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States of Play: Locating Québec in the Performances of Robert Lepage, Ex Machina, and the Cirque du Soleil Author(s): Jennifer Harvie and Erin Hurley Source: Theatre Journal, Vol. 51, No. 3, Theatre and Capital (Oct., 1999), pp. 299-315Published by: Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25068678Accessed: 29-10-2015 13:05 UTC

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States of Play: Locating Qu?bec in the Performances

of Robert Lepage, Ex Machina, and the Cirque du Soleil

Jennifer Harvie and Erin Hurley

The Guardian: "What objects do you always carry with you?" Robert Lepage: "My passport."

The Guardian: "What is your greatest fear?"

Robert Lepage: "Losing my passport."1

But what exactly was this "reinvented circus"? Just what it said it was:

A circus that came from nowhere but was looking for its roots.

In the absence of any, it determined to create some.2

Within the past two years, both the Cirque du Soleil and Ex Machina (led by Robert

Lepage) have set down institutional roots in the province in which their work began, Qu?bec. In February 1997, the Cirque du Soleil?a post-modern circus without

animals?inaugurated its center of creation and production, ''Le Studio/' in a north

eastern quarter of Montr?al. In June of the same year, Ex Machina opened its center, "La Caserne Dalhousie," in Qu?bec City. However, as the above epigraphs indicate, these troupes' relationships to their Qu?bec location are rather more fraught than their

newly (re-)established roots might suggest. Qu?bec provides Lepage, Ex Machina's most likely "deus," with the means to work outside Qu?bec and to travel elsewhere with his Canadian passport. The "nowhere" that is Qu?bec for the Cirque provides that company with an empty space that allows them to create their own aesthetic form, their "reinvented circus."

Jennifer Harvie is a lecturer in Drama at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her research is in

contemporary performance and theories of identity. She has published previously in Essays in Theatre,

Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, and collections on contemporary drama.

Erin Hurley is a doctoral candidate in the Theatre Program at the City University of New York Graduate

Center. She is currently writing her dissertation on Qu?b?cois theatre and nationalism.

Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the Association for Canadian Theatre Research

conference at Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland, in May 1997, at Goldsmiths College,

University of London, in May 1998, and at the Modern Language Association conference in San

Francisco in December 1998. Thanks to the audiences at these events and particularly to Loren Kruger for constructive criticism and feedback on this article. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are our

own and all dollar amounts are in Canadian dollars. 1 Rosanna Greenstreet, "The Questionnaire: Robert Lepage," Guardian, 9 January 1992, 46.

2 "The Quest," http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/odyss/quete.html.

Theatre Journal 51 (1999) 299-315 ? 1999 by The Johns Hopkins University Press



300 / Jennifer Harvie and Erin Hurley

Despite these organizations' apparent ambivalence toward their Qu?bec location, successive Qu?bec governments have embraced Lepage, Ex Machina, and the Cirque as "Qu?b?cois." Federalist and ind?pendentiste, Liberal and Parti Qu?b?cois, Qu?bec

governments have employed financial means and public relations to stake their claim.

Josette Ferai writes: "[0]fficial discourses tend to identify geographical space with

ideological space, claiming title to all theatre created in their territories, which

becomes a source of national pride."3 Like much intercultural theatre work, Ex

Machina and the Cirque question the presumed contiguity of geographical and

ideological space through their organizational structures, the international networks

in which they participate, and their performance codes. The Qu?bec government's response to this dissociation of geography and national identity has been to use these

companies' international practices to buttress its own nationalist aspirations, by

incorporating their peregrinations into an international definition of Qu?bec.

Both Ex Machina and Cirque du Soleil originate in Qu?bec, a nation without a state

whose representatives exhibit profound ambivalence toward their place (within the

Dominion of Canada). Both Ex Machina and Cirque du Soleil produce shows which

tour the globe, travelling established international performance circuits. Sharing an

institutionally provisional nationhood, as well as international aspirations, Ex Machina

and the Cirque provide material for considering the many meanings of the national?

and specifically the Qu?b?cois?in its interactions with the international. Nonetheless, the companies also differ in important ways. Ex Machina is an auteur-centered theatre

company dominated by Lepage; its self-generated productions tour widely and play

predominantly at international theatre festivals and in what Marvin Carlson has called

"pilgrimage theatres."4 The Cirque du Soleil is a circus without stars; its multiple circus troupes present their touring shows organized from multinational headquarters in their own circus tents. These companies' differences permit

us to consider some of

the varieties of Qu?b?cois international performance, in particular its relationships to

locations and finance, as well as to the nation. Wfliereas Ex Machina's operations presume a relationship between production and a Qu?bec location (albeit one biased

in favor of Lepage), the Cirque du Soleil seems to presume that link's demise.

Qu?bec in National and International Contexts

If the international movements of Ex Machina and the Cirque reveal the

non-contiguity of geographical and ideological spaces, then Quebec's very status

underscores this discontinuity. While defined geopolitically as a province in the

Dominion of Canada, Qu?bec is culturally a distinct nation.5 In this context, the

3 Josette Ferai, "There Are At Least Three Americas," trans. Shelley Tepperman and Gary Bowers, in

The Intercultural Performance Reader, ed. Patrice Pavis (London: Routledge, 1996), 53. 4 Carlson defines "pilgrimage theatres" as follows: "The pilgrimage theatre ... is located not in the

city center but in some more remote location, requiring some effort to attain, and where it is the sole

or the dominant attractive element." (Marvin Carlson, "Brook and Mnouchkine: Passages to India?" in

The Intercultural Performance Reader, 85.) For our purposes, the pilgrimage theatre may be in the city center but nevertheless difficult to reach (e.g. because of prohibitive financial cost).

5 Qu?bec is one of Canada's two official founding nations. A former French colony, Qu?bec (called

Lower Canada by the British) joined with a former English colony (part of present-day Ontario, called

"Upper Canada" before Confederation in 1867). Qu?bec is also one of ten provinces and two

territories. In April 1999, acknowledging the first "nations's" right to inhabit the land that is now



LEPAGE, EX MACHINA, AND THE CIRQUE DU SOLEIL / 301

political and cultural status of Qu?bec?as integral to Canada, as distinct within

Canada, and/or as sovereign from Canada?is an ongoing subject of debate. Inas

much as Quebec's geographical and ideological spaces are already contested, it does

not offer a stable ground from whence cultural products might spring, develop and tour.

Since about 1960, Qu?b?cois cultural nationalists have sought to reconcile Quebec's

geopolitical and ideological states. As Annie Brisset notes, the very appellation "Qu?b?cois" "linked territoriality with the affirmation of collective identity."6 Within

Qu?bec, provincial leaders have bolstered a sense of Quebec's national status by

maximizing its control over several policy sectors within provincial jurisdiction, includ

ing education, culture, and natural resources. In addition, in the last twenty years, they have held two referendums on sovereignty, the most recent one in October 1995. On the

federal level, successive Qu?bec governments have consistently sought constitutional

recognition of the province's distinct cultural and linguistic status for over a decade.7

However, it is on the international stage that Qu?bec has most visibly succeeded in

suturing geography and ideology: internationally, Qu?bec asserts the status of a

quasi-nation-state by implementing a form of "paradiplomacy," by institutionalizing its powers in the international sphere, as granted by the federal government. In the

political sphere, the Qu?bec government boasts representatives abroad in established

foreign delegations.8 In the commercial sphere, it ratifies ententes, agreements between

Canada, the Canadian government added a third territory, "Nunavut," carved out of the current

Northwest Territories. It is self-governed by First Nations peoples. 6 Annie Brisset, "When Translators of Theater Address the Qu?b?cois Nation," in Essays on Modern

Quebec Theater, ed. Joseph I. Donohoe, Jr. and Jonathan M. Weiss (East Lansing: Michigan State

University Press, 1995), 63. 7 During his tenure as Liberal Premier of Qu?bec (1960-1966), Jean Lesage developed an increasingly

interventionist (provincial) state, consolidating the province's areas of jurisdiction and expanding the

public sector. During that period, the Qu?bec government established a Ministry of Education; nationalized the electricity company, Hydro Qu?bec (1963); founded the Caisse de d?p?t et de

placement du Qu?bec which acts as an investor for the Qu?bec pension fund (1964); and opened offices

of federal-provincial relations, cultural affairs, family and social welfare, and national resources.

(Michael Keating, "Quebec," in Nations against the State: The New Politics of Nationalism in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996], 68). It is important to stress, however, that

these are "administrative arrangements," not formal amendments to the federal system or to the

Canadian Constitution, both of which continue to exercise significant control over Qu?bec. (Alain-G.

Gagnon, "Qu?bec-Canada: Constitutional Developments, 1960-92," in Qu?bec: State and Society, ed.

Alain-G. Gagnon, 2d ed. [Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1993], 99.) In August 1998, for instance, Canada's Supreme Court ruled that even if, in a future Qu?bec referendum, the Qu?b?cois vote to

secede from Canada, secession will only be possible with consent from the federal government and at

least some of the other provinces. (Anne Mcllroy, "High Court Leaves Opening for Quebec Secession,"

Guardian, 21 August 1998,13.) For more information on the history of Canada's constitutional debates, see Jean-Fran?ois Cardin, History of the Canadian Constitution, from 1864 to the Present, trans. Diana

Halfpenny (Montr?al: Global Vision, 1996). 8

Jean-Philippe Th?rien, Louis B?langer and Guy Gosselin, "Qu?bec: An Expanding Foreign Policy," in Qu?bec: State and Society, 260. In 1968, Liberal Premier Daniel Johnson established the Department of

Intergovernmental Affairs to oversee external relations, international cooperation, and federal

provincial relations. (In 1985 the Department was renamed the Ministry of International Relations and

shorn of its control over federal-provincial relations.) Its exclusive mandate is to plan, coordinate and

implement international government policy. As of 1993, the Ministry of International Relations had

established a diplomatic network of twenty-nine "general delegations," "delegations," and "bureaus"

throughout Western Europe, francophone Africa, Asia, and the Americas. (Keating, "Qu?bec," 103).




the province and a foreign government which pertain, for instance, to economic and

cultural matters.9 In the cultural sphere, Qu?bec establishes affiliations with interna

tional peers through international cultural networks, particularly those traveled and

provided by "its" cultural products and ambassadors (whether official or unofficial). Its most high profile and, hence, frequently employed cultural ambassadors are

Lepage, Ex Machina, and the Cirque du Soleil.

The Qu?bec government's identification of these two performance companies as

Qu?b?cois?despite the fact that they demonstrate a deep ambivalence toward their

national location and produce cultural products primarily for export?indicates a new

tactic for integrating Quebec's geographical and ideological spaces. The definition of

Qu?b?cois, historically associated with the territory of Qu?bec and, problematically, sometimes limited to a white francophonie despite its significant immigrant population, is extended in its affiliation with Ex Machina and the Cirque. Qu?bec logs into

international commercial and cultural networks and enlarges its ideological param eters to become "pluralist, modern and open to the world."10 In public statements and

press releases, current and recent Qu?bec governments have created a rhetorical link

to the international distribution of Lepage, Ex Machina, and the Cirque. They laud

these companies' international work as exemplary of a uniquely Qu?b?cois creativity and claim some credit for their international successes. For example, in a November

1997 press release from the Qu?bec Ministry of Culture and Communications, Minister

Louise Beaudoin was quoted as saying, "We ought to be proud of the successes

Qu?bec has known, like those that the C?line Dions, the Cirques du Soleil, and the

Robert Lepages win on a global scale."11 Qu?bec governments have formalized the link

by deploying Lepage, Ex Machina, and the Cirque as Quebec's international representa tives: Lepage represents Qu?bec as commissioner of "La Saison du Qu?bec," an

exhibition of Qu?b?cois cultural, economic, and technological products in France from

April to June 1999; the Cirque features as the representative Qu?b?cois circus on the

province's worldwide wefrhomepage under the rubric "La Vie culturelle qu?b?coise" (Qu?b?cois cultural life).12

9 Between 1964 and 1989, over 200 ententes were signed, over 60 percent with a sovereign state

(Th?rien, B?langer and Gosselin, "Qu?bec," 262-63.) One of the most recent beneficiaries of Quebec's

commercial diplomacy was the Cirque du Soleil; an entente valued at $1 million signed in November

1997 allowed the Cirque to open its Shanghai office. ("Mission Qu?bec ? Shanghai?Signature de onze

contracts et ententes suppl?mentaires pour des retomb?es directes de 63 million $ au Qu?bec,"

http: / / www.newswire.ca/government/quebec/french/releases/Novemberl997/11 /c2242.html. 10

"D?l?gation g?n?rale du Qu?bec?La Saison du Qu?bec en France?Images de la modernit?,"

http://www.newswire.ca/government/quebec/french/releases/Octoberl997/01 / c0299.html. In the

provincial government's first-ever white paper on the status of theatre in Qu?bec entitled Remettre l'art

au monde, Minister Beaudoin repeats this sentiment: "'Remettre l'art au monde' is the voluntary

gesture of theatre and concert producers and distributers who, together, work to diversify and render

ever more accessible the works of our creators who characterize us as a society and who recognize our

openness to the world." Louise Beaudoin, "Mot de la Ministre de la culture et des communications,"

in Remettre l'art au monde (Qu?bec: Qu?bec Ministry of Culture and Communications, 1996); reprinted at http://www.gouv.qc.ca/culture/indexa.htm. Given her perspective on Qu?b?cois identity, it is

perhaps not surprising that in 1999 Beaudoin became the Minister of International Relations. 11

http://www.newswire.ca/governrnent/quebec/french/releases/Novemberl997/05/c0994.htrnl. 12

"D?l?gation g?n?rale du Qu?bec?La Saison du Qu?bec en France?Images de la modernit?,"

http: / / www.newswire.ca/government/quebec/french/releases/Octoberl997/01 /c0299.html; "La Vie

culturelle Qu?b?coise, "

http://www.gouv.qc.ca/monde/culturef.html.




Qu?bec governments have formalized the link further still by backing up their

cultural rhetoric with financial investment, which facilitates touring but also estab

lishes Qu?bec as a node on an international performance network. In 1997/98 and

1998/99 respectively, Ex Machina received $60,000 and $127,000 from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Qu?bec for taking The Seven Streams of the River Ota and Geometry

of Miracles on tour outside of Qu?bec. For their Qu?bec City Caserne, Ex Machina

garnered even more generous funding: a total of $5 million from the provincial

government and the City of Qu?bec combined.13 Between 1984 and 1994, the Cirque received an estimated $5 million from federal and provincial government sources,

presumably for both touring and general operations.14 For their Studio, the Qu?bec

government granted the Cirque $4.8 million.15

While Qu?bec governments seek to bolster national identity by asserting peer status

in an international network and by formally and informally aligning themselves with

internationally touring Qu?bec arts companies, the outcome cannot be guaranteed. Instead of raising their international profile, this investment may prove too costly, and

may represent Qu?bec as exotic, generic, or unimportant.

Robert Lepage and Ex Machina

The character and limits of the Qu?bec government's attempts to claim Lepage emerge clearly when we compare current Qu?b?cois efforts with an earlier attempt by the Canadian federal government to appropriate him as a national representative. In

1989, prior to recent efforts within Qu?bec to enshrine Lepage and the Caserne in and as a Qu?b?cois national institution, Canadian federalists attempted to enshrine him in

and as a Canadian national institution by appointing him as artistic director of French

Theatre at Canada's National Arts Centre in the federal capital, Ottawa.16 Like his

alliance with a Qu?b?cois nation later in Qu?bec City, Lepage's alliance with a

Canadian nation in Ottawa was somewhat attenuated, primarily by his frequent work not simply outside of Ottawa but outside of Canada. Although Lepage held this post until 1993, he spent much of that time both touring his own shows (including Needles

and Opium in 1991, Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung in 1992, and the Shakespeare Cycle in 1992) and producing shows for foreign companies like the Royal National Theatre in London (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1992) and Peter Gabriel's The Box (Secret

World Tour, 1993).17

13 Gilles G. Lamontagne, "Robert Lepage, le voyageur dans sa caserne," Topo Magazine (September 1997); reprinted at

http://www.mri.gouv.qc.ca/salle_des_nouvelles/tire-presse/lepage_fr.html. 14 The source-article does not specify the intended application of the $5 million dollars. Louise

Leduc, "Culture de l'image de la culture," Le Devoir, 30 November 1996, Bl. 15

"Le Cirque du Soleil profite du programme d'infrastructure," Le Soleil, 4 June 1994, G12. 16 The National Arts Centre / Centre national des Arts is embedded in a

geography and history of

Canadian federalism. "Situated in the heart of the nation's capital across Confederation Square from

Parliament Hill," claims the English language version of its official website, "the National Arts Centre

was one of the key institutions created by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson as the principal centennial

project of the federal government" ("NAC News: History: The Building," http://www.nac-cna.ca/

ottawa_eng/history/top.html). Canada celebrated its centennial in 1967 and the NAC was officially

opened in 1969. 17

R?my Charest, Robert Lepage: Connecting Flights, trans. Wanda Romer Taylor (London: Methuen,

1997), 187-91. The original French text was published under the title Quelques zones de libert? (Qu?bec: Editions de l'instant m?me, 1995).




Figure 1. National Arts Centre / Centre national des Arts, Ottawa, Canada.

Photo credit: National Arts Centre / Mark Fowler / Metropolis. Reprinted with permission.

What the National Arts Centre had not entirely achieved for federal Canada?a

secured physical, and by extension ideological, affiliation between itself and Lepage? the Caserne aimed to achieve for Qu?bec. Both buildings have been designed to act as

ideological as well as geographical landmarks of their respective sites?Canada's

national capital, and Quebec's provincial capital. But while Lepage had neither a

creative role in producing the NAC (it was purpose-built and already twenty years old

when he took up his post) nor sole authority over it (he was one of a handful of artistic

directors) he had both at the Caserne, overseeing its seemingly organic recreation as a

performance laboratory out of a fire station and acting as its sole Artistic Director. The

Caserne thus provided a much stronger opportunity to integrate Lepage into Qu?bec.18

Qu?bec government representatives in particular sought this integration to strengthen

physical and historical bonds?and, by extension, ideological bonds and artistic

association?between Lepage and the Qu?bec nation. Literally a barrack and a fire

station, the Caserne makes manifest Lepage's roots and practice in Qu?bec City by

housing him there. Almost uniformly, Lepage and Quebec's Ministry of Culture and

Communications characterize these roots and practices as both traditional and

innovative. In her speech inaugurating the Caserne in June 1997, Quebec's then-Minister

of Culture and Communications, Louise Beaudoin, noted that the Caserne combines

18 Marvin Carlson, after Kenneth Lynch (The Image of the City [Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960], 3), describes landmarks as "striking urban elements used for orientation" (Marvin Carlson, Places of

Performance [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989], 11). "The advantage with the Caserne," Lepage

says with hindsight, "is that instead of having an office in Quebec [City], going to Montreal to

rehearse, coming back, then going to create in another country, now all energies are concentrated

here." Lepage quoted in Lamontagne, "Robert Lepage."




Figure 2. Caserne Dalhousie, Qu?bec City, Qu?bec. Photo credit: Andrew Lavender. Reprinted with permission.

the style of the second French Empire of a century ago (Louis Napoleon) with

contemporary granite construction.19 A former fire station, the Caserne has had its

nearly one-hundred-year-old fa?ade minutely restored and new modern spaces and

facilities added, resulting in an architectural admixture of genres and types which

parallels the diverse creative functions of the Caserne.20 For its exemplary preservation of architectural heritage and integration of new arts design, the Caserne was awarded

architectural prizes by both the Qu?bec City Commission d'urbanisme et de conserva

tion and the public.21

When Lepage describes the site of the Caserne "at the heart of the most ancient

square kilometre of North America" as the "beginning of the New World," he reiterates the official consecration of the habitation of settler and city founder Samuel

de Champlain (1608) and reinforces the official national narrative that locates Quebec's

origin at the moment of Champlain's arrival rather than in any precolonial native

history.22 Lepage also emphasizes the Caserne's placement "on the Cape, between the

19 Louise Beaudoin, "Allocution de madame Louise Beaudoin lors de l'inauguration de la Caserne,

qui loge la compagnie de th??tre Ex Machina, dirig?e par Robert Lepage" (Qu?bec, 2 June 1997),

http://www.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/minister/disc/1997/d970602.html. 20 France B?gin, "Pour une architecture de qualit?," Municipalit?, July 1998,13; reprinted at http://

www.mam.gouv.qc.ca/revmun/r98jjl2a.pdf. 21

B?gin, "Pour une architecture de qualit?," 13.

^Quoted in Lamontagne, "Robert Lepage." Built in 1608 near what is now the Caserne's site,

Champlain's habitation was the first permanent French settlement in North America. Encyclopedia Britannica Online, s.v. "Champlain, Samuel de," http://www.eb.com:180/bol/topic?eu=22709&sctn=l.




Upper Town and the Lower Town," the older and newer parts of the city.23 Thus,

Lepage places the Caserne on the border between the old and the new, straddling tradition and innovation, associations the Qu?bec government is likewise eager to

make, and to assume for itself. Minister Beaudoin's inaugural speech celebrated the

Caserne's complexity and originality, which she compared to Lepage's own creative

features and, by association, to Qu?bec.24 Corroborating Beaudoin's line, Qu?bec

government press releases emphasize the Caserne's innovative practical flexibility and

its orientations towards exploration and the new, describing it as "a multimedia

creative centre whose central purpose is research into new forms of representation."25

In at least one crucial respect, however, Lepage's and Ex Machina's work, at the Caserne and outside it, resists or even undermines its own subordination to a

Qu?b?cois cultural nationalism. To work properly as a landmark for Qu?bec national

identity, the Caserne presumably would have to interact with the people of that

nation, but it does not. Audiences' opportunities to see work at the Caserne are

severely limited by both its small audience capacity and its understood function, as a

laboratory, not a

playhouse. The Caserne's main space can accommodate an audience

of 200 at most. It rarely opens to audiences, however, and when it does, only briefly and with short notice.26 For Lepage, the Caserne is "a controlled environment," a

laboratory which is hermetic in its relationship to its immediate context and the people in that context.27 In its current mode of operation, the Caserne is more hermitage than

open house. Lepage's and Ex Machina's work makes limited contact with a wider

Qu?b?cois population: Ex Machina's shows are produced primarily for export. Without contact between the Caserne's work and the people of Qu?bec, the gov

ernment's and even Lepage's coveted affiliation between the work and the nation is

tenuous.

If anything, Ex Machina links itself more tenaciously to an international network.

International touring, or pilgrimage, is after all Ex Machina's raison d'etre-, "what we

want to do," claimed Lepage in 1994, the year he founded Ex Machina, "is export our

shows."28 Since its founding, Ex Machina has perpetuated Lepage's long-standing practice of producing major touring shows: The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1994

1998), Elsinore (1995-1997), and The Geometry of Miracles (1998-), amongst others. For

Qu?bec audiences, the upshot of Ex Machina's dedication to touring is, again, limited

domestic access to Ex Machina's shows. Out of the twenty-three productions cited in

The Seven Streams of the River Ota's published version only one took place in the

province of Qu?bec, at the Carrefour International de Th??tre in Qu?bec City in May 1996.29 Geometry of Miracles similarly premiered outside of Qu?bec (at the Du Maurier

23 Quoted in Lamontagne, "Robert Lepage."

24 Beaudoin, "Allocution de Mme Beaudoin."

25 "Culture et Communications, Qu?bec, communiqu? de presse: La Saison du Qu?bec en France:

Robert Lepage: Commissaire de la Saison du Qu?bec en France (Paris, 1 October 1997)," http://

www.gouv.qc.ca/culture/indexa. The same statement is made almost verbatim in "D?l?gation

g?n?rale du Qu?bec?La Saison du Qu?bec en France?Images de la Modernit?." 26

Lepage: "This space is a studio where we will give public rehearsals of work in progress, safe from

the press, and announced no more than 24 hours in advance to keep work timetables as malleable as

possible" (quoted in Lamontagne, "Robert Lepage"). 27

Quoted in Charest, Robert Lepage, 130. 28

Quoted in Charest, Robert Lepage, 114. 29

Robert Lepage and Ex Machina, The Seven Streams of the River Ota (London: Methuen, 1996), viii.




World Stage Festival in Toronto in April 1998) and is touring first to Lisbon, Salzburg, and Paris.30 Whether in its hermitage-like Caserne or on an international performance

pilgrimage, Ex Machina makes less contact with the Qu?bec people than a Qu?b?cois cultural nationalism would have it represent.

The motivations for and effects of Ex Machina's international and universalist

associations bear scrutiny. If Ex Machina is not promoting a Qu?b?cois cultural

nationalism, what, if anything, is it promoting? Chiefly, in the guise of a vague cultural

pluralism, it is promoting a Western metropolitan elitism in pursuit of major and

diverse commercial investment.31 Lepage's and Ex Machina's shows consistently

portray multiple places and cultures as well as characters' spatial and cultural

movement among them.32 The Seven Streams of the River Ota, with its seven languages and dialects and settings in four nations, received production funding from spon sors?and was

produced?in at least fourteen different nations. Arguably, however,

this proliferation works less to explore and articulate cultural differences and more to accrue diverse international production investment from?and multiple international

performance contracts in?different nations whose languages and settings are used in

the show.

Lepage might attempt to defend the globe-trotting nature of his work by calling it

"universal."33 However, the focus (or bias) of its narratives and its places of production is more accurately Western, Northern, and metropolitan.34 About half of The Seven

Streams of the River Ota's published eight-hour version is set in Japan, but most of it

focuses nevertheless on Western characters. Elsinore is Lepage's one-man version of

Hamlet. Geometry of Miracles concentrates on the American architect Frank Lloyd

Wright. The Seven Streams of the River Ota's only productions in the East were in Japan and its only productions in the Southern hemisphere were in New Zealand and

30 "Du Maurier World Stage Festival Launches World Premiere of Robert Lepage's Geometry of Miracles," http:/ /www.newswire.ca/releases/Novemberl997/ 18/c4074.html.

31 Beaudoin explicitly compares the Caserne to peer international sites like MIT's Media Lab, Peter

Gabriel's The Box in England, and Peter Brook's Bouffes du Nord in Paris, implicitly linking England, France, and the US. Beaudoin, "Allocution de Mme Beaudoin."

32 This article is concerned less with cross-cultural movement in Lepage's and Ex Machina's fictions

than with international movements in Ex Machina's touring. For more on Lepage's and Ex Machina's

fictions of cultural movement, see for example, Nigel Hunt, "The Global Voyage of Robert Lepage" (The Drama Review 33.2 [1989]: 104-18); Denis Salter, "Between Wor(l)ds: Lepage's Shakespeare Cycle" (Theater 24.3 [1993]: 61-70); Charest, Connecting Flights; and Jennifer Harvie, "Transnationalism,

Orientalism, Cultural Tourism: La Trilogie des dragons and The Seven Streams of the River Ota" (Robert

Lepage: Theater [sic] sans Fronti?res, ed. Joseph I. Donohoe and Jane Koustas [East Lansing: Michigan State University Press], in press).

33 For example, in discussion with Richard Eyre, former director of Britain's National Theatre,

Lepage says: "I'm not trying to take good ideas from other people or other people's culture, I'm trying to see how that relates profoundly or universally to what I want to say or to do." ("Robert Lepage in

Discussion with Richard Eyre," 19 November 1992, Lyttleton Theatre, London, in Platform Papers 3:

Directors [London: Royal National Theatre, 1993], 38.) See also remarks in Christie Carson's interview

with Lepage, "Collaboration, Translation, Interpretation," New Theatre Quarterly 33 (1993): 131-36,

especially 135.

^Australian cultural critic Meaghan Morris notes that "'global culture' . . . seems to [be] an

optimistic euphemism for the gentler forms of Northern neo-imperialism." ("On the Beach," in

Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler [New York and London:

Routledge, 1992], 450.)




Australia. Elsinore and Geometry of Miracles have only been produced in North America

and Europe.35

Within these Western and Northern contexts, Ex Machina's would-be international

field of exposure is limited even more by its production concentration at elite festivals

in metropolitan cities, largely sponsored by venture capital. Ex Machina's shows may travel extensively (the cost of a year's worth of flights for the company can climb to

$300,000),36 but the destinations of their pilgrimages are remarkably homogeneous:

major metropolitan international festivals, mainly in Europe.37 Many of these festivals

bill themselves as "international," but their reach is circumscribed, their "interna

tional" limited by both financial conditions and qualitative expectations. Financially, the international festival is expensive and enmeshed in the affiliations produced by the

necessary webs of investment. A festival's aspirations to international, unlimited

address are sometimes quite literally betrayed by its title's statement of corporate

sponsorship and affiliation. The Du Maurier World Stage Festival modifies "world"

with the name of a tobacco company, for instance, and the Telstra Adelaide Festival

contextualizes Adelaide, South Australia, and its international festival with the name

of an Internet provider. In terms of quality, the festival itself is often expected to

become "a new masterwork"38 that might grant "worldclass" status to the host city and nation by attracting companies and audiences who consider "the spiritual rewards gained there worth the labor and expense of a lengthy journey" or pilgrim

age.39 Financial circumstances and qualitative expectations such as these combine to

produce a product whose expense is partly passed on to the consumer/spectator. Access to Ex Machina's shows is severely limited by ticket prices. Tickets for The Seven

Streams of the River Ota's 1998 shows at the Telstra Adelaide Festival and the New

Zealand International Festival of the Arts cost AUS$60-105 and NZ$20-85 respec

tively. (Audiences in the three lowest price bands in New Zealand were advised to

bring a cushion.)40 As passports to Ex Machina's shows, tickets are dearly bought in

both financial and cultural currencies.

Lepage's and Ex Machina's predominant context of production?geographically,

financially, and ideologically?is an international commercial network. This affiliation

has implications not just for audiences but also for the company, requiring increasing

35 "Du Maurier World Stage Festival Launches World Premiere of Robert Lepage's Geometry of

Miracles," http://www.newswire.ca/releases/Novemberl997/18/c4074.html. The Qu?bec govern ment has granted Ex Machina $127,500 to tour Portugal, Austria, Italy, Spain, France, Australia, Japan, and England; see http://www.calq.gouv.ca/fr/pdf/bourses.

36 Lamontagne, "Robert Lepage."

37 These include: the Edinburgh International Festival, the Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), and the

Aarhus Festuge (Denmark) for The Seven Streams of the River Ota; EXPO '98 (Lisbon), the Salzburger

Festspiele (Austria), and the Festival d'automne (Paris) for Geometry of Miracles. 38

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Confusing Pleasures," in The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and

Anthropology, ed. George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 240.

39 Carlson, Places of Performance, 88. Promotional literature for the 1998 New Zealand International

Festival of the Arts uses a vocabulary which is not untypical: "The seventh Festival will be held from

February 27 to March 22, 1998, when Wellington will once again become one of the world's great Festival cities." "Romance to Revolution," http://www.festival.nz.com/romancerevolution.html.

40 "The Seven Streams of the River Ota at the Telstra Adelaide Festival," http://www.adfest98telstra.

com.au/theatre/nf06.htm; "Ex Machina," http://www.festival.nz.com/exmachina.html.




financial?and ideological?support outside of Qu?bec. Ex Machina's administrative

director, Michel Bernatchez, claims that at $3-4 million the company's budgets are the

largest of any theatre company in Qu?bec. And while over eighty percent of the $7.5 million needed to renovate and build the Caserne came from municipal, provincial, and federal funding, over seventy percent of the company's running costs are met by funds from abroad. "For Ota alone," says Bernatchez, "the costs of creating the show

were $1.8 million. We had to find 20 co-producers to get that; and in percentage terms, less than 10% of that sum came from local grants."41 Similarly, less than fifteen percent of the costs of touring The Seven Streams of the River Ota were met by domestic grants.42 "At first, when we toured internationally/' said Lepage in 1994, "[a]ll our collaborators

were Quebecers, or almost all. But this won't last, unless we're given the means to

become a company of international calibre?"43 By 1997, the need to look for financial

support beyond the nation is clear. "We realized ...," said Lepage, "that artists must

develop a business sense .... change attitudes and . . .

adjust [their] financial

structures according to the nature of each project."44 This economy of scale means a

diminution in Quebec's investment in Ex Machina in relative terms; it also anticipates a dhrtinution in Quebec's potential ideological claims on Ex Machina. Despite the

Qu?bec government's willingness to partly fund and wholeheartedly f?te the activities

at the Caserne, its identitarian investments are jeopardized by Ex Machina's financial

and geographical migration in pursuit of ever greater and wider sources of funding, and ever more elite contexts of production.

Cirque du Soleil

Ex Machina negotiates the tensions between geographical and ideological spaces by

affiliating itself rhetorically with Qu?b?cois cultural nationalism, but operates none

theless within an international performance circuit. The Cirque du Soleil strives to

remove itself from the national-international plane altogether. Taking what it needs

from the national and the international spheres, the Cirque generates its own

geographically and ideologically coherent space. In the ongoing competition for

priority of place between the Qu?bec nation and the international network, the Cirque has entered not as an ally of one or the other but as another contestant. The "nation" to which Cirque du Soleil claims allegiance is the one it produces?its non-territorial "realm of imagination," populated by an international cast of performers and financed

by sell-out crowds and corporate investment.45 It is this new imagined community? the "imagi-nation"?that the Cirque creates for itself and for its audiences each time it

produces and tours a new show.

This imagi-nation does not prevent the Cirque from taking advantage of Quebec's

largesse. Like Ex Machina's Caserne, the Cirque's Studio (in northeastern Montr?al) functions as a center of creation and organizational headquarters. Unlike the Caserne, it has not been a public performance venue. (Performances are given in the Cirque's


42 Lamontagne, "Robert Lepage."

43 Quoted in Charest, Robert Lepage, 113-14.


45 V?ronique Vial and H?l?ne Dufresne, ed., Le Cirque du Soleil, with the collaboration of Marie

Beauchamp, Th?r?se Mondor and Richard Cot? (Montr?al: Productions du Cirque du Soleil, 1993), 24.




Figure 3. The Studio, Montr?al, Qu?bec. Photo credit: Alexandre Legault, Cirque du Soleil.

Reprinted with permission.

trademark blue and yellow striped big top at Montreal's Vieux-Port.) The public is

invited to stroll the Studio's grounds but is prevented from touring the complex itself.

According to artistic director Gilles Ste-Croix, Quebec's influence on the Cirque's innovative artistry is limited to the challenges of expansion the Qu?bec market posed. "In Qu?bec," he explains, "the artistic community is obliged to try something new

because the market is small." The Cirque's "Qu?b?cois spirit" is located in "its

audacity and ability to change, to call into question."46

The provincial funds that went into the construction of the Studio reveal the

government's interest in the Cirque's complex. The Cirque was accorded $4.8 million

through the program of infrastructure work, indicating that its impact on Qu?bec was

presumed to be economic?providing both short-term (construction) and long-term

(administrative and artistic) jobs to Montrealers.47 The provincial government sees the

Cirque as an exemplary model of a successful enterprise able to derive national gain from the international marketplace. Awarding the Cirque the 1997 prize for one of the

fifty best run private companies in Canada, Quebec's Minister-delegate of Industry and Commerce offered the Cirque and its fellow laureates as "proof that, in this new

46 Quoted in Marie Labreque, "Alegr?a: Le rayon vert," Voir 8.21 (21 April 1994): 30. The webpage of

the Ministry of Culture and Communications explains the impact of the Qu?bec market on cultural

production in more positive terms: "The small size of the Qu?b?cois market forces artists to constantly reinvent themselves, circumstances which favor their vitality and creative strength so frequently noted

abroad." http://www.gouv.qc.ca/monde/culturef/html. 47 "Le Cirque du Soleil profite du programme d'infrastructures," Le Soleil, 4 June 1994, G12.




Figure 4. The Big Top. Photo: Eric Pich?, Cirque du Soleil. Reprinted with permission.

economy based on knowledge, innovation and openness to the world, Qu?b?cois

companies are up to meeting the stimulating challenge of prosperity."48

Despite this nationalist claim by the minister, the Cirque is at base a multinational

corporation; it creates its touring products in Qu?bec, finances them through its own

profits, and manages their distribution through a series of business offices located across the globe. In the spring of 1998, the Cirque had four shows nmning simulta

neously over three continents, all conceived by the same artistic team in Montr?al.

Quidam (the most recent one) was touring North America; Myst?re was based at the

Treasure Island Casino in Las Vegas; Saltimbanco was touring Europe; and Alegr?a was

touring Japan. Since then, two additional permanent installations have opened: O is

playing in Las Vegas at Steve Wynn's new Bellagio casino; La Nouba resides in Walt

Disney World in Orlando.49 Commenting on the extensiveness of the Cirque's

enterprises, journalist Marie Labrecque writes in Voir: "the sun doesn't set on the

Cirque's empire."50

The well-financed corporate side of the Cirque enables its fairy world to operate as

a circus "empire." The Cirque's revenues for 1997 were $175 million, up from $100

48 Rita Dionne-Marsolais, quoted in "Hommage aux 13 entreprises qu?b?coises laur?ates du

concours des 50 entreprises priv?es les mieux g?r?es au Canada," http://www.newswire.ca/

government/quebec/french/releases/Februaryl997/25/c5262.html. 49 O opened in October 1998; La Nouba in December. 50

Labreque, "Alegr?a: Le rayon vert," 30.




million for 1996.51 Part of the Cirque's financial success stems from its high ticket

prices. An adult ticket for Quidam on its North American tour ranges from US$20.25 to

US$46.25; an adult ticket to the Las Vegas show, Myst?re, costs US$69.85.52 Forbes

reported that the Cirque sells an astonishing ninety-seven percent of its house at every

performance; break-even is sixty-five percent.53 With approximately thirty-two percent of revenues left over as profit to be funneled back into Cirque operations, the Cirque's

expansion over the past two years has been phenomenal. It has grown from a one-time

"f?te forain" [fair] in Baie-Saint-Paul to what Ste-Croix calls "a multinational spec tacle."54 Before the Montr?al Studio was completed, the Cirque's global touring had

already led to headquarters in Amsterdam (for the European tours) and Las Vegas (for the permanent casino installations). The company has since established headquarters in Singapore (for the Asia-Pacific tours) and a business office in Tokyo. In August 1997,

Cirque du Soleil, Inc. was recognized for its international organization of human

resources by Workforce Magazine.55 The Cirque's multiple locations at any one time

extend the Cirque-space beyond the confines of any one blue and yellow big top. It is, in part, the Cirque's capacity for expansion which has prompted some critics to

nickname it the "McDonalds of circuses."56

Equally at issue in these critiques is the Cirque's production of a place that is

uniquely its own, that is, a recognizable brand?consistent, replicable, and market

able. With each tour, its artists create a brightly-colored, fantastical world character

ized by the harmonious play of an international cast of circus performers. The Cirque's official, ten-year anniversary book?Cirque du Soleil?characterizes its ideological

space as dedicated to surpassing limits of all kinds:

[The artists] are dedicated to the creation of an unearthly world, a world of spirit forces that

defy the limits of physical reality. Their goal is to go beyond the confines of the ordinary and provide, in that ritual circle of the circus ring,

a brief collision with dazzling feats that

so utterly overturn one's expectations of the possible... as to project us into the intense and

liberating realm of the imagination.57

The Cirque's concern with surpassing limits is most evident in its performance codes, which include fantastical costumes, masked or heavily made-up performers, acts of

technical virtuousity, world-beat music written in an Esperanto-like language, and the

gibberish of the Cirque's "speaking" clown characters. Its musical language is a mix of

indistinguishable romance languages set to "world music" beats. This combination?

51 Brian Johnson, "Cirque du Success," Macleans, 27 July 1998, 38. 52 Ticket prices taken from "Quidam," http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/ticket/quidam/

atlanta.html and "Myst?re in Las Vegas," http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/ticket/mystere/

lasvegas.html. 53 Nina Munk, "A High-Wire Act," Forbes, 22 September 1997,192. 54

Quoted in Labreque, "Alegr?a: Le rayon vert," 30. Nor is its rapidly expanding empire limited to

live performances; it also exists on video and audio recordings and on the Internet in the form of its

award-winning web-site (http://www.cirquedusoleil.com). Its homepage invites surfers to choose

French, English, or German routes through cyberspace. 55 It received an ?ptimas Award in the "Global Outlook" category for its Human Resources

department "that has created a program or strategy to help the company succeed in the world

marketplace." Gillian Flynn, "The Big Top Needs Big HR," Workforce, August 1997, 44. 56

Among those critics is Archaos' founder, Pierrot Bidon, quoted in Johnson, "Cirque du Success,"

40. 57 Vial and Dufresne, Cirque du Soleil, 24.




which made composer Ren? Dup?r? internationally famous?is one of the more

revealing examples of how the Cirque integrates and unifies differences.58

Equally revealing of the Cirque's assimilating drive is its effacement of performers'

ideological, cultural and national placements. Although the troupes are composed of

international artists with their own specialties, the shocks of these cultural differ

ences?in expression, skills, technique, language, physique, and so on?are all but

effaced in production. For example, in breach of standard circus procedure, neither

acts nor performers are introduced. Since Alegr?a, the Cirque's production programs have represented the acts in photographs without captions; to find out who the

performers are or where they are from requires turning to the bio pages at the end of

the program. The Cirque's press attach?e, Jennifer Dunne, explains, "It's the show

that's the star. That's why we don't announce the numbers. Everyone works to

gether."59 In other words, Cirque du Soleil's world is a world in which citizens of

various cultures, nations, and communities happily coexist, united in the anonymous work of producing pleasure and innovating new theatrical form. Instead of taking

advantage of the differences afforded by the traditional circus narrative?structured

around a series of isolated and unrelated turns?Cirque's precisely choreographed and fully sound-tracked spectacle has, in the words of one critic, "tamed performers into units in a seamlessly beautiful ensemble spectacle."60 The acts are deterritorialized

from their originary location and then reterritorialized firmly within the logic of

Cirque du Soleil's unified production aesthetic.

Even the Cirque's ethereal realm of imagination must come to earth while on tour.

In contrast with the Cirque's voided originary location?the Qu?bec they construe as

"nowhere"?it pitches its blue and yellow big top only in sites thematically associated

with the Cirque's theme of surpassing boundaries. The Cirque's crossroads of choice

tend to be ports?sites where the local and the global meet and exchange. Their

premiere performance venue in Montr?al has been the Vieux-Port (Old Port), but the

premiere of Dralion (April 1999) on the Studio grounds indicates that the Studio will be

the future venue for premieres. In Toronto they perform at Harbourfront, a recently

developed up-market commercial port on Lake Ontario which features performance venues, restaurants, shops, a skating rink, and condominiums. In New York City they pitch their tent on the water at Battery Park City?another recreational/commercial

development next to that center of international finance, Wall Street. In each case, the

Cirque situates itself at a site associated with global movements of ships, people, and

capital.

In capital cities that have no ports, the Cirque has settled on sites whose symbolic register it wishes to capture. The Cirque's negotiations with the City of Paris for an

appropriate performance location for their recent European tour highlight the Cirque's attempt to maintain control over its ideological and geographical space even while on

tour. The Cirque's directorship had specifically requested a nodal performance site at

58 For a history of Dup?r?'s international success, see Alain Brunet, "Alegr?a en t?te du palmar?s

'World Music' de Billboard," La Presse, 10 December 1994, D3. 59

Quoted in Louise Lemieux, "Le Cirque du Soleil: Briller toujours et plus," Le Soleil, 4 June 1994, Gl. 60

Gerry Cottle, "But Where's the Danger?" Guardian, 20 December 1995,10. See also Ron Jenkins's

analysis of the Cirque's "high-tech tyranny" in "Le Cirque du Soleil," in Acrobats of the Soul: Comedy and

Virtuosity in Contemporary American Theatre (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1988), 75-90.




the foot of the Eiffel Tower?a key attraction for international tourists and the symbol of modern progress in industry and steel construction at the 1901 World's Fair and

International Exposition. When offered instead a spot in the Bois du Boulogne located on the western edge of the city and associated with the ancien r?gime, the Cirque's

directorship balked, asserting that the site was neither prestigious nor sufficiently well-known. Speaking of the negotiations, the Cirque's director of marketing, Jean

H?on, exclaimed: "We want a meaningful site!"61 The character of their preferred sites

suggests that the Cirque du Soleil wishes to associate itself with transitional moments

in a progressivist model of modern Western history.

In its organizational structure, extension of its own place via international touring and new technologies, and performance codes, the Cirque du Soleil aspires to generate its own non-nationally-aligned place. It pulls up its national roots and establishes

instead an opportunistic relationship with its international routes. It figures its

national place as limited in terms of the market and funding. Instead the Cirque creates a place it calls the "imagi-nation" which is based on surpassing limits of all

kinds. It figures its international places of performance as extensions of its own place,

choosing sites whose own performance genealogies can be construed as supporting the Cirque's aesthetic. While it may resolve the gap between geographical and

ideological spaces experienced by Qu?bec, its resolution requires at least one central

sacrifice: the aggressive and virtually wholesale sacrifice of cultural difference?both

social and geographical?to its unified production aesthetic.

Locating Qu?bec

As their cultural industries outgrow the capacities of Qu?bec government funding and support, both Ex Machina and Cirque du Soleil proliferate their markets (or sites

and media of production) and diversify their sources of funding, increasingly allying themselves with international performance and corporate networks rather than

national locations. In this process, the nation is first exploited?for start-up and

infrastructure funding?and then gradually disowned, as the companies' identifica

tions shift from national loyalty to corporate independence, internationalism, and

"imagi-nationality." In their processes of production and export, they repeatedly evacuate the specific, if shifting, nationhood of Qu?bec. Sceptical observers of

nationalist excess may welcome this disavowal of nationality, but the very disavowal

of national affiliation by Cirque du Soleil (and to a lesser degree by Ex Machina) clears a space for other identifications that are no less problematic. In the first place, each

company produces corporate and aesthetic identities that are homogeneous and

unified?whether by the exigencies of a unified production context (e.g. elite major

European international festivals) or a unified production aesthetic (e.g. "the world" of

the Cirque). In the second, they primarily trade with and perform for elite North

American and European audiences which can physically reach their performances and

afford their tickets. Instead of being expansively international, Ex Machina's and

Cirque du Soleil's affiliations are ultimately limited to a relatively elite class.

Given its identitarian investment in Ex Machina and Cirque du Soleil, Qu?bec also

suffers from their rejections, although not as much may at first be apparent. Like those

61 Quoted in Christian Rioux, "Le Cirque du Soleil sur le bunker de Hitler," Le Devoir, 2 August 1995,

Al.




two companies, Qu?bec has long looked beyond its own borders to form outside

alliances which can distinguish it from Canada. Opportunities to form these outside

alliances are proliferating for Qu?bec now through the development of the informa

tion superhighway in which Qu?bec is heavily invested, both financially and ideologi

cally62 It can exploit Ex Machina and the Cirque's world-renowned identities by

aligning itself with them in its own self-promotion on the worldwide web. Thus, they

figure prominently in its homepage on Qu?b?cois cultural life and in its culture and

communications press cuttings webpages. Again, the nation is detached from territory and promoted internationally. And again, the ideological effects of this detachment are

problematic. What version of the nation is promoted internationally? One that is

innovative and creative? To be sure. One that is elitist and emptied? Possibly.

62 For information on Quebec's communications and information network policies, see, for instance,

the section of the Qu?bec Ministry of Culture and Communications' website devoted to "Les

communications et les inforoutes," http://www.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/cominfo/cominfo.htm.



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