From: "julian samuel" <jjsamuel-AT-vif.com>
Subject: French-Canada  Elseneur by Robert Lepage
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 12:00:20 -0700



Dear List members:

    Robert Lepage pretends to be multicultural, but he has very few visible
minorites in key position his inane works. He is over-rated beyond words.

    Most white Francophone Quebece intellectuals always defend the ugly
racism of the PQ and BQ. Here is a classic example of their racism:

Courrier des lecteurs

 Dans le numéro 88, (hiver 1997) de Lettres québécoises Francine Bordeleau a
attaqué mon roman De Lahore à Montréal. Mais il y a quelques petits oublis
et une paradox massivement. Elle dit que le protagoniste est "néo-marxist,"
Fanonist, est AUSSI un reactionnaire que est préféré les femme en shariah.
Fanon a defendu le role de femme en Algerie comme le protagoniste [soutien
le role de femme en Pakistan].
 Le roman n'a pas seulement pour cible les très susceptibles Québécois. Je
pointe aussi du doigt mon pays natal le Pakistan, un pays sataniquement
raciste.
 Bordeleau protege son Québec et elle néglige le fait pourtant évident que
le roman ridiculise plusieurs nationalismes; elle amplifie mes commentaires
sur le partitionisme (séparatisme) Québécois  pour montrer comment 'les
étrangers' voient Québec. Elle omet de mentionner les passages dans lesquels
j'expose le racisme:
 "J'exhibai mon passeport canadien et ma carte de citoyenneté qui datait de
1973.  Mais le responsable québécois réclama que je produise un formulaire
IMM 1000 de l'immigration canadienne (il faut deux ou trois mois pour
l'obtenir).  Je suis arrivé au Canada en 1966.  On me demandait de prouver
que j'étais Canadien au bout de vingt-sept ans alors que je détiens un
passeport canadien depuis plus de deux décennies."
 Où a été éduquée cette très démocrate Québécoise? Le London School of
Economics comme Jacques Parizeau? Imaginez qu' il soit le maire sortant
d'une ville en France, disons Aix-en-Provence, et qu'il ait imputé sa
défaite à "l'argent et au vote ethnique." Miroir de Jean-Marie Le Pen pur et
simple. Probablement que cette déclaration de Parizeau est acceptable pour
Bordeleau qui dirait que le contexte géopolitique est différent.

Julian J. Samuel

Elseneur by Robert Lepage

Reviewed by Julian Samuel

*
>From the programme notes: "Robert Lepage...notre ambassadeur culturel le
plus reconnu à l'étranger..."

Lear: The art of our necessities is strange and can make vile things
precious.
*

 Elseneur by Robert Lepage is an adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The
work is a reduction of a play that urgently requires many actors, to one
single actor: Lepage himself. This is wholly and cosmically insufficient to
sustain the psychological complexities that have made Shakespeare's work
last century after century in language after language.
 Although Lepage's experimental work is technically sparkly and is
occasionally stimulating it is never intelligent, provocative or deep. The
perfect delivery of his lines is emotionally moribund and does not make use
of Shakespeare's insight and perspicuity. Lepage is trying to create
experiential theatre; the work is not psychologically or dramaturgically
complex in anyway, and is obsessed with tricks that are supposed to visually
excite his audience. In fact, it is not really Shakespeare in any sense --
not even experimentally. Shakespeare's work lends it self beautifully to
experimental interpretation, including modern media such as film.
 So then what is Lepage up to pray tell? Could it be another post-modern
artsy inanity? Yes, nothing short of that. Could it be a tax write-off? Not
really. Though one wonders. Various funding agencies have invested much into
a Shakespeare play that is not Shakespeare in any sense of the word. Lepage
is as superficial; there is not one elegant mental picture that remains. Of
course, all this could be too simplistic a dismissal. But it is not an
abject dismissal: I am trying to explain how he has failed.
 Lepage has invested mind, body and soul into his art. One can see how
passionate he is. It is obvious that he cares about art, superficial art
that is.  Here is why he fails: in a clear imitation of the modernist
Euro-American aesthetic of repetitive filmic loop-editing, and long sustain
duration à la Stan Brakhage (along with many others, such as Brecht, Brook
etc.),  Lepage is trying to make the technical gimmicks part of a normalized
aesthetic vocabulary in his particular "interpretation". This is supposed to
take Shakespeare to another level. Where exactly? It does not matter, it
just has to go somewhere. (Many American experimental artists take
traditional themes and modernize them -- Charles Ives for example).
 His borrowing from the Euro-American pool of experimental artistic practice
is apparent; his innovation is not. He has not mastered his masters: the
allegorically rotating stages, the diagetic video screens on either side,
the gauzy ghosts, the trivially acted sexual references are stupid and
inexorably over done -- stinking to the high heaven of copy-catism. His
colonial masters still rule him; he is a petit province of London, Paris,
Tokyo etc. No more no less.

***
"What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones
The labour of an age in piled stones?"

Milton
***

 But Lepage, the ambassador for Quebec culture, thinks that his grainy
electronic voices, millions of wires, echoed-voices, multiple cameras,
beeping and whistles deepen and post-modernize Shakespeare's tragic art, but
it only piles neon around Hamlet: like a hot-dog palace in Elizabethan
England. All this makes Lepage look like a country-boy who has just
discovered cutting-edge America. He wants to show us that he has understood
and can integrate international trends in the arts, in all the arts and that
he can combine them into one dynamic theatrical entity. He wants to overload
us with images, words and stage motions, but, Robert, we have all been there
and done that.
 Québec's critics fawn over the Lepage's neon secretions because they too
are intellectually provincial, tribal, and sparkly neon is new to them. But,
one hears people say "he is greatly appreciated in London, Paris, Tokyo."
Well then these critics must be provincial also. Robert Levesque of  Le
Devoir is one of the few critics to not fawn over this child prodigy.

*
 For the first hour or so, the music, by Robert Caux, nicely integrates with
the flipping stages, the filmic inter-title burn-ins, but these tricks
becomes tedious, unrelentingly suicidal. Shakespeare knew when to let the
audience reflect, when to let us see the universe in the life of a rat. (So
did Kurosawa in some ways). Lepage knows nothing about this orchestration of
pacing, scene duration, narrative-mirroring and plot reversals. Shakespeare
work is complex and projects no easy resolves to human and political
complications. Lepage's little neon decoration will be forgotten on the
plains of Abraham.
 There must be reasons why Lepage gets funding so easily. What or who could
throw money at such an insignificant, hectoring post-modernizing of
Shakespeare? Here's his promo sheet: "Acteur fabuleux, auteur inspiré,
metteur en scène novateur, Robert Lepage est devenu, en l'espace d'une
décennie effervescente, notre ambassadeur culturel le plus reconnu à
l'étranger." What immense cultural inferiority complex do these words hide?
 Robert Lepage is an ambassador/artist in the worst sense possible. He is a
Revolutionary Provincialist who is being used to project Québec abroad:
Ethnic artists are not given the same level of funding because they don't
fit the same affirmative action mandate as Lepage. One single line of
Richard Burton reading from The Rape of Lucrece is worth all of his
Elseneur.

Julian Samuel

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