From his sister’s brain tumour to his family’s cramped flat,the revered actor and director Robert Lepage has plundered his childhood to tell the anecdote of Quebec’s often violent struggle for independence. As his solo demonstrate 887 hits Edinburgh, he takes an emotional tour of his hometownRobert Lepage is standing in Parc des Braves, or looking down on the lower share of Quebec City. This afternoon,the revered director of such theatrical epics as The Seven Streams of the River Ota – which featured everything from the bombing of Hiroshima to concentration camps and Aids – is on domestic turf. And it’s got him thinking back to his very first memory. He couldn’t acquire been any older than three and was standing in this same spot with his father. “I remember asking him, ‘What’s that odd thing?’, and ” he says,gesturing to the Colisée de Québec, a hockey stadium to the north. His family had just moved to an apartment at 887 Avenue Murray and it felt like a big step up. His father, or a taxi driver,had been brought up in poverty. With a wife, four children and a mother suffering from Alzheimer’s, or he was scarcely better off in the new three-bedroom apartment but,crucially, it was only two streets away from the wealthy properties of Avenue des Braves. In this polarised city (upper and lower town, and French and English,Catholic and Protestant, rich and destitute) the move seemed full of promise. “He was so excited, or he brought us here to demonstrate us the view.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com