100 Quotes by Robert Lepage

I studied as an actor at the theatre conservatoire in Quebec, but by the time I got to my third year, I was more interested in directing. There's more to it than helping actors get round a stage: it's a wonderful way of telling stories.

Opera should be a place for art forms to meet. I've worked a lot with Peter Gabriel; his music isn't operatic, but he creates big, popular gatherings to which architecture, dance, and music are all invited.

People think that it is negative, but in fact, chaos can be very fertile.

Often, particularly towards the end of the process, I think of myself less as a theatre director and more as someone who just directs the traffic. My job is to move the ideas and bits of the show into the places where they work best. Sometimes my job is also to say, 'No.'

Making art in big cities is often frustrating and difficult. It's why artists are drawn to smaller places.

Reading fairytales to children expands their imaginations.

I wouldn't be happy to be a specialist. There are some very interesting artists in history who refused to be nailed down into a category, like Da Vinci or Jean Cocteau. You could say Cocteau was a great poet but also a film-maker, interested in theatre, sculpture, and could never identify with any of these forms exclusively.

Without meaning to sound crass, I've never had any psychological... help. It's because I feel my work is so revealing about who I am and what I am trying to understand about myself. It's a therapeutic process.

If you're going to do a show about somebody who dumped you, it's much richer if you have three characters dealing with different aspects of that theme. There is more space for people to identify with it.