Sunday, January 30, 2011

Robert Lapage Discusses His Stage Craft

(Photo: Julie Perreault)
Q: How do you fit opera into that? Is opera more challenging?
A: Opera disciplines me, dramaturgically. The fact that I’ve now abandoned any attempt at staging a text that I’ve already written, and am just concentrating on writing stuff for developing or improvising, and opera’s exactly the opposite of doing that kind of creation.

53-year old stage director Robert Lapage sits down for an interview to discuss his work with plays, dance, opera and the circus. The article hearkens back to the days of his early success with The Dragon’s Trilogy in 1985 through his recent production of Wagner's Das Rheingold at the Metropolitan Opera in the fall of 2010. One of the great joys in the conversation is his collaboration with ballet star  Sylvie Guillem and choreographer Russell Maliphant in his Kabuki-inspired production Eonnagata for which Lepage was also a performer. [Source]

A video of Eonnagata is after the jump.