It’s with the backdrop Tribute to Rosa Luxemburgbut also the entire history of Quebec in the last century, which the playwright Robert Lepage intends to deploy in the play that will mark in 2023 the 100and birth anniversary of Jean-Paul Riopelle, and the 50and anniversary of the Compagnie Jean-Duceppe.
Still in the process of being created, the piece currently responds to the working name of “Project Riopelle”, but we already know that it is Luc Picard and Anne-Marie Cadieux who will interpret Jean-Paul Riopelle and his companion Joan Mitchell, at the adulthood.
Directed by Riopelle at the end of his life, when the painter Joan Mitchell had just died, Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg is a triptych made up of thirty vignettes, which often symbolize specific events experienced by its creator. Robert Lepage will use it as the basis for three acts in the life of Riopelle. “We have intentions, ideas, themes,” he says, but we are still far from the final product.
One thing is certain, there will be many actors who will revolve around the protagonists, playing André Breton, Samuel Beckett, Paul-Émile Borduas or Alberto Giacometti, for example.
Endless with anecdotes
In an interview, Robert Lepage is inexhaustible with anecdotes that occurred in Riopelle’s life. He also says he wants the dialogues of the play, whose first performance is scheduled for next year, to be anchored in real exchanges, as evidenced by the impressive archives concerning the artist.
He says in particular that the painter, before the signing of the manifesto Global denialhad signed in Paris the manifesto Inaugural break, presented by André Breton. The latter wishing to recruit signatories in Quebec, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Fernand Leduc bring the manifesto, which the group of Paul-Émile Borduas rejects, to launch the Global denialwhich corresponded better to his aspirations.
“Who, Riopelle or Fernand Leduc, brought back the manifesto Inaugural break from Paris ? “, the mystery remains, he says in an interview. He adds, moreover, that Jean-Paul Riopelle was a bit of a “mythomaniac”, and that, without inventing events, he tended to magnify their magnitude in each of the new versions presented.
He also says that Riopelle was part of the discussions surrounding the staging ofWaiting for Godotby Samuel Beckett.
Joan Mitchell, on the other hand, was American, although she later went to live with Jean-Paul Riopelle in Paris. Even today, his fame is much more imposing throughout the world than that of Riopelle, notes Lepage, who also specifies that the New York school of painting radiated stronger, in this post-war period, than that of Paris.
Russian comedians on the run
Somewhat slowed down by the pandemic, Robert Lepage signed his last staging in Russia, where he was still last December. Since then, the play he has staged there, according to the novel The Master and Margaritaby Russian Mikhail Bulgakov, had to be cancelled, among other things because several actors, some of whom were Ukrainians, left the country.
This is particularly the case of the actress Chulpan Khamatova, who signed a petition against the war in Ukraine.
“There are 200,000 intellectuals who have left Russia” since the start of the war in Ukraine, he says. “Engineers, great actors, artists come out at full doors. Some of the actors with whom he has worked will join him in Berlin, where he will soon present, as part of the FIND festival, The Seven Branches of the Ota River and 887.
According to him, opposition to the war is more alive in Russia than the polls suggest, even if President Putin holds a speech which he compares to those of Hitler at the beginning of the Second World War.
And the Russian repression is strong. “We find the letter Z, which symbolizes the war in Ukraine [et le soutien à l’armée russe]on the very doors of theaters,” he says.
According to him, the resolution of the war can only be done from Russia itself.