The Blue Dragon

Québécois director Robert Lepage’s characters are often travellers drawn to the revealing encounter with the other, the exotic, the unknown. Yet in all the stories Lepage has told through opera, film, or theatre, only one of his characters has ever gone away for good— Pierre Lamontagne, the central figure in The Dragons’ Trilogy, who departs as the play closes to study art in China.

Twenty years later, Lamontagne resurfaces in Shanghai’s Moganshan 50, a former industrial complex converted into an arts centre, now the heart of the contemporary Chinese art scene. Here he meets Claire Forêt, a Montreal ad executive, arrives for a visit to rekindle their friendship and adopt a Chinese baby. Claire, who had known Pierre in another life at art school, casts a decidedly western eye on his current existence. Through the shock of their rediscovery and confrontation, their common past opens an unexpected door to the future for both. Enter Xiao Ling, a Chinese artist exhibiting at Pierre’s gallery. As she faces wrenching choices, the young woman awakens hopes long buried in Claire.

In the effervescent paradox that is modern China, the collision of these three characters brings about fundamental changes for each.

Co-written by Robert Lepage, winner of the 2007 Europe Theatre Prize, and his collaborator Marie Michaud (who also co-authored The Dragons’ Trilogy), and performed by Lepage, Michaud, and dancer Tai Wei Foo, The Blue Dragonbears all the hallmarks of Lepage’s original, brilliant, and highly visual style. As always, Lepage relies on the one inexhaustible resource the theatre possesses—the audience’s intelligence.

Source: lacasernet.net

Text 
Marie Michaud et Robert Lepage
Director: 
Robert Lepage
Director assistant
Félix Dagenais
Set designer
Michel Gauthier
Lighting designer
Louis-Xavier Gagnon-Lebrun
Sound designer
Jean-Sébastien Côté
Props designer
Jeanne Lapierre
Costumes designer
François St-Aubin
Projection designer
David Leclerc
Choreographer
Tai Wei Foo
Production
Ex Machina
Created in
Châlons-en-Champagne / France

On tour since February 2008

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