and anonym-
ity of daily slaughter on the battlefield. As these and further examples will
demonstrate, Robert Lepage’s scenic writing defines his affective adapta-
tions, allowing him to visually adapt canonical texts and revive other lesser-­
known works through his distinctly twenty-first-century version of écriture
scénique, a process and product I have termed scenographic dramaturgy.
 INTRODUCTION 3

Scenography as Adaptation
My theorization of scenographic dramaturgy views scenography—or the
entire visual and physical world of a production, including performers’
embodied texts—as the means through which an extant text is adapted. I
have identified three central tenets as the foundation for Lepage’s particu-
lar scenographic approach to adaptation: historical-spatial mapping, archi-
tectonic scenography and the kinetic text of collaborators.1 As Chap. 2 will
demonstrate, historical-spatial mapping is the backbone of Lepage’s sce-
nographic dramaturgy; it transcends the basics of setting and offers a
detailed interpretive engagement with times and places, investing in the
zeitgeist of a particular period and, often, overlaying one era with another
to provide further contextualizing potentialities for spectators.
Architectonic scenography refers to a dynamic stage space/set that shifts
position, height, depth and/or composition to suggest tone and atmo-
sphere. The kinetic text of collaborators indicates the physical scores
crafted by performers who work alongside Lepage to incorporate their
own signature embodied texts into his productions. Lepage’s collabora-
tions with these artists hinge on a shared understanding of the body as an
evocative site where meaning is sculpted, developed and unfolds. The
ways in which collaborators contribute to the total visual world of a per-
formance, including through gesture, movement style and various dance
traditions, are considered here not only as they adapt an extant text but
also as a barometer of an increasingly progressive interculturalism that can
be witnessed in Lepage’s work. Questions of the acknowledgement of
these contributions will further inform my argument as Lepage is often
solely credited as the director/author of the extant text adaptations he
undertakes. In short, although Lepage’s adaptations of extant texts some-
times favour or enhance conventional readings—a form of adaptation Julie
Sanders classifies as an amplificatory procedure (2006, 18)—his unique
contribution to contemporary theatre praxis resides in how he develops
his directorial vision via these three tenets, chiefly historical-spatial
mapping.
The term adaptation is central to this book’s discussion of scenographic
dramaturgy’s meaning-making potential and will be examined throughout
upcoming chapters. Adaptation is viewed here as the broader category
within which Lepage’s process of scenographic dramaturgy fits—in other
words, scenographic dramaturgy is a specific form of adaptation that
Lepage uses to re-envision extant texts. Though adaptations are often
4 M. POLL

defined by alterations to the dramatic text, mise en scène—particularly as

crafted by auteur-directors such as Lepage, Simon McBurney and Elisabeth
LeCompte—is increasingly being seen as an adaptive language and form
of authorship in its own right, capable of reconfiguring canonical texts
through non-logocentric means. As highlighted by Daniel Fischlin and
Mark Fortier, adaptation occurs ‘not only between verbal [dramatic] texts,
but between intercultural bodies, lights, sounds, movements and all the
other cultural elements at work in theatrical production’ (2000, 7).
Granted, all theatre productions are technically adaptations in that they
adapt a dramatic work from page to stage; nonetheless, Lepage’s adapta-
tions can be categorized as such because they go further, refashioning/
remediating extant texts through his signature, auteur-ed performance
text. This text, built on evocative interactions between bodies, stage space
and scenography rather than shifts to the written play or opera libretto,
acts as an additional form of authorship, existing in conversation (not
competition or critique) with the source text.
My work also turns to the etymological root of the verb ‘adapt’. Drawn
from the French word adapter and its Latin counterpart, adaptare, adapt
means ‘to fit’ (Oxford 2012). Lepage’s adaptations allow a text to evolve
via the visual language of its adaptive period and the socio-political con-
text within which it is produced. Though the script may remain the same,
new material informs the production text, be it cutting-edge technology,
such as the 3D digital imaging software created for the Ring cycle, or
intercultural casting.2 Relatedly, the changes Lepage makes to his perfor-
mance texts must be met with shifts to his adaptation-making process,
particularly when it comes to adjusting an extant production’s politics of
representation. Analysis of Lepage’s auto-adaptations of The Dragons’
Trilogy and Needles and Opium will demonstrate the ways in which atten-
tion to collaborators’ agency is paramount on this front. An evolution-­
based understanding of the term adaptation will also inform this study’s
consideration of the ways in which adaptations cross-pollinate (Sanders
2006, 16). Canonical plays are understood here not only as material, dra-
matic texts but also as re-membered, immaterial palimpsests of their own
production histories. Part of the pleasure of interpreting Lepage’s adapta-
tions (and those by other auteur-directors) resides in parsing the new
material (such as Lepage’s scenographic dramaturgy) from the old (allu-
sions to previous iconic productions) and then interrelating the two
strands.
 INTRODUCTION 5

In its theoretical engagement with adaptation, this book would be

remiss not to address certain interconnected concepts, particularly appro-
priation and fidelity. Because Lepage’s performance texts do not critique
the source text, nor stand alone as original plays or operas (in the way that
West Side Story exists independently of Romeo & Juliet), they cannot be
classified as appropriations (Sanders 2006, 4). Moreover, many of the case
studies covered in my book (including The Nightingale and Other Short
Fables, The Ring, The Tempest and Needles and Opium) explicitly signal
their relationship with the original text by bearing the same titles; Sanders
identifies this as a key characteristic of most formal adaptations (Sanders
2006, 22). When it comes to questions of fidelity in adaptation studies,
this book does not privilege the literary text; instead, both the adapted and
adapting texts are placed on an equal plain (Hutcheon 2006, xv). The
source text is not inherently superior to the adaptation. For its part, the
adaptation should not (and cannot) be evaluated in terms of its faithful-
ness to the supposed intentions of the source text’s author. Fidelity is
based on the erroneous but enduring belief that there is one true interpre-
tation of a play text that reflects the author’s intentions (Pavis 2008, 119).
Once aspirations of fidelity to Wagner, Shakespeare or whomever the
source text author may be are abandoned, the adapted text is emanci-
pated, becoming newly available to the possibilities born of an auteur’s
performance-making process.

Scenography as Dramaturgy
Alongside adaptation, dramaturgy is a central concept in this book.
Though dramaturgy can be defined as a characteristic or function (encom-
passing the structure of a play text or the pre-production research on the
historical, social and cultural background of a given dramatic text),
Eugenio Barba describes it as a ‘technical operation’ that is ‘inherent in
the weaving and growth of performance and its different components’
(2010, 8). Barba’s definition is pertinent for the purposes of this book as
it does not qualify dramatic text as the central source of meaning, privileg-
ing it over performance text; instead, Barba sees both dramatic and visual
performance texts as potential contributors to a production’s overall dra-
maturgy. Barba also resists logocentric definitions, dismissing the idea that
dramaturgy is discernible solely in a written text (1985, 5). This apprecia-
tion of the adaptive capacity of physical and spatial texts, such as scenog-
raphy, has been accompanied by appeals for new terminology:
6 M. POLL

The text is no longer the central and superior factor, all the other elements
like space, light, sound, music, movement and gesture tend to have an equal
weight in the performance process. Therefore new dramaturgical forms and
skills are needed, in terms of a practice that no longer reinforces the subor-
dination of all elements under one (usually the word, the symbolic order of
language), but rather a dynamic balance to be obtained anew in each perfor-
mance. (Lehmann and Primavesi 2009, 3)

The term ‘scenographic dramaturgy’ is a response to the call for articula-

tions of new forms of dramaturgy that no longer privilege dramatic text. It
refers to the expressive, dramaturgical interweaving of visual scenographic
elements (lighting, costume, moving set pieces, performing bodies, physi-
cality, etc.) to offer diverse interpretive opportunities to theatre-makers
and spectators.
Scenographic dramaturgy is not a term that I intend to describe
Lepage’s work exclusively. In broader terms, scenographic dramaturgy is
used in this book to rename écriture scénique in its contemporary form.
This shift in language is not meant to differentiate between the sophistica-
tion of contemporary scenographic technologies and those past. Any per-
formance relying on highly physical and visual text, whether enhanced by
cutting-edge technology or not, can lay claim to employing scenographic
dramaturgy. I have selected this term to describe my theory, rather than
écriture scénique or scenic writing, as it highlights the evocative potential
of scenographic design through the word ‘dramaturgy’, which is better
suited to Lepage’s highly physical approach to extant texts. Through its
use of ‘writing’, the term ‘scenic writing’ maintains a connection with
text-based writing and, as such, implies a literal, fixed meaning whereas
‘scenographic dramaturgy’ articulates more clearly the essence of Lepage’s
signature aesthetic—a non-literal, visual text open to various meanings.

A Note on Author Positionality

The term ‘scenographic dramaturgy’ has also been influenced by my own
praxis as a script and production dramaturge. Over time and through col-
laborations with different companies, I have come to prefer a dramaturgi-
cal process that enables me to see a script or an adaptation through to its
stage production, working closely not only with the playwright but also
the director. I have experienced first-hand the significant dramaturgical
impact of directorial decisions surrounding the staging of the physical,
 INTRODUCTION 7

visual world of the play and casting. As Cathy Turner and Synne Behrnt
note in their study of contemporary dramaturgy, in numerous works the
dramatic text is not the sole or primary structuring device (2008, 29).
Adaptations can be written through the staging process. This book works
to demonstrate how the same principle defines Lepage’s adaptations.
Though this study is guided by the aforementioned theoretical frame-
works and my experience as a dramaturge, my personal position as a bilin-
gual Canadian also informs this work.3 Born to Anglophone parents, I
completed primary and secondary school in French immersion programs.
I occupy the space of a cultural interloper as an Anglophone with the abil-
ity to speak French. My work on Lepage is always-already shot-through by
the following quote from a Francophone Canadian student regarding
French immersion programs and the appropriation of language: ‘The
Anglophones have taken everything from us, now they want to take our
language’ (quoted in Heller 166). I remain keenly aware of my place as a
non-Québécoise and acknowledge that my scholarship will, for some, rep-
resent further taking. I am additionally conscious of my position as a
white, settler descendant when discussing Ex Machina’s co-production of
La Tempête with the Huron-Wendat Nation. I am grateful to have trav-
elled to Wendake and liaised with the Wendat scholars George Sioui and
Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui, who generously shared their ways of knowing.
My work does not, however, intend to speak for the Huron-Wendat.
Instead, it aspires to articulate productive methodologies for crafting
intercultural theatre that contributes to the reconciliation process and
does so in the spirit of the recommendations issued by the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

Extant Scholarship
While numerous scholars have theorized the methodologies, aesthetics
and politics (or lack thereof) driving Lepage’s original work over the past
thirty years, contemporary scholarship lacks an in-depth study of the pro-
cess guiding Lepage’s adaptations of extant play texts, including the esti-
mated sixteen-million-dollar Ring cycle produced at the Metropolitan
Opera and his postcolonial production of La Tempête with the Huron-­
Wendat Nation in Wendake, Québec. The most evident omission is his
opera productions. These productions date back to the early 1990s and
have become, in the last decade, the focus of increasing amounts of
Lepage’s time and energy (see Fig 1.1 at the end of this chapter for an
8 M. POLL

illustration of Lepage’s shifting focus over the past thirty years [Fouquet
2014; Caux and Gilbert 2007]). Lepage’s inaugural opera production, a
1992 double-bill featuring Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s
Erwartung, has been the subject of limited analysis, comprised exclusively
of a book chapter, Piet Defraeye’s essay ‘The Staged Body in Lepage’s
Musical Productions’ (2000) and two production reviews, including
Karen Pegley and Catherine Graham’s ‘Visualizing the Music’ (2002).4
The ten operas staged by Lepage between 1994 and 2013 have received a
similarly low level of scholarly attention. Though Joseph M. Ortiz has
written a short review of Lepage’s four-part Ring cycle in Theater Journal
(2013), at the time of this book’s publication, the only academic article
based entirely on Lepage’s adaptation of Wagner’s iconic cycle is Matthew
Wilson Smith’s ‘Gesamtkunstwerk and Glitch’ (2012), which represents
an important contribution to Lepage scholarship. Wilson Smith thinks
through the implications of the Ring’s constant shifting between theatri-
cal, cinematic and televisual perspectives, providing an analysis of the digi-
tal technologies featured in the Ex Machina/Metropolitan Opera
co-production and productively framing technological glitches in the per-
formances as a reminder of the t­heatricality/liveness grounding Ex
Machina’s branch of twenty-first-century total art (Wilson Smith 2012,
74). Like the Ring cycle, Lepage’s staging of Thomas Adès’s Tempest at Le
Festival d’Opéra de Québec and the Metropolitan Opera in 2012 has
attracted nominal academic consideration, receiving only a handful of
brief Opera Quarterly reviews.
While there are a number of articles and book chapters based on
Lepage’s Shakespeare productions prior to 2000, publications focused on
his first Shakespeare staging since 1999, 2011’s La Tempête in Wendake,
Québec, are limited to Barry Freeman’s ‘Another (Aboriginal) Treatment
of La Tempête’ (2013), which reads aspects of the production as reinforc-
ing the archetypal Savage stereotype, and my own differing assessment of
the production’s interculturalism, ‘Adapting “Le Grand Will” in Wendake:
Ex Machina and the Huron-Wendat Nation’s La Tempête’ (Poll 2014).
Academic enquiry devoted to Lepage’s earlier Shakespeare productions
centres on the language, staging and politics of representation driving the
auteur’s engagement with England’s foremost playwright. Karen Fricker’s
subject entry on Robert Lepage in the Routledge Companion to Director’s
Shakespeare provides a succinct survey of Lepage’s Shakespeare produc-
tions and interrogates some of the common characteristics driving these
 INTRODUCTION 9

adaptations, including radical textual shifts that ‘literally re-author’

Shakespeare’s plays (2008, 233). This is exemplified in Elsinore, Lepage’s
adaptation of Victor Hugo’s translation into a ninety-minute solo version
of Hamlet’s existential struggle. Other publications include essays from
Barbara Hodgdon (1996) and Richard Knowles (1998) examining
Lepage’s essentializing Orientalism in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at
London’s National Theatre, Lise-Ann Johnson’s reflections on the devis-
ing process guiding Lepage’s Shakespeare’s Rapid Eye Movement in Munich
(2001) and Andy Lavender’s incisive, first-hand account of the scenography-­
based creation of Lepage’s one-man Hamlet, Elsinore (2001). Robert
Lepage: The Aesthetic Signature At Work aims to contextualize Lepage’s
Shakespeare productions through what I have theorized as the director’s
broader approach to adapting extant texts and operas, particularly in light
of his thirteen-year hiatus and recent return to the playwright’s texts via
2011’s collaborative, intercultural La Tempête in Wendake, Québec.

Structure
In the following six chapters, which include four case studies, the central
focus is Lepage’s highly physical and visual dramaturgy at work. Chapter 2
interrogates how Lepage’s foundations as a devisor led to an adaptive pro-
cess defined by the three prongs of scenographic dramaturgy— historical-­
spatial mapping, architectonic scenography and the kinetic texts of
collaborators. This chapter illustrates the meaning-making potential of
scenographic dramaturgy through examples from Lepage’s extant text
oeuvre and situates Lepage’s adaptive approach in the aesthetic continuum
of auteur theatre. Contextualizing my later analyses of Lepage’s Tempête
on the Wendake First Nations reserve and the Ring cycle at the Metropolitan
Opera, are brief discussions of Peter Brook’s 1970 re-­envisioning of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream and Patrice Chéreau’s centenary Ring stag-
ing—two adaptations rooted in signature scenography. Reference to these
forerunners segues into an exploration of the ways in which adaptations of
canonical texts can be in dialogue with the reception history of the source
text and its numerous other adaptations (Krebs 2014, 583).
Chapter 3 is the first of four case studies to examine Lepage’s evolving
adaptive process, beginning with his 2009 production of The Nightingale
and Other Short Fables. It is organized to support my argument that lesser-­
known, atypically structured texts, such as those with which Lepage began
10 M. POLL

his career as an opera director—Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung—are

most available to his scenographic dramaturgy. This section begins with a
brief outline of the open-ended dramaturgy featured in atypical operas,
contextualizing my case study of Lepage’s adaptation of Stravinsky’s
‘unstageable’ source text, Le Rossignol,5 a fifty-minute opera categorized
by the composer as a symphonic poem. Lepage’s 2009 production, The
Nightingale and Other Short Fables, incorporates Le Rossignol into a
broader program of short compositions organized around a common
theme and stylistic period in Stravinsky’s oeuvre, contextualizing and
highlighting the symphonic poem’s score. By overwriting the produc-
tion’s narrative with a scenographic conceit based on the evolution of
puppetry—which features acrobatic shadow play, Taiwanese hand pup-
petry and Vietnamese water puppetry performed in an orchestra pit
flooded with twenty-seven tons of water—Lepage demonstrates how
light, space, sound, movement and puppetry can shape and develop open-­
ended texts, providing the external dramaturgical framework necessary to
expand an incomplete extant score into a full-length opera. I will explore
how this adaptive conceit creates a hyper-aestheticized, twenty-first-­
century version of Le Rossignol’s nineteenth-century chinoiserie, attempt-
ing to offer a post-Orientalist comment on globalization which, though it
signals a growing effort to incorporate a more progressive interculturalism
in Lepage’s work, is not necessarily legible in the staging. Moreover, both
Chaps. 3 and 4 (on the Ring cycle at the Metropolitan Opera) will engage
with what Simone Murray identifies as one of the ‘lingering blind spots’ in
adaptation studies, by examining how ‘the [institutional] mechanisms by
which adaptations are produced influence the kind of adaptations released’
(2012, 4). I will examine the ways in which Ex Machina’s production
norms (including enlisting numerous co-producers open to the compa-
ny’s insistence on autonomous creative conditions) can be juxtaposed
against the Metropolitan Opera’s more rigid production schedule.
Based on my experience auditing rehearsals of Siegfried and
Götterdämmerung at the Metropolitan Opera, Chap. 4 examines the ways
in which Lepage’s scenographic dramaturgy led to a contentious but inno-
vative adaptation of Wagner’s iconic opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.
This chapter begins by outlining productions of the Ring cycle during
Wagner’s lifetime, particularly the 1876 inaugural performance in
Bayreuth. Wagner’s evolving aesthetic preferences and his vision for future
Ring productions are weighed against accounts and reviews of the inaugu-
ral Bayreuth production as well as Wagner’s own reflections on the process
 INTRODUCTION 11

and product, including his unrealized plan to remount a radically different

Ring production in future (Millington 2007, 270). Wagner’s vision for a
Ring remount and the production aesthetic he espoused in his later years
are then viewed through the lens of Appia’s scenic sketches for the tetralogy
and Lepage’s Metropolitan Opera staging. Like many adaptations, princi-
pally those involving canonical texts, Lepage’s Ring is shown to engage in
intertextuality and dialogic exchange with previous conceits and stagings,
including Wagner’s inaugural production and Appia’s theories. Enhanced
by lighting and video, Lepage’s set, built of twenty-four moveable planks,
physically reconfigures to summon the four operas’ various locales (Valhalla,
Nibelheim, etc.) and shifting tones. The kinetic text of collaborators also
figures centrally in the Ring through work with acrobats to stage added
scenes teasing out characters’ backstories, and the Metropolitan Opera’s
collaboration with the African-American baritone, Eric Owens, who rein-
vented Wagner’s arguably anti-Semitic character Alberich through the
combination of his deeply affecting voice and a unique physical and ges-
tural text developed with Lepage. This collaboration demonstrates the
subversive potential of physical and visual performance texts in adaptations
and is contextualized via production norms at the Metropolitan Opera,
including the opera house’s limited casting of African-American males
from its inception in 1880, well into the 1990s and beyond.
In analysing the Metropolitan Opera/Ex Machina co-production of
Wagner’s Ring cycle, this chapter offers the first account/analysis of
Lepage’s directorial approach to opera from inside the rehearsal room,
detailing his method of handling the conditions of production at the
opera house, including the company’s marketing strategy and the ways of
working established by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage
Employees’ (IATSE) Local One, the premier stagehands’ union. Lepage’s
relationship to power is analysed in my Ring case study, which investi-
gates how he maintains control in situations where he is no longer work-
ing under his preferred home-court conditions at La Caserne (his Québec
City based laboratory) and the ways in which Lepage’s singular position
as auteur has the potential to overwrite contributions from his longtime
collaborators.
The third of four case studies, Chap. 5 examines how La Tempête—the
2011 collaboration between Robert Lepage’s theatre company, Ex
Machina, and the Huron-Wendat Nation on the Wendake First Nations
reserve—fostered moments of productive interculturalism both on stage
and off through scenographic dramaturgy. Lepage’s process of scenic
12 M. POLL

­ riting responds to the signifying possibilities of performer-authored

w
kinetic texts and a production’s given physical location. Inspired by
Lepage’s personal connection to the Huron-Wendat reserve and offering
an in-depth engagement with Québec’s colonial history, particularly the
treatment of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples, the Wendake Tempête marks a
departure in Lepage’s work. This chapter picks up on what Karen Fricker
has noted as an inverse relationship characterizing the content featured in
Lepage’s global turn; as his work gains cultural cachet on the international
festival market, its content moves further away from Québec-specific
material, sometimes veering towards cultural blankness (2008). My dis-
cussion of the Wendake Tempête looks at Lepage’s 2011 return to a local
context through a production crafted exclusively for the Huron-Wendat
amphitheatre, a marked deviation from Lepage’s otherwise decidedly
international trajectory.
Drawing on intercultural theory, scenographic dramaturgy and postco-
lonial theory, Chap. 5 includes a brief survey of Québécois and Indigenous
Shakespeare adaptations in Canada. This chapter highlights some of the
potential traps of staging intercultural adaptations, including power
imbalances among collaborators and reductionist portrayals of difference.
Ex Machina and the Huron-Wendat Nation’s ability to avoid some of
these traps will be analyzed through examples illustrating how sceno-
graphic dramaturgy’s three central components function as both a process
and product fostering a progressive dialogue between cultures. This chap-
ter analyzes the Wendake Tempest as it foreshadows Canada’s Idle No
More movement and the Parti Québécois’ arguably xenophobic Charter
of Québec Values.6 As well, by incorporating sections from an extended
interview with costume designer Mara Gottler, this case study offers an
inside view of the collaborative adaptation process for the first Shakespeare
co-production between Francophone Québécois theatre-makers and
Indigenous artists. Shifts made to the production’s physical performance
text during preview performances are examined, particularly as they
emphasize the First Nations Caliban’s perspective.
Foregrounded by Chaps. 3, 4 and 5’s case studies analyzing Lepage’s
various adaptations of canonical texts, Chap. 6 offers the first interrogation
of the auteur’s twenty-first-century, scenography-driven ­re-­envisionings of
his own texts, The Dragons’ Trilogy (1986) and his seminal one-man show,
Needles and Opium (1991). This section posits that for his auto-adapta-
tions (or adaptations of his own extant texts), Lepage’s revisionist
 INTRODUCTION 13

scenographic dramaturgy is, to a great extent, a response to critiques of the

problematic depictions of difference in his original productions. Lepage’s
initial attempt to update his representations and offer a contemporaneous
Québécois perspective saw the revival of The Dragons’ Trilogy in 2003,
which replaced the two Québécois actors, who originally played the pro-
duction’s Japanese and British characters, with an actor of Japanese descent
and a Briton. I will examine the varying implications of this shift, including
how the aesthetic distance achieved by having white, Québécois actors
play Asian characters in the original production created a self-critiquing
look at xenophobia in Québec, an effect that was muddied by the 2003
production’s use of Asian performers. Chapter 6 then moves on to
Lepage’s 2008 production of The Blue Dragon, which picks up with a
central character from The Dragons’ Trilogy; Pierre Lamontagne has relo-
cated to China and, as rendered in The Blue Dragon, Shanghai is a far cry
from the ‘Orient’ portrayed in Lepage’s preceding productions. This
chapter concludes with an examination of 2013’s Needles and Opium and
its evocative dialogue between bodies and the set, a large rotating, angled
cube in which performers fly. Focused on how this new production of
Needles and Opium reflects broader cultural and theatrical changes, Chap.
6 examines Lepage’s addition of the Afro-Canadian professional dancer,
Wellesley Robertson III, to play and co-author a dance-based text for
Miles Davis (a character who was referenced but rarely seen in the original
production). Robertson, alongside Lepage, crafts a physical and visual
body text on, in and around the kinetic set, giving Davis a rich, significant
voice without uttering a word.
My upcoming analyses of Lepage’s productions will demonstrate that
although his stagings of extant texts begin, in part, with a play text, the
dramatic text is one of a number of resources informing his interpreta-
tions. His scenographic dramaturgy is developed through a kinetic dia-
logue between performers, the stage space, scenography, props, machinery,
media and the dramatic text—though it does not favour the latter as the
production’s primary meaning-making axis. By considering Lepage’s
approach to staging extant plays and operas, this book interrogates the
challenges of adapting lesser-known texts and canonical works with estab-
lished meaning. As the upcoming chapters will demonstrate, the nature of
the encounter between a source text and Lepage’s scenographic d ­ ramaturgy
can have a number of outcomes, among them productive disruptions and
powerful reframings of the present.
14 M. POLL

*Entries are drawn from Fouquet 2014 and Caux and Gilbert 2007.
Year Productions of Extant Operas Productions of Extant Other Extant Text Productions
Shakespeare Texts
1983 • Coriolan et le monster • Carmen, adaptation of the
aux milles têtes, Théâtre opera by Georges Biset,
Repère, Q.C. Théâtre d’Bon Humeur;
performed at Théâtre de la
Bordée, Q.C.
1984 • Solange passé, by
Jocelyne Corbeil and
Lucie Godbout, Théâtre
de la Bordée, Q.C.
• Stand-by 5 minutes, by
Jean-Jacqui Boulet, Louis-
Georges Girard, Ginette
Gay, Martine Ouellet,
Marie St. Cyr, Théâtre de
la Bordée in cooperation
with Théâtre de
l’Équinoxe, Q.C.
• Partir en peur, Théâtre
des Confettis, Q.C.
1985 • Á Propos de la demoiselle
qui pleurait, by André
Jean, Théâtre Repère,
Q.C.
• Histoires sorties du tiroir,
by G. Bibeau, Les
Marionnettes du Grand
Théâtre de Québec
• Suite californienne, by
Neil Simon (California
Suite), Théâtre du Bois de
Coulonge (Sillery),
performed at the Théâtre
du Vieux-Port du Québec
• Coup de poudre by Josée
Deschênes, Marin Dion,
Simon Fortin, Benoit
Gouin, Hélène Leclerc,
Théâtre Artéfact and
Parks Canada; opened at
Artillery Park
1986 • Le Bord extrême, Ingmar
Bergman’s adaptation of
The Seventh Seal, Théâtre
Repère, Q.C.
• Comment devenir parfait
en trois jours, by Gilles
Gauthier, based on
Stephen Manes’s novel,
Théâtre des Confettis,
Implanthéâtre, Q.C.
1987
1988 • Le songe d’une nuit d’été,
Théâtre du Nouveau
Monde, Montréal

Fig. 1.1 Lepage’s extant text productions: 1983–2013

 INTRODUCTION 15

1989 • Romeo & Juliette à • La Vie de Galilée, by

Saskatoon, Theatre Bertolt Brecht, Théâtre du
Repère, Q.C.; Nightcap Nouveau Monde,
Productions, Saskatoon Montréal
• Écho, based on Ann
Diamond’s A Nun’s
Diary, Théâtre 1774,
Montréal; Théâtre Passe
Muraille, Toronto
• C’est ce soir qu’on saoûle
Sophie Saucier, by Sylvie
Provost, Les Productions
Ma chère Pauline,
Montréal

1990 • La Visite de la Vieille

Dame, Friedrich
Dürrenmatt, National Arts
Centre, Ottawa
1991
1992 • Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung, • Le Cycle de Shakespeare: • Alanienouidet, by
by Béla Bartók /Arnold Macbeth, Coriolan, La Marianne Ackerman and
Schoenberg, Canadian Opera Tempête, Théâtre Repère, Robert Lepage, National
Company, Toronto Q.C.; Le Manège, Arts Centre, Ottawa
Maubeuge; Am Turm
Theater, Frankfurt;
Festival d’automne de
Paris, France
• The Tempest, National
Arts Centre, Ottawa
• A Midsummer’s Night
Dream, National Theatre,
London
1993 • Shakespeare’s Rapid Eye • Nationale Capitale
Movement, Bavaria State Nationale, by Jean-Marc
Theatre, Munich. Dalpé and Vivian Laxdal,
• Macbeth and The National Arts Centre,
Tempest, Tokyo Globe Ottawa
Theatre, Tokyo

1994 • Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs, • A Dream Play by August

by Michael Nyman, Globe Strindberg, Royal
Theatre, Tokyo Dramatic Theatre,
Stockholm
1995 • Elsinore, Ex Machina,
Q.C.
• Le Songe d’une nuit
d’été, Le Théâtre du
Trident, Q.C.
1996
1997
1998 • La Tempête, Le Théâtre • La Celestine, by Fernando
du Trident, Q.C. de Rojas, Ex Machina,
Q.C.; Kungliga
Dramatiska Teatern,
Stockholm
1999 • The Damnation of Faust, by • Jean-Sans-Nom,
Hector Berlioz, Ex Machina, adaptation of Jules
Q.C.; Festival Saito-Kinen, Vernes’s novel by Jean
Japan Charlebois, Gestion Son
Image, Montréal

Fig. 1.1 (continued)

16 M. POLL

2000
2001 • La Casa Azul, by Sophie
Faucher, Ex Machina,
Q.C.
2002
2003 • The Dragons’ Trilogy
(auto-adaptation), Ex
Machina, Q.C.
2004 • The Busker’s Opera,
based on John Gay’s
opera, Ex Machina, Q.C.
• La Celestina, by Fernando
de Rojas, Ex Machina,
Q.C.; Ysarca, Spain
2005 • 1984, by Lorin Maazel, Ex
Machina, Q.C.; Big Brother
Productions, New York
2006
2007 • The Rake’s Progress, by Igor
Stravinsky, Ex Machina, Q.C.;
Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie,
Brussels; Opéra de Lyon; San
Francisco Opera; Royal Opera
House, London; Teatro Real,
Madrid

2008 • The Blue Dragon (‘spin-

off’ of The Dragons’
Trilogy), Ex Machina,
Q.C.
2009 • The Nightingale and Other
Short Fables, by Igor
Stravinsky, Ex Machina, Q.C.;
Canadian Opera Company,
Toronto; Festival d’art Lyrique
d’Aix-en-Provence; Opéra
National de Lyon; De
Nederlandse Opera,
Amsterdam

2010 • Das Rheingold, by Richard

Wagner, Ex Machina, Q.C.;
Metropolitan Opera, New York
2011 • Die Walküre, by Richard • La Tempête, by William
Wagner, Ex Machina, Q.C.; Shakespeare, Huron-
Metropolitan Opera, New York Wendat Nation; Ex
• Siegfried, by Richard Wagner, Machina, Wendake, Q.C.
Ex Machina, Q.C.;
Metropolitan Opera, New York
2012 • Götterdämmerung, by Richard
Wagner, Ex Machina, Q.C.;
Metropolitan Opera, New York
• The Tempest, by Thomas Adès,
Ex Machina, Q.C.;
Metropolitan Opera; Weiner
Staatsoper, Vienna; Festival de
l’Opéra de Québec, Q.C.
2013 • Needles & Opium (auto-
adaptation), Ex Machina,
Q.C.
(Fouquet 2014; Caux and Gilbert 2007)

Fig. 1.1 (continued)

 INTRODUCTION 17

Notes
1. The phrase ‘scenographic dramaturgy’ has been employed to describe a
wide variety of theatre and dance scenography (such as work by Nick Cave,
Michael Levine and Carol Brown) in publications by Pamela Howard,
Karoline Gritzner, Natalie Rewa, Carol Brown, Anne Niemetz, Margie
Medlin and Russell Scoones, among others. These authors’ definitions of
the term differ widely and do not inform my specific use of ‘scenographic
dramaturgy’ as an auteur-generated form of adaptation in which visual and
physical performance texts function independently of the dramatic text.
2. In 2011 and 2012, I audited rehearsals for the Ring cycle at the Metropolitan
Opera. In 2011, I attended the final dress of Lepage’s colonial adaptation of
The Tempest, set on the Huron-Wendat reservation outside Québec City.
3. Canada’s bilingual education initiative, launched by a group of Anglophone
parents in St. Lambert, Québec in 1965, gave Anglophone families the
option of having their children educated entirely in French from kindergar-
ten through to the final years of high school, when certain English language
courses were made available to them (Safty 1991, 474).
4. Like Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung, Lepage’s production of Stravinsky’s
The Rake’s Progress was the subject of brief reviews in Canadian Theatre
Research and Opera Canada.
5. The Nightingale.
6. Introduced in 2013 by then Premier Pauline Marois, the proposed Charter
of Québec Values would prohibit civil servants from wearing certain reli-
gious symbols including hijabs, niqabs, kippas and turbans.

References
Barba, Eugenio. 1985. ‘The Nature of Dramaturgy: Describing Actions at work’.
New Theatre Quarterly 1 (1): 75–8.
———. 2010. On directing and dramaturgy: Burning the house. New York and
London: Routledge.
Caux, Patrick, and Bernard Gilbert. 2007. Ex Machina: Chantiers D’écriture scé-
nique. Sillery, Québec: Septentrion.
Defraeye, Piet. 2000. ‘The Staged Body in Lepage’s Musical Productions’. In
Theatre Sans Frontières: Essays on the Dramatic Universe of Robert Lepage,
edited by Joseph I. Donohoe Jr. and Jane M. Koustas, 79–94. East Lansing:
Michigan State University Press.
Fink, Jerry. 2004. ‘Cirque du Soleil Spares No Cost with “KA”’. Las Vegas Sun,
September 16, http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2004/sep/16/cirque-
du-soleilspares-no-cost-with-ka/. Accessed 1 April 2013.
Fischlin, Daniel, and Mark Fortier. 2000. Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical
Anthology of Plays from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. London: Routledge.
Fouquet, Ludovic. 2014. The Visual Laboratory of Robert Lepage. Trans. Rhonda
Mullins. Vancouver: Talonbooks.
18 M. POLL

Freeman, Barry. 2013. ‘Robert Lepage among the Huron-Wendat: An(other)

Aboriginal Treatment of The Tempest’. In Renaissance Shakespeare: Shakespeare
Renaissances, edited by Martin Prochazka, Michael Dobson, Andreas Hofele,
and Hanna Scolnicov, 279–85. Delaware: University of Delaware Press.
Fricker, Karen. 2008. ‘Robert Lepage’. In The Routledge Companion to Director’s
Shakespeare, edited by John Russell Brown, 233–50. London: Routledge.
Hodgdon, Barbara. 1996. ‘Looking for Mr. Shakespeare after “The Revolution”:
Robert Lepage’s Intercultural Dream Machine’. In Shakespeare, Theory and
Performance, edited by James C. Bulman, 71–94. London: Routledge.
Hutcheon, Linda. 2006. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge.
Johnson, Lise-Ann. 2001. ‘Shakespeare’s Rapid Eye Movement’. In The Production
Notebooks: Theatre in Process, vol. 2, edited by Mark J. Bly, 73–139. New York:
Theatre Communications Group.
Knowles, Richard Paul. 1998. ‘From Dream to Machine: Peter Brook, Robert
Lepage and the Contemporary Shakespearean Director as (Post)Modernist’.
Theatre Journal 50 (2): 189–206.
Krebs, Katja. 2014. ‘Ghosts we have seen before: Trends in adaptation in contem-
porary performance’. Theatre Journal 66 (4): 581–90.
Lavender, Andy. 2001. Hamlet in Pieces: Shakespeare Reworked: Peter Brook, Robert
Lepage and Robert Wilson. London: Nick Hern.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies, and Patrick Primavesi. 2009. ‘Dramaturgy on Shifting
Grounds’. Performance Research 14.3: 3–6.
Millington, Barry. 2007. ‘“Faithful, all too faithful”: Fidelity and Ring Stagings’.
The Opera Quarterly 23 (2–3): 265–76.
Murray, Simone. 2012. The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural Economy of
Contemporary Literary Adaptation. New York: Routledge.
Ortiz, Joseph M. 2013. ‘Der ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner’ (review).
Theatre Journal 65 (2): 268–70.
Pavis, Patrice. 2008. ‘On Faithfulness: The Difficulties Experienced by the Text/
Performance Couple’. Theatre Research International 33 (2): 117–26.
Pegley, Karen, and Catherine Graham. 2002. ‘Visualizing the Music: Robert
Lepage’s Staging of Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung for the Canadian Opera
Company’. Canadian Theatre Review 109: 73–7.
Poll, Melissa. (2014). ‘Adapting “Le Grand Will” in Wendake: Ex Machina and
the Huron-Wendat Nation’s La Tempête’. Theatre Research in Canada, 35 (3):
330–351.
Safty, Adel. 1991. ‘French Immersion in Canada: Theory and Practice’.
International Review of Education/Internationale Zeitschrift für
Erziehungswissenschaft/Revue Internationale de l’Education 37 (4): 473–88.
Sanders, Julie. 2006. Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge.
Turner, Cathy, and Synne K. Behrndt. 2008. Dramaturgy and Performance.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wakin, Daniel J. 2008. ‘Techno-Alchemy at the Opera’. The New York Times,
November 6, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/arts/music/07faus.
html. Accessed 26 August 2013.
Wilson Smith, Matthew. 2012. ‘Gesamtkunstwerk and Glitch’. Theatre 42 (2): 65–77.
 CHAPTER 2

Scenographic Dramaturgy & Auteuring

Adaptations

Heir to the écriture scénique developed by theatre’s modern movement,

Robert Lepage’s scenographic dramaturgy is his entry point when adapt-
ing an extant text. This chapter seeks to articulate the devising-based roots
of Lepage’s approach to adaptation and how the three components of
Lepage’s scenographic dramaturgy—historical-spatial mapping, architec-
tonic scenography and kinetic texts—‘write’ adaptive performance texts.
This is followed by an exploration of the ways in which Lepage’s extant
text oeuvre also figures in the broader continuum of auteur theatre. By
articulating non-logocentric definitions of adaptation and ‘text’, unpack-
ing the term auteur through its Western film and theatre etymologies and
evaluating debates surrounding authorship and authority, I will demon-
strate that when it comes to auteur theatre, highly physical and visual
performance text is content. Though a classic narrative or score may be
widely-known (e.g., the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or the
Ring’s score), auteur-ed performance text, including Lepage’s sceno-
graphic dramaturgy, renegotiates and recontextualizes canonical work by
making meaning in new ways and, often, by making new meanings.1

Foundations
Lepage’s interest in crafting original productions and dedication to work-
ing in a highly visual and theatrical mode can be traced to seminal experi-
ences in his training and early career. As a young actor studying at the

© The Author(s) 2018 19

M. Poll, Robert Lepage’s Scenographic Dramaturgy, Adaptation
in Theatre and Performance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73368-5_2
20 M. POLL

Conservatoire de musique et d’art dramatique du Québec, he struggled

with the acting program’s emphasis on realism and emotive capacity, a
system taking its cue from Stanislavski’s psychological approach.2 Preferring
a more physical aesthetic, Lepage excelled in classes taught by Marc Doré,
a Lecoq-trained instructor whose emphasis on the body in scenic space
would resound in Lepage’s later use of kinetic texts in his devised work.3
Lepage’s inability to conform to North America’s dominant, realist act-
ing aesthetic left him without work upon graduating from the Conservatoire
in 1978. Alongside his classmate Richard Fréchette, he pursued further
training with Alain Knapp in Paris. This experience would indelibly colour
Lepage’s approach to theatre-making via the devised process. Knapp
taught students his approach to shaping a career in theatre during a three-­
week workshop in Paris: to sustain their positions as artists, actors must
take on the role of director and playwright, creating their own work.
Through Knapp, Lepage also learned that producing devised theatre
involves working on all facets of production-making (Dundjerović 2007,
9), thus fuelling his interest in scenography.
During his time in France, Lepage would visit Théâtre du Soleil, a the-
atre company run by the Lecoq-trained director/auteur Ariane
Mnouchkine. Mnouchkine’s theatre, which put Lecoq techniques into
practice, was a source of inspiration for Lepage. He was particularly taken
with the agency she accorded to actors in the creation process, her use of
extended rehearsal periods and the deserted ammunitions factory she
chose as her company’s laboratory (Caux and Gilbert 2007, 12).4 The
impact of Mnouchkine’s theatre can be seen in various aspects of Lepage’s
scenographic dramaturgy, whether through its Lecoq-inspired physicality,
consideration of the performer as a creator or use of an extended rehearsal
period. More problematically, like Mnouchkine’s productions, Lepage’s
theatre would also traffic in Orientalism, an aspect of his work which will
be discussed in Chaps. 3 and 6.5 Lepage’s initial brush with Mnouchkine’s
theatre and Knapp’s teachings on the performer’s responsibility to create
their own work would end his formal arts education, sending him into his
professional career with a process placing high value on the artist’s imagi-
nation and interests as key creative fodder.
Upon his return to Québec, Lepage founded Théâtre Hummm… with
Fréchette, prior to becoming involved as an actor and co-devisor at
Théâtre Repère, a company founded by his former Conservatoire instruc-
tor, Jacques Lessard. At Théâtre Repère, Lepage would gain a defining
tool for his theatre-making approach—the use of an initial resource to
 SCENOGRAPHIC DRAMATURGY & AUTEURING ADAPTATIONS 21

spark the creative process. Lessard trained with Anna Halprin at the San
Francisco Dancers’ Workshop, learning to devise through the RSVP cycles,
a creative process originated by Anna’s husband Lawrence, a landscape
architect. Anna used the respective steps of the cycle to free dancers from
their dependence on choreography and allow them to generate their own
work by sourcing the creative impulse within (Worth and Poynor 2004,
54). The cycle’s principles are: resources, score, valuaction and perfor-
mance. ‘Human and material resources’ are employed to spark and stoke
the creative process while scoring records ‘events, activities and things
comprising the project [e.g., people, movement, set, props etc.].’
Valuaction is the step through which the dancers evaluate each other’s
work and reshape their scores accordingly. The ‘P’ of RSVP—or perfor-
mance principle—comprises the live performance event and a choreo-
graphed piece’s evolution over time (Halprin 1996, 122–23).
Lepage’s participation in Lessard’s work with (and variations on) the
Halprins’ RSVP cycles would allow him to experience theatre-making
through the lens of a devised process while also discovering a set method-
ology with which to approach creating theatre. Lessard’s take on the
RSVP model, the Repère cycles, privileges diverse forms of expression
beyond the written text, including light, movement, sound and objects
(Dundjerović 2007, 11). Lessard’s use of scenography as a dramaturgical
tool, combined with Lepage’s experience working as an actor for La Ligue
Nationale d’Improvisation, would expose the young artist to the value of
improvisation and scenographic experimentation as alternative play-
‘writing’ techniques not hinging on dramatic text. Lepage would spend
his tenure at Repère predominantly in the director’s seat, honing his
approach through the Repère cycles and subsequently gaining the artistic
foundation with which he would strike out on his own.
Integral to understanding Lepage’s scenographic dramaturgy as an
adaptive process is a familiarity with his approach to devising. Lepage
and members of his company, Ex Machina, employ aspects of Lessard’s
Repère cycles by working with resources which have ranged from a
flashlight to a life event such as the death of a parent.6 This step usually
begins with a resource Lepage has provided and/or resources brought
in by company members inspired by a central theme/idea/place of
Lepage’s choice. Lepage will often set some limitations at the beginning
of the process, which may include the languages used in the perfor-
mance or the total number of vignettes comprising the production
(Dundjerović 2010, 170).7 Led by Lepage, the company uses the
22 M. POLL

resources to experiment freely, without setting specific goals. This work

can take many forms, chiefly ‘improvisation, writing games, drawing,
dancing and/or singing’ to tease out the performative possibilities of a
resource (Lessard 1990, 139).8 This is the first of the two-part ‘parti-
tion’ or scoring process. The second phase, synthesis, sees the material
developed by each collaborator during the experimentation phase orga-
nized and streamlined.
Évaluation and représentation make up the final two stages of the
Repère cycles. In the évaluation stage, collaborators feed back to one
another based on the work they have curated and presented. Lepage then
makes the final decision about which material will be retained for further
development and/or synthesis.9 This deductive process or ‘chipping away’
at the material continues until the narrative emerges (Lepage and Bureau
2008, 92). While the ‘représentation’ phase of Lessard’s Repère cycles
allows for a piece’s gradual development over time, Lepage’s process dif-
fers in his willingness to radically reshape a production during the perfor-
mance phase (Lessard 1990).10 Having always narrated his work as in
progress, he is more interested in pushing the boundaries of performance
than presenting a polished final product; a fact that, as Chaps. 4 and 6 will
demonstrate, challenged the institutional norms at the Metropolitan
Opera and shapes Lepage’s auto-adaptations of his own work.
The use of resources also defines the early steps in Lepage’s adapta-
tions though these productions also begin with a dramatic text. In many
ways, the dramatic text serves as another resource, a creative primer rather
than an authoritative and/or inflexible ‘set of instructions’ on how to
stage/interpret the narrative (Puchner 2011, 294). Lepage searches the
dramatic text as well as his personal creative reserves for a central resource,
most often a layering of times and places (which may or may not relate
directly to the given narrative), as the jumping off point for his adapta-
tions. Once Lepage has grounded his interpretation geographically and
conceptually, he relies on architectonic scenography and the kinetic texts
he develops with his collaborators to ‘write’ his interpretation of a given
text (hence the title ‘Chantiers d’écriture scénique’ or ‘Sites of scenic
writing’ for Ex Machina’s 2007 publication relating the company’s his-
tory and objectives).11 Commenting on the process behind Lepage’s
2013 adaptation of his 1991 production of Needles and Opium, actor
Olivier Normand noted that it’s ‘not a usual process where you do a read-
ing and you rehearse for five weeks and then the set comes in’; instead,
 SCENOGRAPHIC DRAMATURGY & AUTEURING ADAPTATIONS 23

from the outset of the rehearsal process ‘the set designer and sound
designer are there … so every aspect of the show goes side by side’
(Normand and Robertson 2017). Lepage’s strategy for adapting an
extant text relies on the ways in which the set, sound, performers’ bodies
and text interrelate. For Needles and Opium, this physical work led to new
scenes, cuts and the reconfiguration of the written text. Here, we begin
to see the ways in which scenographic dramaturgy provides a significant
means of adaptation.

Lepage on Lepage
Prior to embarking on an exploration of Lepage’s scenographic drama-
turgy and his place in the auteur theatre continuum, a brief consider-
ation of his repeated claims that he has no process contextualizes the
counter argument I posit throughout this book. Since the beginning of
his career, Lepage has resisted the idea of a fixed approach to making
theatre. Of his 1982 production En Attendant with Théâtre Repère, he
partly credited Lessard’s devising techniques but also the ‘intuitive
method’ upon which he and Richard Fréchette relied (Lepage and
Charest 1997, 135). Lepage’s deference to intuition, chaos and/or
magic has remained embedded in his discourse. In a 1993 conversation
he likened directing to guessing which way the wind might blow (quoted
in Carson 1993, 31–32) and, in a 2008 interview with Stéphan Bureau
on his work, commented, ‘Things happen and they are miracles; we can’t
explain these kinds of things. Everything aligned, there was a conver-
gence of energies, of light, of speech’ (Lepage and Bureau 2008, 92).12
Some scholars have accepted Lepage’s cryptic discourse. Dundjerović
cites Lepage’s use of ‘intuition and personal impressions’ (2007, 208).
James Reynolds, however, frames the Québécois director’s articulations
of his process as ‘unneccesarily mystifying’; Lepage’s deference to intu-
ition, Reynold’s argues, is a means of circumventing prescribed roles and
rigid frameworks, both of which carry the ‘potential danger of creative
limitation’ (Reynolds 2010, 281–82). My work is similarly cautious of
Lepage’s discourse. Though the auteur continues to explain away the
notion of a definitive process shaping his work and may not himself be
conscious of the main tenets that repeatedly define his extant text pro-
ductions, my experience auditing rehearsals and analysis of his adapta-
tions indicate otherwise.
24 M. POLL

Historical-Spatial Mapping as the Foundation

for Lepage’s Scenographic Dramaturgy

In itself, Lepage’s reliance on evocative scenography is in line with the

aesthetics of various theatre-makers. Examples range from Adolphe Appia
and Edward Gordon Craig’s early experiments summoning atmosphere
through lighting and minimalist sets to Penny Woolcock’s English
National Opera production of Dr. Atomic, which uses digital projections
and film clips to revisit the circumstances leading up to the atomic bomb’s
release on Hiroshima in 1945.13 Other artists known for a signature visual
approach to locating extant narratives include Simon McBurney, who
incorporates digital projections to present Moscow via a Google Maps
perspective in Complicite’s The Master and Margarita, and auteur
Benedict Andrews, whose adaptation of Three Sisters sees Chekhov’s hero-
ines stranded on a mound of dirt at the play’s conclusion, an apt metaphor
for their dreary futures in provincial Russia. This said, Lepage’s particular
investment in what I’ve termed historical-spatial mapping demonstrates a
comprehensive engagement with place, positioning it as the interpretive
axis for his scenographic dramaturgy. Upon beginning the process of con-
ceptualizing an extant text, Lepage turns to the aforementioned RSVP/
Repère cycles’ central tenet—the resource—which functions as the foun-
dation for his adaptations. While general readings of Lepage’s devised
works identify his preferred resource as material, this book will demon-
strate that when it comes to his adaptations, the productions are defined
by the conceptual resource of an era-specific place. This goes beyond the
basics of ‘setting’ by making a significant investment in the zeitgeist of a
particular period or periods. Questions of cultural and social context
therefore define Lepage’s historical-spatial mapping, allowing the two fur-
ther branches of his scenographic dramaturgy, architectonic scenography
and the kinetic texts of collaborators, to extend further meaning-making
potentialities from an established interpretive footing rooted in places,
times and their attendant historical-cultural contexts.
Lepage’s fascination with place began with an interest in geography at
a young age and has coloured his dramatic aesthetic ever since. His work
draws heavily on his experience as an international traveller and frequently
depicts the artist’s literal and figurative quest towards self-discovery as
played out in hotel rooms, airports and in flight. Lepage’s career has been
launched by devised works that, alongside material resources such as a
deck of cards, have regularly employed place and time as defining tools.
 SCENOGRAPHIC DRAMATURGY & AUTEURING ADAPTATIONS 25

The Seven Streams of the River Ota and Needles and Opium rely on an
engagement with place grounded in the social, cultural and political con-
ditions defining locations during different periods. Seven Streams uses
Hiroshima as its central resource, tracking the lives of those affected both
directly and indirectly by the bomb, while Needles and Opium takes Paris
and New York as its inspiration, charting the reverse journeys of Miles
Davis and Jean Cocteau over the Atlantic in 1949. The 1985 production
of The Dragons’ Trilogy spans seventy-five years and centres on three
Canadian Chinatowns, suggested through scenic transformations using a
sand box, a kiosk and numerous props. The odyssey begins in Québec
City in 1910, passes through mid-twentieth-century Toronto and arrives
in Vancouver in the 1980s (Bernatchez et al. 2011). Throughout, the pro-
duction depends on simple staging conceits, such as the reconfiguration of
shoe boxes to summon the streets of Québec and the trampling of chil-
dren’s shoes by soldiers to evoke the destruction and the loss of innocence
caused by war. Further examples of historical-spatial mapping are featured
in The Far Side of the Moon (2000), Tectonic Plates (1991), The Nightingale
and Other Short Fables (2009) and The Andersen Project (2005), among
others. Given Lepage’s consistent engagement with geography, era and
related contexts in his devised productions, it is revealing to explore the
ways in which his adaptations turn to the creative resource with which he
is most well-versed—time and place.
The key aesthetic referents in Lepage’s adaptation of Berlioz’s légende
dramatique, The Damnation of Faust, come from his initial work with a
place resource. In a video preview for the opera, staged initially at the
Festival Saito Kinen in Japan, Lepage comments that the director’s job is
not to ‘decorate’ the composer’s music but to ‘illustrate its energy’ and
‘extend’ the score (Lepage 2009).14 In many of his opera productions,
Lepage’s use of historical-spatial mapping is his central means of elucidat-
ing the music’s energy as he perceives it. Regarding The Damnation of
Faust, Ex Machina’s opera production manager, Bernard Gilbert, notes
that by featuring some of the earliest motion picture projections alongside
visual references to the lush, romantic aesthetic that defined European
opera production in the mid-1800s, Lepage turns to ‘an avant-garde way
of deconstructing the story linked to the period when Hector Berlioz
wrote the piece’ (quoted in Mehta 2009). The story in question is based
on Goethe’s Faust, which details Faust’s deal with the devil and his conse-
quent descent into hell. Berlioz, who initially studied to be a doctor, main-
tained a keen interest in science and technology while championing the
26 M. POLL

aesthetics of romantic opera through his adherence to the genre

(Macdonald 2005) including its tragic hero narrative, the privileging of
intuition over rationality and the idealization of nature. The medieval cas-
tles, fantastical nature scenes and choruses of devils elaborately represented
in nineteenth-century opera houses contrasted significantly with the reali-
ties of working-class life in a newly industrialized Europe. This tension
became the central directorial conceit for Lepage’s The Damnation of
Faust scenography.
Built of twenty-four vertical quadrants, Lepage’s set for Berlioz’s
légende dramatique creates grand romantic images through modern tech-
nologies including video sequences and projections (i.e., twenty-four bal-
lerinas perform in their individual quadrants as digital curtains billow
furiously within each quadrant’s frame). The natural world, a highly cele-
brated trope in romanticism and an important muse for Berlioz (Macdonald
2005), is depicted through scenes referencing nature via technology.
These segments serve not only to represent the popular opera aesthetics
contemporary to Berlioz but also to reinforce important narrative tropes.
One such segment features a filmed underwater dream sequence depicting
Faust floating weightlessly in a love-induced ecstasy. Here, Lepage delivers
his interpretation of a man whose love is powerfully euphoric, leading
Faust to an other-worldly state in which cherubic mer-women in flowing
garments similar to his lover’s surround him, demonstrating that his ado-
ration of Marguerite shapes his every thought and action.
Lepage’s set also functions to juxtapose Berlioz’s love of the romantic
aesthetic with his dedicated interest in the nineteenth century’s budding
technology. Resembling a giant reproduction of film or photography neg-
atives, the set’s quadrants use performers and film clips to depict move-
ment sequences in progressive states. Eadweard Muybridge, a contemporary
of Berlioz’s who studied animal locomotion by deconstructing movement
with photographed stills, would lay the foundation for early moving pic-
tures. In keeping with his place/time resource (nineteenth-century
Europe), Lepage projects Muybridge’s ‘horse in motion’ footage onto
each quadrant of the set and incorporates live acrobats rigged to appear as
if they are riding the horses. His use of such sequences, interspersed with
the aforementioned images representing romanticism’s expression of the
natural world, gives spectators the option to interpret the music’s meaning
via an emphasis on the conditions of time and place (Fig. 2.1).
While Lepage’s 2010–2012 adaptation of the opera cycle, Der Ring des
Nibelungen, demonstrates an engagement with the production’s fictional
 SCENOGRAPHIC DRAMATURGY & AUTEURING ADAPTATIONS 27

Fig. 2.1 The Damnation of Faust featuring Marcello Giordani (Faust) and John
Relyea (Mephistopheles), Metropolitan Opera, 2008, photo: Ken Howard

setting, this staging also demonstrates the ways in which Lepage’s

historical-­spatial mapping can reference multiple times and places includ-
ing an opera’s production history as well as its contemporary context.
Upon confirming his Ring collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera,
Lepage and select collaborators from Ex Machina travelled to Iceland to
experience the country’s terrain (Froemke and Graves 2012). Lepage
would use Iceland as the central conceit for his re-envisioning of
Wagner’s apocalyptic music drama, which takes its inspiration from the
Icelandic Prose Edda, Poetry Edda and Völsunga Saga alongside the
epic German poem, Das Nibelungenlied (Millington 1992). His forty-
five ton Ring set, built of twenty-four computerized planks, brought the
ideal of Iceland’s shifting tectonic plates to the stage. In coordination
with the music, Lepage’s set was reconfigured to summon the Rhine via
the individual rippling of consecutive planks. It ultimately transformed
to offer a rainbow bridge to Valhalla, allowing Wagner’s opera to be
visually written in space. Lepage layered this postmodern interpretation
of Iceland with exaggerated mythic iconography that winked at Wagner’s
aesthetically problematic inaugural production; Lepage’s production
included the presence of be-horned Valkyries, ‘breast-plates … full
gowns’ that referenced ‘the costuming of a much earlier era’ (Everett-
Green 2010). The most powerful element contextualizing Lepage’s
28 M. POLL

historical-spatial mapping for the Ring, though, was the casting of

African-American singer Eric Owens in a particularly sympathetic char-
acterization of the villain Alberich; as Chap. 4 will detail, this flagged the
continued marginalization of black men in North American society and
offered a much-needed contemporary comment on the Metropolitan
Opera’s dismal track record employing black male singers.
Granted Lepage regularly employs historical-spatial mapping to pro-
vide interpretations of an extant text, his use of this conceit does not
always produce clear readings. Lepage’s production of Stravinsky’s The
Rake’s Progress featured a choice of time and place that is unusually forced
and struggles to offer an accessible reading of both the text and context.
Instead of setting The Rake’s Progress in its usual London milieu, which
was inspired by William Hogarth’s eighteenth-century etchings of the
same name (Taruskin 1992), Lepage’s production is set in the late 1940s
and early 1950s, moving from Texas oil country to Hollywood and Las
Vegas. Lepage believed the Hollywood connection was relevant due to the
fact that Stravinsky settled in Los Angeles in 1941 and made road trips
throughout the country for concert engagements. Historical-spatial map-
ping becomes problematic here as Lepage’s deference to Stravinsky’s
biography is coupled with constant references to a Wim Wenders film.
Both conceits bear a too-distant connection to The Rake’s narrative and
the latter, though viewed by Lepage as an exciting interpretive angle,
obscures Stravinsky’s narrative and demonstrates Lepage’s universalized
assumptions:

You’ve seen Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders? … Europeans have a way of

depicting America that is completely different … There’s a lot of beauty in
there, a great love for American landscapes and desolation and all that.
We’re sending back to America the image of itself and its film culture, how
we see it. (Lepage 2007)

While Lepage’s scenographic dramaturgy succeeds in crafting a specifically

Wenders-inspired locale, the relevance of this conceit remains unclear. As
depicted in Paris, Texas, which charts a man’s self-revelatory journey from
Texas to Los Angeles, Wenders’s America is a boundless and stunning
Southwestern landscape. Here, Lepage follows suit, depicting Texas as a
wide-open landscape with little to clutter the stage. Through a video
­backdrop representing Texas’s seemingly endless plains and star-studded
 SCENOGRAPHIC DRAMATURGY & AUTEURING ADAPTATIONS 29

sky, Lepage paints Tom’s beginnings as humble. As Paris, Texas depicts

the lead character’s self-searching, cross-country trip, Wenders summons
expansive highways and road signs. Similarly, Lepage sends Tom’s beloved,
Anne Trulove, on the same journey as she attempts to recover Tom and
return with him to Texas. Through lighting and sound, as well as a life-­
sized prop vehicle creating the illusion that Anne is barrelling along in her
1950’s sports car, Lepage depicts long stretches of sprawling Wenders-­
style highway lighting up as the car’s high-beams flash on the iconic road
signs leading up to L.A.
Unlike his production of The Damnation of Faust, Lepage’s references
to the composer’s cultural/historical milieu fail to serve The Rake’s narra-
tive. As Tim Ashley suggests, Lepage’s transposition to Texas and later,
Hollywood, functions with limited relevance and deflates the production’s
stakes: ‘Stravinsky’s viciously capitalist London is replaced by an unthreat-
ening series of screen tests, location shoots and red-carpet parades’ (2010).
Moreover, beyond the minimal threat posed by Hollywood, Lepage’s pro-
duction of The Rake’s Progress rings false due to repeated references in the
libretto to London. As Chap. 3 will demonstrate, Lepage’s opera re-­
envisionings work best with open-ended pieces set in flexible environ-
ments such as the légende dramatique or monodrama. Stravinsky’s
traditional three-act opera is set clearly in London and relies on specific
details of the city during the eighteenth century, including the notoriously
poor conditions endured by psychiatric patients at Bedlam and the traf-
ficking of syphilitic prostitutes by local brothels. Lepage’s choice of mid-
twentieth-century Texas and Hollywood as his place/time conceit lacks
relevance to the narrative and, ultimately, undermines the opera.

Architectonic Scenography
By naming the second tenet of Lepage’s scenographic dramaturgy ‘archi-
tectonic scenography’, I am referring to a dynamic stage space character-
ized by a set that shifts position, height, depth, and/or composition to
represent the auteur/director’s signature adaptation of an extant text.
Such transformative scenography can be viewed in a range of modern pro-
ductions, from the Wooster Group’s employment of shifting platforms
and large video screens to suggest the complex memory-making process in
Vieux Carré (1977) to Andreas Fuchs and Ulrich Eh’s lighting, which
instantly frames a parade of actors posing in photographic tableaux and
reconfigures stage space in Robert Wilson’s production of The Threepenny
30 M. POLL

Opera (2007). The term ‘architectonic scene’ is particularly relevant to

Lepage’s shifting sets as it aligns his work with Edward Gordon Craig’s
approach. Craig rejected illusionistic scenery in favour of a minimalist,
symbolist aesthetic, featuring moving walls and shifting platforms. This
literally fluid architecture or ‘architectonic scene’ underwent kinetic tran-
sitions to evoke new configurations (Baugh et al. n.d., 4). When com-
bined with evocative lighting inspired by Appia, Craig’s scenography
suggested the mood and atmosphere driving individual scenes in his extant
text productions (McKinney and Butterworth 2009, 20).
Though the production’s historical-spatial mapping is a mismatch over-
all for Stravinksy’s opera, Lepage’s adaptation of The Rake’s Progress offers
examples of the ways in which low-tech architectonic scenography can
expand on self-evident thematic aspects of the opera. When Tom aban-
dons his true love (literally Anne Trulove) and Texas homeland to con-
quer Hollywood, Lepage’s scenic metaphors demonstrate that Tom’s
judgement is not merely faulty but disaster-bound. One scene, in which a
disillusioned Tom snorts cocaine, features his movie-set trailer actually
inflating and pathetically deflating before spectators’ eyes. In this, Lepage
suggests that much like his deflated trailer, Tom’s Hollywood career and
vastly inflated ego are both on the verge of imminent collapse. Later,
Tom’s strategic, fame-driven marriage to the celebrated bearded lady,
Baba the Turk, is laid bare as loveless when the main feature of the cou-
ple’s extravagant property materializes. The too perfect, blue luxury pool
adorning the Rakewell-Turk estate is created through pristine periwinkle
lighting gels and trompe l’oeil scenography.15 During an afternoon party
scene at the estate, the pool remains empty. Here Lepage offers the con-
ventional moral for Stravinsky’s opera: the pursuit of ephemeral wealth
and fame is no match for a life lived with love.
The interpretive potential of Lepage’s architectonic scenography is best
demonstrated through its marked availability to unconventionally struc-
tured and therefore seldom produced works, such as Bluebeard’s Castle
and The Damnation of Faust. As detailed in Chap. 3, both pieces present
musical collages rather than conventional dramatic narratives and, as such,
benefit from the signifying potential of scenographic dramaturgy.
Bluebeard’s Castle focuses on Duke Bluebeard and his new wife, Judith.
Although Bluebeard welcomes Judith into his castle, as she goes from
room to room, opening seven different doors and discovering increasingly
horrifying scenes, she begins to question her recent nuptials. Based on
Maurice Maeterlinck’s symbolist narrative, Bluebeard’s Castle is mythical
 SCENOGRAPHIC DRAMATURGY & AUTEURING ADAPTATIONS 31

in character but maintains a keen self-awareness. To highlight the meta-­

theatrical question that librettist Béla Balázs poses in the text of Bluebeard’s
prologue, which asks the audience, ‘Where’s the stage? Is it outside or in?’
(Stewart 2010), Lepage and Michael Levine’s set features the Brechtian
device of an oversized frame, drawing attention to spectators’ cognitive
complicity in creating the drama. Moreover, the set parallels Craig’s evoc-
ative architectonic scenography by morphing to evoke different moods
and tone-establishing spatial configurations, among them the glowing
beacon of Bluebeard’s castle as seen from afar and the grim realities of life
therein: ‘After viewing the castle as a golden dollhouse from afar, the not-
so-happy couple enter a dank and oppressive vestibule made doubly claus-
trophobic by the forced perspective of Michael Levine’s set’ (Kaptainis
2015). As Judith opens the door to the first room in the castle, her conse-
quent terror is palpable as harsh red light streams from within and projec-
tions create the illusion that the moaning walls are bleeding, as what
appears to be blood trickles down the set. Through his depiction of
Bluebeard’s torture chamber, Lepage keeps the Duke’s murderous inten-
tions at the forefront of his conceit (Fig. 2.2).

Fig. 2.2 Bluebeard’s Castle featuring John Relyea (Bluebeard) and Malgorzata
Walewska (Judith), Seattle Opera, 2009, photo: Rozarii Lynch
32 M. POLL

In his aforementioned production of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust,

Lepage encountered yet another unconventionally-crafted and seldom pro-
duced work. Because it contains sequences that present staging challenges,
Berlioz’s opera hybrid (Macdonald 2005) is often limited to concert per-
formances. Lepage not only addressed the scenic challenges presented by
The Damnation of Faust through architectonic scenography but also used
interactive technology to illustrate his conceit. To stage Berlioz’s opera,
Lepage and set designer Carl Fillion built a structure composed of twenty-
four vertical quadrants or what Lepage called ‘a giant picture book’
(Bernatchez et al. 2009). This structure was used simultaneously as a play-
ing space and backdrop for fluid digital projections and video segments
mimicking the lavish pictorial depictions of nature that define romantic
opera production. These digital projections also served as a key interpretive
device for Lepage to present his reading of the characters’ inner lives. In
this, he used advanced technology to pursue a staging technique associated
with Josef Svoboda. As defined by Svoboda, psycho-­plastic space is a dra-
matic space that reflects characters’ emotional states through shifts in sce-
nography (McKinney and Butterworth 2009, 111). Given the limitations
of technology and scenic design in the mid-­twentieth century, Svoboda
once made do with moving walls and a suspended overhead mirror to con-
vey Hamlet’s skewed perspective in a 1965 production: ‘The spectator saw
a double … vertical movement of menacing monolithic objects vividly con-
veying the sense of a crushing dehumanizing world with which Hamlet
must cope’ (Kennedy 2004, 202). Similarly, in The Damnation of Faust,
Lepage used kinetic scenography during Mephistopheles’s appearance to
Faust in the forest. Through motion sensors attached to the performer’s
body, Mephistopheles’s inner malice was relayed through an arresting
image of death; as he passed different trees in the forest, they died instantly,
rapidly withering and shedding their leaves.

The Kinetic Text of Collaborators

Numerous theatre-makers have relied on physical texts to make meaning
in their adaptations. Yael Farber’s adaptation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie,
Mies Julie, turned the play’s central love affair into a kinetic pas de deux
while Thomas Ostermeier and Calixto Bieito have both made an evocative
and literal mess of Shakespeare, having characters enact their emotional
journeys by writhing, playing and even consuming dirt. In A Theory of
Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon notes the performer’s role as an adaptor,
 SCENOGRAPHIC DRAMATURGY & AUTEURING ADAPTATIONS 33

writing that ‘performers are the ones who embody and give material exis-
tence to the adaptation … Actors—through gestures, tone of voice, or
facial expressions—interpret through incarnating characters in ways the
initial creator never envisaged’ (2006, 81–82). This is echoed in Robert
Stam’s assertion that ‘Performers too become, in their way the adapters
and interpreters … as they mold characters through gestural details, ways
of walking or talking’ (2005, 22). Lepage’s process includes an expansive
view of the body’s role in performance, employing it as a site whereupon
meaning is developed and ultimately unfolds. His work towards embodied
scenography most often takes shape through his work with collaborators;
these individuals are specifically cast for their ability to author unique
physical texts that are incorporated into the performance. In rehearsals for
Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Metropolitan Opera, I witnessed first-hand
how Lepage encouraged acrobats, dancers and performers to co-author
their own corporeal scores for performance, whether based in dance, cir-
cus tumbling or physical characterizations. As with his devised produc-
tions, Lepage often casts performers, dancers and/or body doubles with
expertise in crafting their own devised movement work (be it acrobatic
routines, choreography or, as Chap. 5’s case study of the Wendake Tempest
will demonstrate, axe-play and stylized dance). The agency afforded to
these individuals results in largely co-determined physical scores.
Relatedly, Aleksandar Dundjerović’s scholarship flags the contributions
of ‘actor-authors’ and uses the term to describe both Lepage and the cred-
ited collaborators who co-author his devised pieces (e.g., The Seven Streams
of the River Ota) (2007, 18, 79). Actors such as Marie Brassard and Rick
Miller, both known for devising their own solo shows, have made signifi-
cant contributions to Lepage’s devised theatre in productions such as The
Dragons’ Trilogy and Lipsynch. My terminology and meaning differs from
Dundjerović’s in that I employ the term collaborator to encompass the
physical contributions of dancers and acrobats as well as actors. In later
chapters, I will problematize the fact that authorship credit for these phys-
ical scores is often absent from Ex Machina’s production materials. My use
of the term collaborator also encompasses Lepage’s work with performers
who, though they may not be skilled in any particular facet of physical
theatre, are cast due to their willingness to learn new physical skills to craft
embodied performance texts. An interest in heightened physicality in per-
formance was integral to the casting of the Ring cycle,16 where the
Rhinemaidens worked alongside Lepage’s assistant director and Cirque du
Soleil alumnus Nielson Vignola on acrobatic scores that saw them rigged
34 M. POLL

high above the stage’s surface to appear to be swimming in the Rhine. The
same can be said of The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, in which sing-
ers worked with puppet master Michael Curry to author kinetic texts
based in Bunraku and Vietnamese water puppetry.
Erwartung, Schoenberg’s operatic ‘monodrama’ of the aforemen-
tioned double-billed Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung, offers an early
instance of Lepage working with collaborators to further develop an extant
narrative through kinetic text. Erwartung is the story of a mentally unsta-
ble young woman who searches the forest at night for her lover’s body.
While Schoenberg’s original Erwartung narrative is crafted for one per-
former, The Woman, Lepage chooses to literally embody her psychosis
through the physical contributions of three dancer-acrobats, Pamela Sue
Johnson, Noam Markus and Mark Johnson. They portray the imagined
figures in The Woman’s tortured mind. Unlike the non-singing ‘special
supers’ used in many operas to populate crowd scenes, these performers
are experienced devisors brought to the production for their distinct skills.
Pamela Johnson is a founding member and choreographer for High
Xposure, a rock-climbing dance theatre company. Mark Johnson is a per-
former and devisor of dance theatre and Markus Noam is a Lecoq-trained
mime and acrobat. Lepage supplied these three collaborators with a series
of generative images he associated with Erwartung and worked with them
as they improvised to develop embodied visuals for the performance
(Walker 2001). One sequence saw the three sources of The Woman’s
agony—her psychiatrist, her murdered lover and his mistress—appear
from an aerial position on the set’s back wall (via rigged harnesses).
Through an excruciatingly slow backdrop of acrobatic sequences, the
physical text embodies Schoenberg’s vision which ‘represented in slow
motion everything that occurs in a single second of the greatest psycho-
logical stress’ (Neighbour 1992). Spectators are not left to imagine The
Woman’s torment; instead, they are confronted by her inner psychological
turmoil in material form (Fig. 2.3).
Through the emotional catalyst of the acting machine, performing
bodies offer further representational possibilities for Lepage’s adapta-
tions. An heir to Meyerhold’s techniques, in which an actor’s emotions
are sourced organically through specific movements, Lepage uses fluid,
transformative space (including sets that shift position, height, depth,
and/or composition throughout a production) to prompt a central
meaning-­
­ making dialogue between actors and their environments.17
Lepage interprets the Ring by prompting singers to interact with his
 SCENOGRAPHIC DRAMATURGY & AUTEURING ADAPTATIONS 35

Fig. 2.3 Erwartung featuring Susan Marie Pierson (The Woman), Noam Markus
(The Lover) and Mark Johnson (The Psychiatrist), Seattle Opera, 2009, photo:
Rozarii Lynch

constantly morphing set, a ninety-thousand pound structure composed of

twenty-­four vertical planks which are reconfigured via computer control
and manual manipulation. In the third act of Die Walküre, the usually
steely battle cry that is the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is offset by adolescent
giggles and playful cavorting among Brunhilde and her Valkyrie sisters;
each character sits astride a giant bridled plank and revels in the see-saw
motions of her flying ‘steed’. This interactive, adrenaline-producing con-
ceit encourages the performers to feel joyful invigoration, prompting
their bodies to communicate a meaning that breaks with conventional
interpretations; while the Valkyrie traditionally embody the strength and
fearlessness of determined warrior women, Lepage turns the tables by
emphasizing the youth and humanity of Wagner’s Valkyries. They pro-
claim their battle cry and slide off their enormous ‘horses’ with enthusias-
tic laughter. Similarly, Siegmund’s terrified sprint from persecution in the
forest takes on a new urgency thanks to a scenic reconfiguration that
forces the performer (Jonas Kaufmann) to seemingly negotiate a maze of
giant (digital) trees. As critic Anthony Tommasini notes, by having
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Demonologia
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Demonologia
or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of
ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism,
enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the
doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions,
astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination,
dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars,
ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations,
inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians,
miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy,
purgatory, predestination, predictions, quackery, relics,
saints, second sight, signs before death, sorcery,
spirits, salamanders, spells, talismans, traditions, trials,
&c. witches, witchcraft, &c. &c. the whole unfolding
many singular phenomena in the page of nature

Author: J. S. Forsyth

Release date: December 22, 2023 [eBook #72476]

Language: English

Original publication: London: John Bumpus, 1827

Credits: Richard Tonsing, Tim Lindell, and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
DEMONOLOGIA ***
Transcriber’s Note:
New original cover art included with this eBook is
granted to the public domain.
 Demonologia;

OR,

NATURAL KNOWLEDGE REVEALED.

W. WILSON, PRINTER, 57, SKINNER-STREET, LONDON.

 DEMONOLOGIA;

OR,

NATURAL KNOWLEDGE REVEALED;

BEING

AN EXPOSÉ
OF

Ancient and Modern Superstitions,

CREDULITY, FANATICISM, ENTHUSIASM, & IMPOSTURE,

AS CONNECTED WITH THE

DOCTRINE, CABALLA, AND JARGON,

OF

AMULETS,
APPARITIONS,
ASTROLOGY,
CHARMS,
DEMONOLOGY,
DEVILS,
DIVINATION,
DREAMS,
DEUTEROSCOPIA,
EFFLUVIA,
FATALISM,
FATE,
FRIARS,
GHOSTS,
GIPSIES,
HELL,
HYPOCRITES,
INCANTATIONS,
INQUISITION,
JUGGLERS,
LEGENDS,
MAGIC,
MAGICIANS,
MIRACLES,
MONKS,
NYMPHS,
ORACLES,
PHYSIOGNOMY,
PURGATORY,
PREDESTINATION,
PREDICTIONS,
QUACKERY,
RELICS,
SAINTS,
SECOND SIGHT,
SIGNS BEFORE DEATH,
SORCERY,
SPIRITS,
SALAMANDERS,
SPELLS,
TALISMANS,
TRADITIONS,
TRIALS, &c.
WITCHES,
WITCHCRAFT, &c. &c.

THE WHOLE UNFOLDING

MANY SINGULAR PHENOMENA IN THE PAGE OF NATURE.

 By J. S. F.
“The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
“And these are of them.”

“All which, by long discourse, I’ll prove anon.”

London:
JOHN BUMPUS, 23, SKINNER-STREET.

1827.
CONTENTS.
 Page
Observations on Ancient and Modern Superstitions, &c. 1
Proofs and Trials of Guilt in Superstitious Ages 9
Astrology, &c. 18
Practical Astrology, &c. 25
Natural Astrology 26
Judicial or Judiciary Astrology 27
Origin of Astrology 28
Astrological Schemes, &c. 29
Table of the Twelve Houses 30
Signs to the Houses of the Planets 32
Angles or Aspects of the Planets 33
The Application of Planets 34
Prohibition 35
Separation 35
Translation of Light and Virtue 35
Refrenation 35
Combustion 35
Reception 36
Retrogradation 36
Frustration 36
The Dragon’s Head and Tail 36
Climacteric 37
Lucky and Unlucky Days 39
Genethliaci 41
Genethliacum 42
Barclay’s Refutation of Astrology 43
On the Origin and Imaginary Efficacy of Amulets and Charms, in the
Cure of Diseases, Protection from Evil Spirits, &c. 51
Definition of Amulets, &c. 56
Effect of the Imagination on the Mind, &c. 59
History of Popular Medicines, &c.—How influenced by Superstition 67
Alchemy 73
Origin, Objects, and Practice of Alchemy, &c. 81
Alkahest, or Alcahest 85
Magician 91
Magi, or Mageans 96
Magic, Magia, Mateia 99
Magic of the Eastern nations,—a brief View of the Origin and Progress of
Magic, &c.—
Chaldeans and Persians 101
Indians 109
Egyptians 110
Jews 115
Prediction 123
Fatalism, or Predestination 136
Divination 142
Artificial Divination 142
Natural Divination 142
Axinomancy 143
Alectoromantia 143
Arithmomancy 144
Belomancy 144
Cleromancy 145
Cledonism 145
Coscinomancy 146
Capnomancy 146
Catoptromancy 147
Chiromancy 147
Dactyliomancy 148
Extispicium 148
Gastromancy 149
Geomancy 149
Hydromancy 150
Necromancy 150
Oneirocritica 150
Onomancy, or Onomamancy 152
Onycomancy, or Onymancy 154
Ornithomancy 155
Pyromancy 155
Pyscomancy, or Sciomancy 155
Rhabdomancy 156
Oracle 157
Ouran, or Uran, Soangus 163
Dreams, &c. 164
Brizomancy 164
Origin of interpreting Dreams 164
Opinions on the cause of Dreams 166
Fate 168
Physiognomy 171
Apparitions 178
Deuteroscopia, or Second-sight 194
Witches, Witchcraft, Wizards, &c. 204
Witchcraft proved by Texts of Scripture 225
Dr. More’s Postscript 226
The Confessions of certain Scotch Witches, taken out of an
authentic copy of their Trial at the Assizes held at Paisley, in
Scotland, Feb. 15, 1678, touching the bewitching of Sir George
Maxwell 259
Depositions of certain persons, agreeing with confessions of the
above-said witches 264
The Confession of Agnes Sympson to King James 267
The White Pater-noster 270
The Black Pater-noster 270
Sorcery 272
Sortes—Sortilegium 273
Sibyls 282
Talismans 283
Philters, Charms, &c. 285
Hell 286
Inquisition 297
Inquisition, or the Holy Office 297
Demon 307
Demonology 308
Derivation of the strange and hideous forms of Devils, &c. 315
The Narrative of the Demon of Tedworth, or the disturbances at
Mr. Monpesson’s house, caused by Witchcraft and Villainy of a
Drummer 338
The Demon of Jedburgh 355
The Ghost of Julius Cæsar 360
The Ghosts of the slain at the Battle of Marathon 360
 Familiar Spirit, or ancient Brownie 361
Gipsies—Egyptians 362
Jugglers, their Origin, Exploits, &c. 378
Legends, &c.—Miracles, &c. 393
Monks and Friars.—Saints and Hermits 405
Of the Hermit of the Pillar—(St. Simeon Stylites, St. Telesephorus,
St. Syncletia) 427
Holy Relique-Mania, &c. &c. &c. 431
 PREFACE.

Among the multifarious absurdities and chicaneries, which at

different epocha of society have clung to, and engaged the attention
of man, absorbing, as it were, his more active intelligence, the
marvellous and the ridiculous have alternately and conjointly had to
contend for pre-eminence; that, whether it were a mountain in the
moon or a bottle conjuror; a live lion stuffed with straw or a
mermaid; a Cocklane ghost or a living skeleton; a giant or a pigmy;
the delusive bait has invariably been swallowed with avidity, and
credited with all the solemnity of absolute devotion.
If we look back towards what are called the dark ages of the worlds
that is, at times when men were mere yokels, and when the reins of
tyranny, superstition and idolatry, were controlled by a few knowing
ones, we shall see the human mind at its lowest ebb of debasement,
grovelling either under the lash of despotism, or sunk beneath the
scale of human nature by the influence of priestcraft,—a time, when
the feelings of men were galloped over, rough shod, and the dignity
of the creation trampled under foot with impunity and exultation, by
a state of the most passive and degenerate servility: how much must
it now excite our wonder and admiration of that supreme
Providence, who, in his merciful consideration for the frailest of
mortals, by a variety of ways and means best suited to his
omnipotent ends, has dragged us gradually, and, as it were,
reluctantly to ourselves, from darkness to daylight, by extinguishing
the stench and vapour of the train oil of ignorance and superstition,
lighting us up with the brilliant gas of reason and comparative
understanding, while, under less despotic and more tolerant times,
we are permitted the rational exercise of those faculties which
formerly were rivetted to the floor of tyranny by the most humiliating
oppression!
 The pranks of popes and priests, conjurors and fire-eaters, have
comparatively fled before the piercings of the intellectual ray.
Witches no longer untie the winds to capsise church-steeples, and
“topple” down castles,—they no longer dance round the enchanted
cauldron, invoking the “ould one” to propitiate their cantrip vows:—
Beelzebub himself with his cloven foot is seldom if ever seen above
the “bottom of the bottomless pit;” ghosts and apparitions are
“jammed hard and fast” in the Red sea; demons of every cast and
colour are eternally spellbound; legends are consigned to the
chimney-corner of long winter-nights; miracles to the “presto, quick,
change and begone!” of the nimble-fingered conjuror; and holy relics
to the rosary of the bigot. Amulets and charms have lost their
influence; saints are uncanonized, and St. Patrick, St. Dennis, & Co.
are flesh and blood like ourselves; monks and holy friars no longer
revel in the debauches of the cloister; the hermit returns unsolicited
from the solitude of the desert, to encounter with his fellow-men; the
pilgrim lays by his staff, leaves the Holy Land to its legitimate
possessors, and the tomb of St. Thomas-à-Becket, to enjoy,
unmolested, the sombre tranquillity of the grave. Quacks and
mountebanks begin also to caper within a narrower sphere; to be
brief, the word of command, to use a nautical phrase, has long been
given, “every man to his station, and the cook to the fore-sheet,”—
worldly occupations have superseded ultramundane speculations.
Astrologers themselves, who once ruled the physical world, have long
ago been virtually consigned to the grave of the Partridges; and
floods and storms are found to be phenomena perfectly consistent
with the natural world. We also know that the sun is stationary, that
the moon is not made of green cheese, and that there are stars yet in
the firmament which the centifold powers of the telescope of a
Herschell will never be able to explore.
The Reformation, which originated in the trammels of vice itself,
gave the Devil in hell and his agents on earth, such a “belly-go-
fister,” that they have never since been able to come to the scratch,
but in such a petty larceny-like manner, as to set all their
demonological efforts at defiance. This is the first time “old Nick”
was ever completely floored; though, it would appear, from the
recent number of new churches, built no doubt with the pious
intention of keeping him in abeyance, that he has latterly been
making a little head-way;—these, however, with the “Holy alliance,”
like stern-chasers on a new construction, should the “ould one”
attempt to board us again in the smoke of superstition, will, without
much injury to the hull of the church, pitch him back to
Pandemonium, there to exhaust his demonological rage in the
sulphuretted hydrogen of his own hell; while the lights of revealed
religion, emanating from these soul-saving foundations, like Sir
Humphrey Davy’s safety-lamp, will give us timely warning of the
choke-damp of damnation before it have time to explode about our
ears.
It behoves us, nevertheless, to pray that we may merit this
protection, and to watch, for we know not at what hour the
cracksman may pay us an unwelcome visit; for, whatever pampered
hypocrites and mercenary prayer-mongers may pretend to the
contrary, our worldly goods, although but of a temporary and
perishable nature, are as essential to our existence and respectability
here below, as our spiritual faith is necessary to our heavenly and
eternal happiness above, however unequal the comparison.
Among the creatures of the Devil, no one has a more decent claim
to his clemency, than the caterwauling canting hypocrite. The
hypocrite is a genus to which a variety of species belong, the
subdivisions of which are too numerous for our present purpose; we
shall only therefore offer a few remarks on one kind of these
vampyres, drawn from daily observation. If not absolutely gluttons,
although many of them are gourmands in excess, hypocrites are
invariably fond of their ungodly guts, for which they are at all times
ready to sacrifice their God, their King, their country and their
friends. They have a stomach like a horse, and a reservoir like a
brewer’s vat. The hypocrite of circumstances prays, or pretends to
pray, in adversity, and swears in good earnest, like a trooper, in
prosperity,—he is either a roaring bedlamite or a whining calf, a
peevish idiot, a buffoon, or a disgusting bacchanal;—in short, he is
capable of such derogatory pranks and extremes, that, as the
occasion serves, he with equal facility rises from the bended knee of
supplication to extend the hand of venality, aye, and of sensuality
too, to the object of his latent and ungovernable concupiscence. His
bloated chops, at one time, resemble a passive pair of bagpipes,
while, at another, they are inflated with all the arrogance of beggarly
pride and momentary superfluity. He is never ashamed to beg, and
only afraid to steal—although equally adapted for the one as the
other. A consummate, a brawling, and a suspicious egotist—he will
hear no one but himself, no opinion but his own. In his own house he
is a bear; in the house of another, a nuisance; and every where a nil
desideratum. Self-eulogy is his most constant theme; and his
loathsome flattery, either applied to himself or others, is invariably
bespattered with the most impious invocations of the Deity, to
witness his rebellious professions of patience, submission,
abstinence, and every other exotic virtue, which he knows only by
name. His cant is of the basest and most servile description; and for
the attainment of some object, however pitiful or paltry, important or
consequential, he is the same venal wretch all over. Where his
expectations are defeated, and the yearnings of his bowels
unappeased, his sycophancy is succeeded by slander, impertinence,
insult, and the most unfounded suspicion. The cringing, wriggling
wretch, at length, having wormed himself through a world of
unpitied degradation, filth, and obscenity, attempts, at the end of his
career, to offer up to his God, what has been indignantly rejected by
the Devil—he dies as he lived, a pauper, equally to fortune and fame
—without one redeeming qualification to keep alive even his name,
which is never mentioned unless mingled with that kindred
contempt and insignificance to which it was by nature and existence
so closely allied.
Popular traditions are always worth recording; they illustrate
traditions and exemplify manners: they tend to throw off the
thraldom of the intellect of man, and stimulate him to exertions
compatible with the intentions of his existence. It is with this view
that the materials of which the following pages are composed, have
been collected. Priestcraft, the foster-mother of superstition, is now
sunk too far below the horizon ever to set again in our illumined
hemisphere. The history of their former influence may, nevertheless,
enlighten and amuse, as well as guard the tender ideas from
receiving impressions calculated to stupify the reason and riper
judgment; thus withdrawing the flimsy veil of error and credulity, by
an exposure of those fallacies too often credited, because frequently
passed over without the aid of investigation through the more
refined medium of moral and physical research.
 Demonologia.

OBSERVATIONS ON ANCIENT AND

MODERN SUPERSTITIONS, &c.

The mind of man is naturally so addicted to the marvellous, that,

notwithstanding the brilliant eructations of knowledge that have
been elicited and diffused out of chaotic darkness since the
establishment of the Christian religion, and the revival of learning
and the arts, the influence still of ancient superstition is by no means
entirely annihilated. At the present period, however, it is principally
confined to the uneducated portion of the community; although, at a
more remote period, its limits were by no means so circumscribed. A
belief in the existence of apparitions, witches, sorcerers, and
magicians, is still credulously supported in many parts of the world,
though less so in civilized Europe than in other countries, Lapland
and some parts of Sweden and Norway excepted. But how much
must it astonish us when we look back to the distant ages of Greece
and Rome, the nurseries of the sciences and the arts, to find the
greatest heroes and statesmen imbibing and fostering the same
ridiculous prejudices, and strenuously cultivating the same belief,
paying obedience to augurs, oracles, and soothsayers, on whose
contradictory and equivocal inferences their prosperity or adversity
was made to depend. In fact, little more than a century ago, do we