Robert Lepage / Ex Machina

Robert Lepage and Ex Machina's theatricality is inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural and inevitably characterised by intense hybridity. These complex features - while the source of an internationally celebrated theatrical innovation and considerable pleasure for audiences - have nevertheless also prompted notable criticism. <i>Robert Lepage / Ex Machina: Revolutions in Theatrical Space</i> reads against the grain of criticism providing readers with a fresh practice-based and critical perspective by arguing that these innovative aesthetic practices operate simultaneously as positive cultural principles. Drawing directly on case studies of process and a wide range of productions and building from in-depth interviews this book intertwines theoretical and practical concerns weighing them in balance and in doing so produces for the reader a new critical perspective on Robert Lepage and Ex Machina.<br/><br/>Through the course of his analysis James Reynolds illustrates that underpinning the inter-disciplinary eclecticism of Ex Machina's practice is a profound engagement with social cultural and political difference. Running through the work is a drive to create performances built around a principle of contradiction through which audiences can apprehend difference in its myriad infinite forms. Consequently <i>Robert Lepage / Ex Machina</i> explores this embracing of difference in all its depth and complexity opening a key way for readers to develop both their practical and theoretical appreciation of this practice. At the same time the discourse around this vital forward-looking practice is rebooted not only by re-thinking its contribution to the vocabulary of drama and theatre but also through revealing and assessing the critical discourse it initiates through performance.