My play’s longer than your play
By Anne Kingston - Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 0 Comments
Robert Lepage’s new work is nine hours long and it’s not unique. Here comes ’slow theatre.’
After wowing audiences in London, Sydney and Madrid, Robert Lepage’s multilingual play Lipsynch finally receives its North American premiere next month at Toronto’s Luminato Festival. And what has theatre mavens chattering most about the Canadian theatrical alchemist’s latest production? Its exploration of the human voice? Its multidisciplinary virtuosity? No, the buzz is all about Lipsynch’s audacious running time of eight hours and 25 minutes. It’s being staged in three-hour chunks over three days or, for Lepage devotees, at all-day marathons punctuated by 20-minute intermissions and a 45-minute meal break. Tickets run $75 to $125, which when you do the math is a bargain. Where else can you buy genius for 25 cents a minute?
Toronto-based actor and playwright Rick Miller, one of nine actors who collaborated on the production, says Lepage’s desire to mount a nine-hour play met with resistance. “We all thought he was nuts,” he says. But he now sees the time commitment as key to the “operatic experience”: “Time takes on a different scale; you experience things without turning on the BlackBerry or cellphone.”
