Robert Lepage is one of Canada’s most versatile and esteemed theatre artists. His original approach to theatre has won him international acclaim, particularly for his use of new technologies. He is the recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement and was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. He is the founder and artistic director of Ex Machina and has directed numerous plays, operas and films including work for Cirque du Soleil.
About Ex Machina
Led by artistic director Robert Lepage, Ex Machina creates, produces, and disseminates multidisciplinary artistic works, most often theatrical.
The company brings together creators from several fields of activity and offers a broad range of artistic production: original plays written and performed solo or collectively, plays based on existing texts, productions in which various disciplines (dance, music, museology) mingle with theater, operas and multimedia productions featuring a predominantly technological dimension. Ex Machina mainly develops its shows in the city of Quebec, then presents them abundantly in Quebec, Canada and elsewhere in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
Beyond their diversity, the company’s projects have some features in common. Anecdotes lead to the exploration of ideas such as the revelation of identity through exposure to the other. Cultural intersections, the nature of the creative act, interrupted communication and states of dependence are recurring themes.
Several dramatic situations oppose the quotidian to the extraordinary, the naturalism to the metaphor, and somehow diffident characters to historical figures. The multilingualism, the massive use of images, the reversal of perspective, the variations in scale, the use of narrative codes borrowed from the cinema and the use of technological tools aim to spark meaning and emotion, reflecting a desire to poeticize theatrical expression.
About twenty permanent employees and a large number of artists, artisans, designers, authors, performers, and freelance technicians work each year to create Ex Machina’s shows. They are seen year after year by hundreds of thousands of spectators.
