Robert Lepage’s creative alchemy

This feature by Sarah Greene appeared in the November 2011 issue of Q&Q.

Robert Lepage’s impressive artistic career spans theatre, film, and opera, and includes stints as designer and director for Cirque du Soleil and a Peter Gabriel world tour. The prolific Quebec actor, writer, and director has now added graphic novelist to his list of achievements. The Blue Dragon, first published in French earlier this year by Quebec’s Éditions Alto, appears this month from House of Anansi Press.

Adapted from the play of the same name, the book reunites co-writers Lepage and Marie Michaud, both of whom performed in the original 2008 production. The idea for the graphic novel, first suggested by Lepage’s sister and assistant Lynda Beaulieu, seemed natural given the influence on the play of Hergé’s The Blue Lotus, about TinTin’s adventures in Shanghai; the use of Chinese calligraphy, video, and comic panel-like squares in the set design; and the fact that the central character, Pierre Lamontagne, is a graphic artist and calligrapher.

“We thought a graphic novel would be more faithful, do more justice to the piece,” says Lepage. “We saw it as an opportunity to extend the themes of The Blue Dragon.”

A follow-up to the mid-1980s production The Dragons’ Trilogy, the story is set in modern-­day China and revolves around three characters in a love triangle: Lamontagne, a middle-aged Quebecois artist who lives in Shanghai and runs a contemporary art gallery; his ex-wife, a Montreal-based ­advertising executive hoping to adopt a baby; and Lamontagne’s younger Chinese lover. Just as there are three characters interacting in three languages (French, English, and Mandarin), there are three possible endings to the play and the book. Éditions Alto played on the number by printing a first run of 3,333 copies.

To adapt the highly visual play into print, Lepage and his production company, Ex Machina, imagined how they would present the story as a film. They auditioned a number of Quebecois artists for the project, eventually choosing Fred Jourdain, a young illustrator known for his portraits of rock stars and celebrities. Jourdain’s fluid, vivid illustrations of a rainy Shanghai are conveyed by mixing comic-book art with more painterly images. “He was very strong at expressing emotions on his characters’ faces,” says Lepage.

Anansi publisher Sarah MacLachlan fell in love with this combination of graphica and fine art. “I thought that was an extraordinary thing,” she says. The Blue Dragon is Anansi’s first graphic novel for the adult market (its children’s imprint, Groundwood Books, published the YA title Skim by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki in 2009). Canadian fiction editor Melanie Little met Éditions Alto president Antoine Tanguay last January, at the Canada Council for the Arts’ inaugural translation rights fair in Ottawa, and presented an offer within days.

The graphic novel has also had an effect on the theatrical version of The Blue Dragon, which will be remounted by Toronto’s Mirvish Productions in January. “Our work with Fred had a big influence on the piece,” Lepage says. “Both to make it stronger by simplifying some of the storylines, but also by complexifying some things that needed to be more [complex]. A lot of that came from some of the very rich, effervescent exchanges we had with Fred.”

Lepage says the adaptation was so successful it’s changed his approach to publishing: “Whatever play we come up with we should try to find a format – not necessarily another graphic novel – that is as faithful to our visual approach to the stage as it is [to] the written word.”

Éditions Alto and Ex Machina have continued their partnership, producing a limited-­run souvenir book for Lepage’s production of Stravinsky’s opera The Nightingale and Other Short Fables and collaborating on a nine-volume box set for his epic nine-hour opera Lipsynch.

“[Lepage] is a central cultural figure in Quebec right now,” says Tanguay. “Everything he does turns to gold.”

Illustrations by Fred Jourdain, courtesy of Anansi

Anansi hires Melanie Little

In the wake of publisher Lynn Henry’s abrupt move to Doubleday Canada three weeks ago, House of Anansi Press is announcing some changes to its staff roster. Company president Sarah MacLachlan has been named president and publisher, thereby filling Henry’s former role, and former Freehand Press editor Melanie Little has been brought in as senior editor of Canadian fiction.

“I look forward to working with what I know will be a crack team,” said Little in a press release.

Meanwhile, former managing editor Janie Yoon has been promoted to senior editor of non-fiction, and former editorial assistant Kelly Joseph has been promoted to assistant editor.

Look for further coverage in Q&Q Omni next week.

The new face of summer magazine fiction

The magazine market for fiction may not be in quite so critical a condition after all. Toronto Life has announced plans to drop its annual Summer Fiction feature, but another city magazine has just kicked off a fiction package of its own.

Ottawa Magazine’s current issue boasts its first Summer Fiction package, which contains stories by authors Alan Cumyn, Melanie Little, Nichole McGill, and Dorothy Speak. Editor Sarah Brown says the plan is to make the fiction feature an annual event, and to focus on the work of Ottawa writers. “As a city magazine I think it’s our mandate to really showcase the writing talent in and around the city.” The stories need not necessarily be set in Ottawa, notes Brown, though three of the four in the debut issue happen to be.

To come up with the lineup, Brown commissioned stories rather than soliciting submissions. “As this was our first fiction issue, I made up a list of about 30 writers who I would love to have in the magazine. This was done in conjunction with my coworkers. I also spoke with Sean Wilson from the Ottawa International Writers Festival who had a lot of great ideas. As luck would have it, four of the first five writers I contacted immediately agreed to write for our first issue.”

Elsewhere, the Toronto Star has done its own story on Toronto Life‘s decision to pull the plug on fiction. And noting editor John Macfarlane’s explanation that it was difficult to find Toronto-set stories, the Star‘s Judy Stoffman asks a very good question: “Where are the imaginative chroniclers of life in Toronto?”

(Like Toronto Life and Q&Q, Ottawa Magazine is owned by St. Joseph Media.)

Related links:
Read Sarah Brown’s editor’s letter from Ottawa Magazine‘s fiction issue
Read the Toronto Star story about Toronto Life
Read Q&Q‘s story about Toronto Life