After a tumultuous few years, the revered Canadian theater director Robert Lepage is returning to a tried-and-tested production.
“The Seven Streams of the River Ota,” which became a worldwide hit after its 1994 premiere, takes the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, as the starting point of a seven-hour saga. Seven stories, spanning 50 years, explore the repercussions of the 1945 attack on survivors and their descendants around the world.
Lepage, 62, has made his mark internationally as an imaginative storyteller who draws on a variety of media and cultural influences. In 1994, he founded the multidisciplinary company, Ex Machina, in Québec City, Canada, and it soon became renowned for monumental productions like “The Seven Streams of the River Ota” and “Dragons’ Trilogy,” which delved into Chinese culture.
Lately, however, Lepage has been embroiled in debates around cultural appropriation.
In 2018, his production “SLAV,” which initially featured a predominantly white cast singing African-American slave songs, was canceled after protests. It returned to the stage in a reworked version, before Lepage ultimately pulled the plug on it.
“Kanata,” a play inspired by the history of Canada’s indigenous groups, known as First Nations, lost North American investors the same year after activists accused the production team of ignoring indigenous input. A version of it, “Kanata — Episode 1 — The Controversy,” was eventually presented at the Théâtre du Soleil in Paris.
“The Seven Streams of the River Ota” was revived in September for the opening of Le Diamant, a new cultural center Lepage founded in Québec City, and the show is now set for another world tour. The revival is a coproduction with the Chekhov International Theater Festival in Moscow and the National Theater in London, where it runs until March 22. The show is to travel to Japan this summer as part of the culture festival of the Tokyo Olympics, and commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.
A few days before “The Seven Streams of the River Ota” opened in London, Robert Lepage spoke by phone. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
How much did you alter “The Seven Streams of the River Ota,” 25 years on?
We were happily surprised to what extent the whole thing holds. It doesn’t feel like an old show at all. The challenge in remounting it was that the younger generations are ill-informed about the context of Hiroshima and World War II. We feel that we have to remind people of certain things.
And how have you changed as a director since it was first performed?
I feel more secure about a lot of things. I’ve learned not to fear the process as much. What I do works when you start in complete chaos. You can’t start with a recipe. I still have doubt, but I have the impression that I’m more courageous.
For a long time, I was trying to be faithful to a style I was developing. I’ve got rid of all that. Whatever the subject matter for a creation, I try to find its own sauce.
“The Seven Streams of the River Ota” is very long. How do you make a seven-hour performance work for an audience?
Nowadays you have such a huge offer of storytelling in every form and shape. People will actually go to the theater if it’s an event. We’re asking them to be marathon runners. When you go to see a show that lasts two hours, it’s an individual experience. But when you’re there for seven hours, it creates a community. There is this spontaneous thing that happens at curtain call: actors and technicians applaud the audience for staying, and the audience takes it as an achievement.
“SLAV” and “Kanata” caused debates about cultural insensitivity. You met with black activists after the initial cancellation of “SLAV.” What did you learn from that exchange?
I was thinking that it would be the opportunity for a big confrontation. It was exactly the contrary. There was nothing against me personally: It was a big movement in Canada at that point about cultural appropriation. It’s a debate that needed to happen.
Of course there was something a bit obscene and naïve on our part in having only white women singing slave songs. It was a really bad judgment from the start. People volunteered to come and see us work, we had a great collaboration, and now we have projects together. What’s more complex and unresolved is the relationship with the First Nations.
What differences do you see between the two situations?
The First Nations have been robbed of so many things, and suddenly here we are telling their stories. But at the Théâtre du Soleil, most of the 36 actors who were part of “Kanata” were people from Afghanistan, from different parts of the world, who had fled to France — people who had been exploited and recognized themselves in the First Nations’ tragedies.
To this day, I can understand their position. But I think it’s very moving that somebody who comes from another part of the world, who had to flee because of the Taliban, compares that oppression with how the First Nations were oppressed.
You first took “The Seven Streams of the River Ota” to Japan in 1995, for the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. How was your vision of Japanese history received then?
Hiroshima is a strange thing for Japanese to talk about. We saw them as victims, and the Japanese don’t necessarily feel comfortable with feeling like victims — certainly not in World War II, where they also have their lot of atrocities. They were very interested and surprised to see the way we portrayed the whole tragedy of Hiroshima as something that resonates years later in London, or elsewhere in the world.
Since then, Japan has lived through another nuclear tragedy, at Fukushima. Do you think it will be seen differently now?
For sure. I did a few interviews in Tokyo a few months ago, and everyone was very intrigued to see how it will resonate. In Japan, they emerge from these tragedies in a very noble, beautiful way. The way they express that pain is always understated, very discreet, but at the same time profound. That was an inspiration for the show from the very start.
The Seven Streams of the River Ota
Through March 22 at the National Theater in London, then touring in France, Russia and Japan; nationaltheater.org.uk.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
