JANE KOUSTAS
Cinéaste, dramaturge, comédien, metteur en scène, Robert Lepage doit sa renommée internationale à sa capacité d’ébranler, sinon de faire éclater les frontières conventionnelles du théâtre. Son succès sur le plan international s’explique en grande partie par son aptitude à mélanger langues et cultures de sorte que chaque public puisse s’y reconnaître. De sa ville natale de Québec, au Japon, en Europe ainsi qu’aux États Unis et ailleurs, Lepage trouve son public et le public se trouve dans son théâtre. Dès les premières représentations de La trilogie des dragons (production reprise à Montréal en 2003 lors du Festival de théâtre des Amériques) jusqu’à la création de Zulu Time (2000-2002), Lepage a su mettre en question la notion du texte ainsi que celle de la traduction. Sans texte “figé,” ses productions échappent également à la traduction. En fait, la confusion des langues, la cacophonie même, se trouvent au centre des productions dans lesquelles plusieurs langues sont utilisées, parfois en même temps. Dans Zulu Time, Lepage considère l’existence et le potentiel d’une langue internationale qui se trouverait entre ou au-delà des langues traditionnelles et pour laquelle aucune traduction ne s’avérerait nécessaire ou même possible. Cette production s’organise autour de l’alphabet international aéronautique qui identifie chaque lettre par un mot et dont la dernière lettre est représentée par “Zulu”. L’heure zulu ou “Zulu time” est aussi l’heure au méridien de Greenwich utilisée par les militaires ainsi que dans l’aviation. La production prend lieu dans l’espace neutre, générique, international d’un aéroport, endroit dans lequel les notions conventionnelles d’identité culturelle et linguistique, ainsi que la fonction communicative du langage se trouvent ébranlées sinon pulvérisées.
In his 2001 study Grammars of Creation, translation scholar and philosopher George Steiner reflects on the changing role of language in the era of connected intelligence and the web society:
We inhabit language-worlds (Heidegger) or languagegames (Wittgenstein) in so manifold and intimate a way that our sensation of being is primarily semiotic. […] Nevertheless, I put forward the intuition, provisional and qualified, that the language animal we have been since ancient Greece so designated us, is undergoing mutation. It seems to me that recent technological developments, technology inevitably implicating metaphysics, come near to enforcing such supposition. (264-65)
Language and its transformation, mutation, and translation are central to the work of Robert Lepage. If, as Derrick de Kerckhove states, “electronic technology is changing the consciousness of the literate mind” (148), it is to be expected that a theatre which boasts its use of “teletechnology” (de Kerckhove 15) to the point of earning for its creator the somewhat redoubtable nickname of “l’Inspecteur Gadget” invites the audience to rethink and even step beyond language. Indeed, Lepage’s “théâtre à l’heure de la globalisation” (Bélair C1) asks the spectator to consider the internationalization, translation, and role of language in a technocultural environment (de Kerckhove 23) where “glocalization” (Varsava 704) and “time-space compression” (Varsava 703) challenge conventional notions of time, space, and place.
This article will endeavour to illustrate that Lepage, “a renaissance man – author, director, designer, media-mixing artist, and actor […], one of the major creative forces in the world” (Harbourfront Centre 29), wins world-wide recognition through his exploration of border crossings, transnational identities, and spaces beyond and between geographical limits, cultural identity, and translation. Lepage takes his audience to that mythical, mystical third space, the between zone, the space of the arcade identified by Walter Benjamin with respect to translation or to that of the hourglass described by Patrice Pavis in his discussion of multicultural theatre. Furthermore, it will be argued that in Zulu Time Lepage injects emotion and affect into this space: the production centres on the characters’ frustration at finding themselves as adrift emotionally as they are geographically, culturally, linguistically, and temporally.
While this passage to a zone beyond or between linguistic, cultural, and geographic boundaries is well illustrated by the 2000- 2002 production Zulu Time, it is important to note that Lepage’s work has always sought to cross or blur such distinctions. Lepage described one of his earliest productions, Circulations, as a trilingual production, “one third English, one third French, and one third movement” (Ex Machina, Press Kit: Circulations), thus suggesting that movement adds a new dimension to both the standard source-target translation model and the standard Canadian bilingual models. In The Geometry of Miracles, Lepage’s mostly Quebecois company speaks English, French, and Serbo-Croatian. In whatever language it is produced, his theatre bypasses traditional target versus source translation models: not only is there neither a translation nor original version, there is, in most cases, no official script or text. The actors switch back and forth among languages as they “decide for themselves what they should say”and “improvise and write their own text”(McAlpine 139).Cultural and linguistic differences, the basis for translation, are either at the very centre of Lepage’s theatre, and hence exploited and exploded, as in The Dragons' Trilogy, or circumvented entirely in plays like Elsinore which rely on the audience’s knowledge of the text and its reading of the mise en scène. A brief overview of his work will illustrate that in theatre relying on a plurality of idioms, conventional notions of language and place of origin lose their relevance. 1
Like all Ex Machina productions, Circulations was inspired by a “concrete visual source” (Ex Machina, Press Kit: Circulations), in this case a road map. When Louise, the Quebecois heroine, leaves a miserable home life to “voir le monde,” she does so in both senses of the expression: she sets out to see the world but also to learn about life. However, the audience is expected not only to follow Louise’s geographic and existentialist journey, but also to explore with her the question of language. Although billed as trilingual,“in French and English”does not mean here the simultaneous translation usually associated with Canadian bilingualism in official settings. “Bi” and “tri” mean here instead that the actors switch back and forth between English and French and that no translation is provided. There is therefore neither an original nor target language; it is instead a “play” on the very idea of translation. Louise sets out on her journey with a walkman and English language-learning tapes. Much of the dialogue takes place in stilted, phrase-book English used inappropriately and reminiscent of the conversation in Ionesco’s La cantatrice chauve, based on standard language-learning tapes: even a New York mugger excuses himself by stating, “I need soap… I need toothpaste.” Phrase-book English, especially spoken by Louise with her Quebecois accent, appears foreign to both French and English audiences. It is, in fact, more like a third language that spans the two. Just like Louise, the audience must “circulate” between cultures and languages, finding itself curiously uprooted and at a cultural intersection.
In The Dragons’ Trilogy, a trilingual English, French, and Chinese play billed as a “lyrical epic about the meeting of cultures” (Ex Machina, Press Kit: The Dragon’s Trilogy), the audience is taken on a cultural and linguistic voyage that spans seventy-five years and three cities: Quebec, Toronto, and Vancouver. As in Circulations, the confrontation of cultures and the volatile nature of the “Other” form the framework of the play. As Lorraine Camerlain notes:
La multiplicité des cultures et des langues constitue un fondement de La trilogie et de la quête intérieure dont la pièce est la manifestation. Jamais les langues ne se font véritablement obstacle; elles s’accordent, à la poursuite d’un objectif commun. On ne parle pas exotiquement anglais, chinois ou japonais. Les langues étrangères s’intégrent au projet, au propos du spectacle. (85)
French, English, and Chinese are used either simultaneously, sequentially or in combination. In several scenes the audience hears the same lines spoken in Chinese, as well as in either French or English. Deliberately heavy accents also suggest the presence of another language. Hence, the Chinese store owner’s expression “The store is burn” is understood by the English shoe salesman as “A star is born,” suggesting confusion not only of languages but also, ironically, of cultural landmarks.
In Vinci, a solo performance by Lepage, the meeting of cultures is also central: the title is both a play on Caesar’s victorious boast uttered as the cultural conqueror acquired new territories and a reference to the artist of the Mona Lisa. The main character, Philippe, travels through Europe to assuage his anguish following the suicide of his dear friend. Focussing in part on the Mona Lisa, with Lepage playing the role of the woman in the portrait, the production centres on the role of the painting as an international cultural icon. Languages (Quebec and continental French, Italian, and English) and identities blend and clash creating both comic and poignant scenes: a girl in a Paris Burger King, played by Lepage, discourses on the meaning of “Burgerkingness,” and then turns her face and becomes the woman in the Mona Lisa. The British tour guide’s condescending attitude towards his “little French-Canadian” clients stands in sharp contrast to the blind Italian guide’s ability to convey the shape and feeling of a cathedral through the generosity and sensitivity of his expression and gestures. The former shares, through translation, a language with his interlocutors but fails to connect with his audience. The Italian guide, however, who speaks Italian to a public which presumably does not, engages in genuine communication. Because of his sincere desire to reach his audience, his untranslated speech defies cultural and linguistic barriers and is the more successful.2
In Tectonic Plates, the three central characters, a deaf-mute, an artist, and a bilingual transvestite connect, move, and separate like the continents, the geographical land masses described by the title. The play brings together characters from South America, Italy, Alaska, and Quebec who switch back and forth among French, English, Spanish, and Italian. Like the language, the accents too may vary depending on the actors’ origin. Once again, the use of different languages and their interference is important since the central narrative, and the much more subtle subtext, rely on the clash of languages.As Shawn Huffman notes: “Communication is not immune to drift either. The dispersal of meaning, from its emission to the chance that it will be intercepted and correctly decoded, is also a major issue in Lepage’s play” (162). In Tectonic Plates the shifting is not only synchronic but also diachronic: images, spaces, gender characteristics, and meanings change over time as well as space.
When Kevin, an American tourist who is practising his hesitant French, tries to pick up Jennifer, Jacques’s drag identity, he, thinking that Jacques is a woman, readily admits to being frustrated by “le sexe.” Only when he provides the example of “la café” do Jacques and the audience realize that he is referring to gender in language. His inability to recognize that Jennifer is a man and his subsequent disappointment are parallelled by his confusion between English and French words and meanings. Both the failure and the potential of language to provide genuine communication are tragically illustrated in one of the final scenes. Thanks to a mutual friend, who recognized Jacques’s voice on the radio, Antoine finds Jacques, his former lover, in New York. Antoine uses a method of “hearing” to kill Jacques. Antoine is a deaf mute. He places his hand on his interlocutor’s throat to “read” the vibrations of the vocal chords and hence understand the words. His final conversation with Jacques ends when he strangles him in love-torn despair using this same gesture. Language, in any form, fails the characters in their attempt to draw closer and, like the continents, they remain separated. Rick Groen notes:
Consequently he [Lepage] uses the spoken word as a kind of musical counterpoint to the visual icons. The actors switch freely from English to French to Spanish to Italian, the different languages just another formidable barrier in our doomed quest for a universal grammar, a continental restoration.
Polygraph, set against the background of the Berlin wall, also centres on the clashing of languages and cultures and the breaking down of “walls” that separate. Similarly, in Needles and Opium the audience embarks on a voyage that straddles cultures, languages, and historical moments. Robert, a lovesick Quebecois, books into a Paris hotel. He stays in a room once occupied by Miles Davis, Jean Cocteau, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and he senses their presence. Robert’s hopeless, and eventually comical, efforts to reach his lover through various telephone operators provide a concrete example of a breakdown in communication. His unsuccessful efforts stand in sharp contrast with the ability of the hotel room’s former occupants to transcend language, cultural differences, and time through their art.
In The Seven Streams of the River Ota spectators are taken on a linguistic, geographic, cultural, and time-bending journey to Hiroshima immediately following the bombing, to present day Japan, to a New York rooming house in the 1960s, to a central European concentration camp during World War II, to contemporary Amsterdam, to Quebec, and elsewhere. When East meets West, cultures and languages collide and combine. As in the other productions noted above, the dialogue switches back and forth among several languages, in this case French, English, Japanese, Czech, and Polish, frequently without translation. The public experiences two, if not more, languages simultaneously and, like the characters,must live on the interface. When translation is used, it is frequently subverted. The use of English or French surtitles when Japanese is spoken confuses the source-text/target-text dichotomy as titles usually provide translation from, not into, the author’s language. An Anglophone or Francophone audience would thus expect the surtitles, not the spoken text, to be in Japanese since English and French are Lepage’s “source” languages. Thus, while neither Lepage nor his actors speak Japanese, their characters do, and the English or French appearing in the titles would seem to be the translation rather than the original. Similarly, a conversation between Hanako, who is working on a Japanese translation of Baudelaire, and Sophie, her Quebecois friend, is relayed by an “off-stage” translator, located in a booth, whose “simultaneous” version is corrected by Hanako. As in other productions, Lepage challenges traditional notions of cultural and linguistic origin and identity: neither the “Other” nor the target or source language or culture is easily identifiable.
Likewise in The Geometry of Miracles characters from Quebec, the USA, France, and Russia meet, frequently by chance, interact in a variety of languages, and confront each other, taking the audience on a journey that defies time and geographic and linguistic barriers. The production is based on a metaphysical link and mythical encounter between Frank Lloyd Wright, the founder of “organic architecture,” and guru Georgei Gurdjieff, a proponent of “organic living,” who counted among his disciples Wright’s third wife, Olgivanna. The story moves from Russia, to Paris, to Wisconsin, to the Arizona desert. The language switches among English, French, Serbo-Croatian, and Russian. Even when surtitles are used, the audience is exposed to both languages and must frequently rely on the other languages of theatre: here, for example, dance, including a sort of tai-chi used by Gurdjieff, is used extensively and seems as curiously up-rooted in the Arizona desert as Olgivanna’s Serbo-Croatian.
In the productions described above, the audience frequently experiences several cultures simultaneously and must remain on the interface rather than on either side of the source/target linguistic or cultural divide. Lepage bypasses or deforms the filter of translation, thus destabilizing traditional notions of identity and translation: his work, wherever it is produced, is not Quebec theatre in English translation but international theatre that works on the interface and depends on the interference of languages and cultures. Indeed, it owes its international success to its refusal to identify with any one culture. As Stephen Godfrey noted, “Lepage seems to have a god’s-eye view of the world.”
As Jeanne Bovet suggests, Lepage’s intention is not to transport the audience to another culture where it is subsequently made to feel comfortably at home. Instead, he invites the audience to experience both the journey and the resulting disorientation and confusion that frequently accompany travel. She states:
La parole a en fait subi exactement le même sort que les langues scéniques paraverbaux, à savoir que c’est sa dimension d’objet tangible, plutôt que sa dimension référentielle, qui est mise en évidence par les expérimenteurs québécois actuels. En d’autres mots: la parole n’est plus exploitée pour son traditionnel pouvoir dénotatif mais aussi, et quelquefois même exclusivement, pour ses effets connotifs. (2)
Instead of a text “dénotif et politisé,” Lepage proposes language that is “connotatif et poétisable” (Bovet 1), hence the decision not to translate: it is frequently the incomprehensiblity of the spoken words, their sounds, their disorienting effect on the audience, and their determining role in a power relationship that motivates the “text.” Furthermore, the inaccessibility of language forces the spectator to rely on the other languages of theatre which Lepage uses so ingeniously. As Paul Thompson, former director of Montreal’s National Theatre School, notes, “It is his picture-making ability that allows his plays to travel so well internationally.His work transcends the limitations of language” (qtd. in Bemrose). Indeed, as Hébert and Perelli-Contos illustrate, it is in his capacity as a “faiseur d’images” (59) that Lepage transcends linguistic boundaries. It is a theatre of non-linear translation, in the sense of the target and original text, and of cultural non-identity in that it is instead multi-identitaire and non-textual.
It is important to note here that multicultural does not mean an arbitrary collage of international theatrical or social practices and languages. It is rather, as Patrice Pavis argues for the case of Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine, and Eugenio Barba, a careful and deliberate sorting or sifting of signs and ideas comparable to the controlled passage of grains of sand in an hourglass. Pavis qualifies this as intercultural theatre which requires spectators to position themselves at the interface, in the “between zone,” not in an effort to understand the “foreign” culture, but rather to appreciate the interaction between the familiar and the foreign or, as is sometimes the case with Lepage, between two or more “foreign” cultural signs and languages. Pavis states, “Pour comprendre la culture étrangère source, le spectateur ne doit pas se transplanter en elle,mais se situer par rapport à elle, assumer la distance temporelle, spatiale, comportementale entre les deux” (217).
Both the model and the multicultural theatre described by Pavis are, however, not without their critics: indeed, Zulu Time may be a response to accusations of orientalism levelled at Lepage. Just as Rustom Bharucha attacks Peter Brook’s and others’ appropriations of Eastern theatre as “a continuation of colonialism, a further exploitation of others” (14), Jennifer Harvie, in an article significantly entitled “Transnationalism, Orientalism and Cultural Tourism: La triologie des dragons and The Seven Streams of the River Ota,” denounces Lepage’s use of the East as “a vehicle for Western fantasies, denying the East’s own autonomy and selfdetermination” (123). It is interesting to note that Pavis praises Brook, to whom Lepage is frequently compared. Pavis admires “his” Mahabharata, noting Brook’s intention to “bring India and its culture closer to the Western audience, to produce signs that facilitate the identification of a reality that is familiar to this audience” while still preserving “Indian rootedness” (192). Bharucha, however, interprets this production as an “appropriation and reordering of non-western material within an orientalist framework of thought and action, which has been specifically designed for the international market” (68). Similarly, Harvie accuses Lepage of adopting a “tourist’s gaze” in productions that “engage Orientalist East/West binary constructions that are productively disruptive” (111).
This article will now argue that Zulu Time, perhaps in somewhat of a response to such accusations, attempts to go beyond all notions of dominant/subordinate culture, language, theatre practice or geographical space to a linguistically, culturally, temporally, geographically generic zone beyond or between traditional boundaries, namely that of Zulu or international time and of the generic airport lounge.3 Just as Lepage’s earlier productions deconstruct and indeed exploit traditional notions of translation as well as source and target text languages by working on the interface between languages, the airport setting takes this production to a culturally indefinable zone beyond traditional, frequently asymmetrical, relationships such as East versus West or French versus English.”
Indeed, the title itself is the first indication of the bypassing or surpassing of traditional notions of geographical and cultural time and space. As Lepage explains: “L’heure Zulu […] c’est le moment où les heures ne correspondent plus. Plus précisément, c’est l’heure universelle en usage dans l’aviation militaire et de plus en plus dans l’aviation civile. H pour Hôtel, T pour Tango, Z pour Zulu” (qtd. in Martel, “Éclaté”). As Lepage points out, while Zulu time does correspond to an actual hour for some people, those located on 0 degree longitude, it is, for most, universal time and therefore an unreal, surreal or suspended time beyond their own zone. As Michel Dolbec noted:
Zulu Time, c’est l’heure universelle dans le jargon des militaires. Zulu Time, c’est donc la même heure pour tous, ou plus d’heure pour personne, ce qui revient au même, surtout lorsqu’on l’applique aux avions, aux aéroports, aux passerelles de transit, aux chambres d’hôtel, aux restaurants et aux bars anonymes.
Thus while technically the same time for everyone, Zulu time is an imaginary time for most. As the above critic underlines, it is not just the title and time zone that places this production in a generic space: the setting itself, the airport or the identical, international, and standard hotel room or bar, assigns it to a zone beyond or between flights, cultures, identities, and geographical and linguis- tic boundaries. While this meeting or mixing of cultures, or métissage, could potentially lead to a sense of community, the various cultures meet one another without ever mingling or mixing. Lepage explains:
L’aéroport offre un curieux paradoxe, hors de l’espace et des frontières, presque hors du temps, ce lieu représente un carrefour de cultures multiples. Les aéroports sont probablement les premiers endroits où le métissage a été expérimenté, et où s’actualise véritablement le concept de «global village.» À preuve, l’existence d’une chapelle multi-confessionnelle à l’aéroport d’Amsterdam. L’aéroport devient ainsi microcosme du monde avec ses diversités. Voyageurs d’origines variées y passent, y mangent, y dorment. Et pourtant, les cultures s’y côtoient sans se mêler. Chacun est seul dans la multitude. C’est ce qu’évoque Zulu Time, dans une suite de numéros montrant l’humain moderne, en mouvement. (qtd. in Laliberté)
The airport thus remains a space between or beyond cultural, geopolitical, and linguistic boundaries and identities. John Tomlinson, in his discussion of globalization and cultural homogenization, suggests that “in the context of air travel, homogenization could actually only occur if one did not leave the air terminal upon arrival, choosing duty-free shopping over actually entering one’s destination” (Varsava 704). It is worth noting that the lounge areas are, furthermore, politically “between” spaces as one does not officially enter or leave a country until having passed immigration.
This “between” space is depicted on stage by a frame of aluminium scaffolding bathed in violet light and measuring 30 metres long, 17 metres wide, and 10 to 12 metres high, on which the entire production takes place. Actors, acrobats, clowns, and robots saunter, scurry, dance or swim across, or are suspended from, two elevator bridges that lower and rise from the frame. They also move in and about the towers that support it. Just as the Greenwich meridian bisects the planet, the frame divides the audience in two. Twenty-four clocks, each set an hour apart, adorn the upper edge of the frame. The soundscape, which begins even before the actual performance, includes music, notably the jazz classic “Time after Time,” rattles, ticks, and techno.Combined with the multi-media effects that have earned Lepage the nickname of “inspecteur gadget du théâtre”(Baillargeon), the work of more than fifteen contributing artists in a production subtitled “un cabaret technologique” rises to the level of a “poème techno sur la solitude” (St. Hilaire, “Zulu Time”) and “une énorme fresque à la démesure des aéroports” (Martel, “Zulu Time”).
The production is organized according to the international aviation code made up of twenty-six words, many of which belong to an “international” language, representing the twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet.4 It is beyond the scope of this paper to describe in detail all twenty-six scenes, sketches or episodes which vary in length and complexity. Indeed, an attempt to do so would run contrary to the central thrust of the play:written text is notably absent.5 Lepage essentially illustrates the failure of language or any other form of communication to unite people who, paradoxically, find themselves increasingly isolated in an increasingly crowded space. This is indeed the central irony and trope of the production. As Lepage, who rarely passes a week without a plane trip and who “vit dans l’entre-mondes et non pas entre deux mondes” (Pontbriand), explains, in a world in which travel and communication are increasingly frequent, rapid, and easy, there is less genuine interaction: “Les aéroports sont un lieu commun qui se trouve à la croisée de chemins. Une aire de métissage, un carrefour qui devrait faire nous rencontrer. Paradoxalement, les aéroports générent beaucoup de solitude” (qtd. in Martel,“Zulu Time”).
Suffice it to say that all scenes, from Alpha to Zulu, from loveless sex, to airport anomie, to terrorist violence,6 including mime acts, video clips, screen projections, and other gadgets from the Ex Machina arsenal (a name carefully chosen, as Lepage explains:“On a fait le choix d’un nom dans lequel il n’y aurait pas le mot ‘théâtre.’ C’était une façon d’affirmer notre amour des machines et des technologies de la scène” [qtd. in St.Hilaire,“Robert Lepage”]) illustrate solitude, loneliness, and the increasing need for the “human to synchronize itself to the mechanical” (Taylor). Even in the sketch entitled “Golfe,” the golfer, whose silly postures and irrational rage at the ball draw laughs, plays alone at what is generally acknowledged to be a social and shared activity. The lonely stewardess listening to her recorded dirty messages from télé-rendez-vous in “Uniforme,” the isolated and sexually frustrated clients in “Hôtel,” the hapless dancers in “Tango,” and the same stewardess whose bar-side rendition of the old jazz standard “Time after Time” reveals the desperate and paradoxical loneliness of a woman who encounters hundreds of people in her daily work, all find themselves alone in a world in which “chacun est seul dans la multitude” (Lepage, qtd. in Laliberté). The production opens with a lounge singer’s rendition of “Time after Time.” However, in “Alpha,” while the audience may well appreciate the nightclub singer’s crooning, his subsequent stand-up act falls on deaf ears, for the latter is performed in German before a Francophone audience. The traditional cymbals and drum roll marking the end of the joke are not followed by laughter and, like the golfer or lounge singer whose performance also depends on the presence and appreciation of others, the would-be comedian encounters only empty silence.
Paradoxically, then, in a play structured around an alphabet, language ceases to function as a means of communication: one does not converse or write using the international aviation code. While its very existence depends on its being universally understood, the code identifies only letters and the relationship between the signifier and the signified is sabotaged. Here, only the sound of the letter is important and it bears no relevance to the object signified by the word. What little spoken text that appears in the production falls into the category of “international language”: the safety instructions given in various languages and the jazz tune will be understood by most because of their very familiarity and not because of the words’ signification. Furthermore, none of the actors or actresses actually ever converse, as all text is either prerecorded, like the safety announcements, or at least preprogrammed, like the song or night-club routine. Language works, therefore, in only one direction; the receptor of the night-club song or recorded message has no opportunity to reply and thus language, robbed of its referential role, ceases to function as a means of communication. Steiner argues: “Language is its own past. The meanings of a word are its history, recorded and unrecorded. They are its usage. Prior history does not, or only very exceptionally, attach to any colour or musical sound a specificity of meaning. Words mean” (144). Here, however, words do not mean; they merely point to a sound.
As illustrated above, Lepage’s trademark and innovative use of languages has always forced the audience to travel to a space beyond traditional notions of language and translation. As one critic points out, this two-and-a-half-hour production with practically no text represents an evolution rather than a new direction. Kate Taylor of the Globe and Mail notes, “Indeed, text is almost entirely incidental to Zulu Time […]. Zulu Time represents the natural progression of Lepage’s work away from a conventional script – never his strong point – toward performance art.” This is not to say, however, that the production is devoid of language or that the language has no importance. Instead, as suggested above, Lepage uses language, or its absence, innovatively to show how language, traditionally understood as a means of communication, of bringing people together, ceases to function even in an airport marked by the sign of its own international language code. Even the frequently used “scratching,” the disc jockey’s technique of hand spinning discs, provides a sound which, while rhythmic, defies notation according to the conventional code and challenges or transgresses conceived notions of music. As previously noted, the airport, the plane, the typical hotel room and bar, are generic spaces beyond traditional language, geographical, cultural and, as the title suggests, temporal markers. Indeed, the link between the scientifically construed notion of Zulu time and the equally artifi- cial, international aeronautic alphabet is compelling. Steiner maintains that “a vital part of the history of science and technology has been that of a constantly improving exactitude in measurements of time” (246). He predicts, however, the death of language, maintaining that “Whenever the sciences, pure and applied, whenever mathematics came to map, to energize, to expand human experience and possibilities, the retreat from the word proved correlative and ineluctable”(280). Steiner evokes, nonetheless, the presence of a language that transcends, precedes or supercedes all others. He notes:
Anthropology and ethno-linguistics are arguing for the probable existence not only of a small number of language-nodes from which all subsequent tongues derive but for the possibility of one Ur-Sprache, that primal speech which positivist linguistics and cultural history had rejected as fantasm. Ur, this untranslatable German prefix, connoting immensities and retrospection and the location of an absolute “first” or “prime,” is becoming the code-word, the signature-tune in our new manuals. (14)
The use of an internationally recognized code to define the space of the between zone hints at the notion of Steiner’s Ur- Sprache, or Benjamin’s “pure language” or “reine Sprache,” as the latter explains in his discussion of translation:
Wherein lies the relatedness of two languages, apart from historical considerations? Certainly not in the similarity between works of literature or words. Rather, all suprahistorical kinship of languages rests in the intention underlying each language as a whole – an intention, however, which no single language can attain by itself but which is realized only by the totality of their intentions supplementing each other: pure language. (75)
As Sherry Simon explains, Benjamin “gives a physical shape to this space: the shape of the arcade,” which “represent[s] an ambiguous urban space, neither inside, nor outside, a passageway” (“The Paris Arcades” 75). This image is hauntingly rendered in Paul Cadmus’s painting “Night in Bologna” in which light and perspective throw both the viewer and the central figure into the surreal space both outside and inside the arcade.7
Like the arcade that divides but allows for open, “between” spaces, the airport and its appendages (the lounge, bar, and hotel) are between cultures, languages, political boundaries, and even time. They thus constitute a “third space” such as that evoked by Benjamin. Cadmus positions his central figure curiously out of synch in a sur- or unreal space that is neither entirely within nor outside the arcade, thus disorienting the viewer. Similarly, Lepage places the audience in a space in which language, like Cadmus’s light and shapes, although familiar, does not function normatively. Lepage also introduces desire and emotion into the arcade motif. Spectators experience the characters’ frustration at finding themselves alone, unable to connect and “between” languages, cultures, and time zones. As in the painting, the between space of the arcade is portrayed as a lonely one.
However, just as Simon cautions against an over-simplification of Benjamin’s complex and elaborate metaphor, this paper will not attempt to argue that Lepage has indeed found “reine Sprache.” Nonetheless, the similarity between this image and Lepage’s use of an international language code to define a space beyond or between cultures is compelling. Furthermore, both Lepage’s earlier work and the following quotation, in which he refers to the then upcoming production of Zulu Time, suggest his awareness of this space and language as well as their inherent potential:
I’ve become interested in language as a universal thing. You know that they discovered a sort of proto-European language? It is made up of 22 words that feature in absolutely every language in the world, from English to Japanese – all spelt the same way, pronounced the same way, meaning the same thing – words like “embargo,” “matador,” “motel,” “condom,” “virus.” That means that we’re moving towards a language where, whether you’re from a tribe in South Africa or from North America, the word “matador” describes a specific identical thing. And that is where I am heading for. It gives me hope that everyone can keep their own culture and speak their own language, but that we’ll have one day a secondary language. What interests me particularly is the poetry that emerges when a language is created from a need. So what I am trying to do in our next piece is to create a story from these words – like “gangster” or “revolver” […]. We have to step into the new millennium with a new dramaturgy. All of the world conflicts and the theatrical themes are about words, what a word means in one language as opposed to another. That’s what theatre should be about. Do we really understand each other’s cultures? (qtd. in Whitely)
Lepage subsequently discovered a secondary language in the already existing international aviation code. He also discovered cultural understanding, as well as poetry, in the common space of the solitude shared by travellers who frequent the airports, hotels, and bars that could be anywhere, and hence seem nowhere, and that exist in time zones that cease to represent the day/night distinction.
Lepage is keenly aware of yet another international or universal language that crosses and blurs linguistic, geopolitical, cultural as well as temporal boundaries and that situates its user on the interface. If Zulu Time is structured around an alphabet that, paradoxically, does not lead to communication and interaction, its reliance on technology and the codes of the computer, internet, and web suggest yet another attempt at “connectedness” (de Kerckhove xxix). Like the international code, the internet knows no time or geographical zones. De Kerckhove notes: “Being everywhere at once, the web is the ultimate decentralizing force. It suppresses all distances and all delays other than those inherent in the transmission technology” (82).8 If, however, connectedness,the goal of which would seemingly be communication and interaction, is indeed “[…] the tendency for separate or previously unrelated entities to be joined by a link or a relationship” (de Kerckhove 144), the net, like the international aeronautic code, fails to link the members of the multitude in any meaningful way. De Kerckhove notes: “The outer substitutes for the inner: text instead of the word; text processing instead of thinking; information instead of meaning; connectedness instead of community […]” (95).
Furthermore, computer-generated images and sounds and the constant, even overwhelming, presence of technology in this production compel the audience to position itself differently. The audience is made to think, indeed perceive, spherically because both the café or bar style seating arrangement that places the audience around or even on the set and the surrounding techno atmosphere (flickering lights, machine-like noises, screens, etc.) challenge traditional linear readings of theatre. De Kerckhove notes:
In truth, it is the whole electronic culture that has gone nonlinear. […] The shape of time, once purely exclusively linear, now becomes spherical, like the operating milieu of bats. […] This is the condition of man today, riding full speed on the crest of the electronic wave, surfing the fields of all expertise with the zapping precision of a video game. (78, 82)
Like Steiner quoted above, de Kerckhove reflects on how technology will influence literature and the arts.He refers to the importance of the alphabet and notes: “The old cultural technology of Europe and North America is still around and doing fine in the form of the self-consciousness created by the phonetic alphabet. It is true, however, that this literate mentality is being seriously challenged by the new electronic technologies” (185). By juxtaposing the “old cultural technology” of the Latin alphabet and the “connected intelligence” of the web age, Lepage is also transforming theatre. If the creation of the Greek alphabet facilitated or even led to the development of theatre by encouraging abstract thinking and linear processing,9 the use of technology, as outlined above, requiring the audience to use its computer skills, thus opens up new directions for theatre today. Referring to Lepage’s work, Hébert and Perelli-Contos observe:
En ce sens encore et à l’instar du théâtre antique qui a contribué d’une certaine façon à l’assimilation de la théôria en tant que mode de connaissance suscité par l’usage de l’écriture phonétique, le théâtre de l’image ne contribuerait-il pas, à sa façon, à l’assimilation d’un (de) nouveau (x) mode (s) de connaissance que les technologies actuelles seraient en train de susciter? Dans ce même sens, le théâtre de l’image ne serait-il pas, comme le théâtre antique, l’un des témoins privilegés d’une révolution paradigmatique que nous serions en train de vivre? (160)
In sum, in the web society, the language of theatre, and the translation process it frequently entails, has entered a new paradigm.
Artistic, including theatrical, exchange between Canada’s two dominant cultural and linguistic communities has frequently been defined, albeit somewhat erroneously, by the notion of “two solitudes.” This theatre production, set in generic territory and in an international time zone, organized around international languages, the aeronautic code, and the computer, and based on the central trope of “chacun est seul dans sa multitude,” clearly forces Canadian and Quebec audiences to step beyond this dichotomy. Elaborating on Benjamin’s image, Sherry Simon evokes that of the inhabited bridges spanning the Arno river in Florence. She argues that translation, rather than serving as an empty bridge or slab between two distinct cultures, should, like these bridges, illustrate the passage. She notes:
These [the bridges] are not efficient slabs linking one place with another, spaces whose entire meaning is consumed with the experience of transit. Rather, they are passages cluttered with shops and houses, where entire existences can be spent. These bridges bring duration to the experience of passage. (“The Paris Arcades” 78)
Similarly, Lepage’s focus is on the passage and on the journey. Indeed the suspended ramps that run between the two towers, and on which much of the action takes place, represent the bridge crossed by passengers to board the plane. The passage here, however, is not to the land of the “Other” culture, as is arguably the case for most translations, but rather to the no man’s land, the between or beyond zone of secondary language and culture shared by all but belonging to none — hence the characters’ profound loneliness and solitude. In Zulu Time the “between” space is not occupied by a community, as is that of the Arno, but rather by anonymous, peopled emptiness. If translation is referred to as travel “across the lines” (Cronin) or as “a vehicle through which cultures travel” (Simon and Homel 9), Lepage has shown that the final destination may just be that zone in which translation is no longer necessary or practicable, where everyone’s watch, mind, and body are set to Zulu time, thus evoking Althusser’s “space without place, time without duration” (78).
In interviews Lepage frequently admits to being fascinated by travel since his youth. He says that if he had not become an artist, he would have become a geography teacher or tour guide. A translator would also have been an option. He speaks several languages and is keenly aware of the links between travel and translation. Furthermore, in Zulu Time, in which he positions spectators “between the lines” and on the interface, he seems to have understood “the task of the translator.” Benjamin states in the seminal essay bearing this title:
It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another […]. For the sake of pure language, he breaks through decayed barriers of his own language […] he must go back to the primal elements of language itself and penetrate to the point where work, image, and tone converge…all great works contain their potential translation between the lines. (80-81)
NOTES
1. Sections of this paper appear in Koustas, Jane. “Robert Lepage
Interfaces with World on the Toronto Stage,” Theatre sans frontières
(Lansing:Michigan UP, 2000). 171-191.
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2. Hébert and Perelli-Contos note in their discussion of this scene: “Si
bien que le corps de l’acteur se fond avec le corps architectural; il sert
d’interface, c’est-à-dire de contact, de traduction, de passage d’un
réseau à un autre.” (83)
Return to article
3. Sections of the discussion of Zulu Time were presented in a paper
entitled “Zulu Time: a certain feeling of décalage,” read at
“Expériences interculturelles au sein des communautés francophones
d’Amérique du Nord,” Université de Moncton, August, 2002.
Return to article
4. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India,
Juliette, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo,
Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whisky, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.
Return to article
5. Hébert and Perelli-Contos note: “Pour lui [Lepage], le texte ‘figé’est
trop souvent ‘un compte rendu,’ ‘le fantôme d’un événement qui s’est
passé.’” (57).
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6. It is tragically ironic that Zulu Time, which includes scenes of terrorism,
including a suicide bomber aboard a plane, was booked as part
of the New York-Quebec festival scheduled for Sept. 2001. Indeed,
the technical crew and artistic director were in New York preparing
for the production on Sept. 11.
Return to article
7. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Theatre
Research in Canada evaluator who provided this example.
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8. Just as the international aeronautic code reflects its origins as a product
of the American military, the internet too illustrates American
dominance.De Kerckhove notes, “English is the dominant language
of the Internet. This is a significant issue at every level, not only in
terms of the communication and/or violation of local sensibilities
but also in terms of ordinary training. It has become almost
axiomatic that you have to learn English in order to learn computers”
(188).
Return to article
9. De Kerckhove notes, “Art only became a recognized human reality
when the Greek alphabet shattered the human senses by reducing the
rich sensoriality of oral language to a series of abstract squiggles. The
job of art, then as now, was to take each sense and reconstitute a world
around it in terms of drama, painting, music, dance, fine food etc.”(23)
Return to article
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