LEPAGE DEFIANT
Dunlevy on SLAV director
Poor Robert Lepage.
The acclaimed Quebec director finally responded to the outcry leading to the cancellation of SLAV, his “theatrical odyssey based on slave songs” in collaboration with singer Betty Bonifassi as part of the Montreal International Jazz Festival; and the resulting message is, to borrow a line from Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
In an elaborate statement released Friday morning, the theatre director goes to great lengths to explain how he has been muzzled; that this is a blow to artistic freedom; that his company, Ex Machina, is revered the world over; and that he demands the “right for theatre to talk about anything and anyone. Without exception. None.”
Newsflash, M. Lepage: no one is taking away your rights. You were free to mount this highly problematic production. You received funding for it. And a coveted spot at the jazz fest. You are in a position of privilege, in more ways than one.
But as you have the right to put what you want on stage, people have the right to question your choices. And they did. That your reaction to the criticism is to block your ears and complain that you can’t keep doing as you choose is unfortunate.
Lepage speaks of the “intolerant discourse heard both on the street and in some media,” adding that “everything that has led to this cancellation is a direct blow to artistic freedom.” Really? Everything? Some insightful, nuanced and thought-provoking things have been said and written in articles about SLAV and cultural appropriation since the show was announced in November.
Members of the black community — including McGill law student and cultural commentator Marilou Craft, and Quebec rapper and historian Aly Ndiaye, a.k.a. Webster — have penned pointed opinion pieces detailing their concerns.
In June, I spoke with McGill University art history professor and transatlantic slavery expert Charmaine Nelson, recently returned from a year as a visiting professor at Harvard, who explained why representation is crucial in a production such as SLAV.
Is that the intolerant discourse to which Lepage is referring? Or is he offended that people took to “the streets,” that his choices got people’s passions so enflamed that they dared show up outside the theatre on opening night and allow their voices to rise.
That he saw such dissent only as an affront to his right to say and do as he pleases is a fitting example of the kind of attitude that got him here.
There have been endless opportunities for introspection, for humility and for rethinking his and Bonifassi’s approach to SLAV — the latest being the pause of the past week, leading to his statement on Friday.
Lepage had an opportunity for a mea culpa, to admit that perhaps, just maybe, he made some mistakes here, he had a blind spot, he messed up. Such an admission could have opened the door to a rapprochement, to mending some of the wounds caused by the insensitivity of his artistic process.
That he instead took the chance to toot his own horn, toflipthebirdtoanyonewho questions his methods, speaks volumes.
“Over the course of my career,” he wrote, “I have devoted entire shows (to) denouncing injustices done throughout history to specific cultural groups.” It’s a pity that during the course of mounting and presenting this show, he couldn’t see the injustice right in front of him.
It’s no coincidence that the jazz fest’s statement announcing the cancellation of SLAV on Wednesday mentioned only that the decision was made in tandem with Bonifassi. As Lepage said, “If it were up to me, the show would still be running ” — the captain going down with his ship.
His big defence seems to be that he has been doing this for years and nobody has ever said a word. The first part of that statement may indeed be true; as Montreal playwright and Teesri Duniya Theatre artistic director Rahul Varma said in an op-ed to the Gazette on Friday, “(cultural appropriation) is nothing new for Lepage,” citing the shows Dragons’ Trilogy and Zulu Time as examples of his “continued practice of colour-blind casting that seems to privilege white actors to play non-white characters.”
But as the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements — and an increased sensitivity toward issues of representation in cultural productions (including film and TV ) — have shown, the times they are a changin’.
With his defiant, tone-deaf stance, Lepage comes off like a dinosaur.
That he saw such dissent only as an affront to his right to say and do as he pleases is a fitting example of the kind of attitude that got him here.