Robert Lepage at BAM

by Joseph Bradshaw

Robert Lepage

From his upturning of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Met to his reinvention of the hardboiled detective story in Polygraph (presented at 1990’s Next Wave Festival), Robert Lepage can always be found at the forefront of theatrical innovation. Also an acclaimed film director, Lepage’s work for the stage strikes an inventive balance between filmed and live action. His deep understanding of the potential of contemporary technology is used to reinterpret the past, and his results are always astonishing. What else would we expect from contemporary theater’s foremost Renaissance man?    

Since Polygraph, BAM has presented Lepage’s stage work on the regular. For the 1992 Next Wave a 35-year-old Lepage—who by that point was already an established figure on the international scene—performed his triumphal one-man show Needles and Opium. This piece, which Mel Gussow called “a chamber work marked by its absolute precision,” crosscut the lives of Miles Davis and Jean Cocteau with elements of Lepage’s own autobiography, in a gymnastic medley of musings on jazz, travel, Surrealism, and the act of creation itself.

The Blue Dragon—now, a graphic novel!

by Susan Yung

Illustration by Fred Jourdain, from The Blue Dragon book

Turning a graphic novel or comic book into theater or film is a reliable method of producing eye-popping entertainment. Spider-Man and Annie, currently on Broadway, are two examples, not to mention all the superhero blockbuster movies. But can you think of a graphic book that was inspired by a film or show? (Add in comments, if so!)

Illustration by Fred Jourdain, from The Blue Dragon book

Shanghai in Next Wave—From Dragon to Heaven

by David Hsieh

Tai Wei Foo and Robert Lepage in The Blue Dragon. Photo: Louise Leblanc

Robert Lepage directs and acts in The Blue Dragon; his character Pierre is a Canadian expat living in present-day Shanghai. In The Edge of Heaven, Gary Lucas reinterprets Chinese pop songs created in 1930s Shanghai. Both shows filter this major Eastern metropolis through Western eyes—befitting, as the history of Shanghai is closely intertwined with the Western presence in China.

Situated at the mouth of the Yangtze River in the middle of China’s coastline, Shanghai’s strength lies in its ocean-facing harbor. But China didn’t have much use of it before the 18th century since the major north-south shipping route was the Great Canal linking the Yellow and Yangtze rivers inland. And except for some isolated periods, China was not a sea-faring empire.

That changed in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanjing, after the British “fire-spewing ships” streamed up the Yangtze River and forced China to open five ports for trading, including Shanghai. Although not a sleepy fishing village like Hong Kong, which China ceded in the same treaty, Shanghai, by Chinese standards, was not a major city (its official status was a level below) nor a historical one. It had a population of about 200,000. The city wall, built 300 years earlier, measured only three miles in circumference. The landscape was as flat as a piece of cardboard and prone to flooding. But acting on the advice of William Jardine, a ship physician turned opium merchant turned parliament member, London decided this would be the base for its future operation in China. Modern Shanghai was born.