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Robert Lepage's Stravinsky: Rhyming Imagery on Stage

  • Author / Creator
    Nearey, Brendan P.J.
  • Québécois Director/Writer/Performer/Filmmaker Robert Lepage is internationally recognized for his striking multimedia productions and transformative mise-en-scène. This thesis specifically explores Lepage’s staging of two Igor Stravinsky operas: The Rake’s Progress (2007), and The Nightingale and Other Short Fables (2009). This is not a musicological study, rather it is an analysis of the mise-en-scène Lepage devised for these productions. Lepage employs a specific method of seeking commonalities between disparate stage imagery, and orchestrating radical transformations of the stage picture around those reoccurring elements, using them as reference points for his audience. These reference points are to his stage picture what homonyms and rhymes are to poetry; they change meaning based on context, and resonate with the spectator on more than one level. Using tools described in Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1976), and Marvin Carlson’s The Haunted Stage (2003), I approach Lepage’s mise-en-scène as a layering of intersecting frames. Secondly, a close reading and analysis approaches the mise-en-scène of Lepage’s The Rake’s Progress (2007) as a form of adaptation, drawing from Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation (2013). Finally, I examine The Nightingale (2009) with a libretto based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the same name, on its emulation of 19th century chinoiserie, using principles from Edward Said’s Orientalisim (1978).

  • Subjects / Keywords
  • Graduation date
    Fall 2017
  • Type of Item
    Thesis
  • Degree
    Master of Arts
  • DOI
    https://doi.org/10.7939/R3JD4Q36D
  • License
    This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.