The Far Side of the Moon – Show Programme, Auckland Arts Festival 2018

22–25 March ASB Theatre Aotea Centre

THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY ROBERT LEPAGE PERFORMED BY YVES JACQUES EX MACHINA

CREATIVE TEAM Written & Directed by Robert Lepage

Production Manager (Touring) Vanessa Landry-Claverie

Performed by Yves Jacques

Tour Manager Léa Touzé

Script Consultant Adam Nashman

Technical Director (Touring) Olivier Bourque

Artistic Collaborator & Project Originator Peder Bjurman

Stage Manager Francis Beaulieu

Assistant to the Director Pierre-Philippe Guay Original music composed and recorded by Laurie Anderson © 2000 Difficult Music (BMI)

Lighting Manager Félix Bernier-Guimond Sound Manager Stanislas Elie Video Manager Benoit Brunet-Poirier

Assistant Set Designer Marie-Claude Pelletier

Costume & Props Manager Isabel Poulin

Assistant Lighting Designer Bernard White

Stagehands Emmanuelle Nappert Jean-Félix Labrie

Costume Designer Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt Puppet Designers Pierre Robitaille Sylvie Courbron Puppeteer Éric Leblanc Set Consultant Carl Fillion Images produced by Jacques Collin Véronique Couturier Audio Editing Jean-Sébastien Côté Production Manager Louise Roussel Technical Coordinator Michel Gosselin Technical Director Dany Beaudoin

Set building Unissons Structures, Les Conceptions Visuelles Jean-Marc Cyr Host’s voice Normand Bissonnette Martine Rochon Additional music ‘Moonlight Sonata’

by Ludwig van Beethoven ‘Naima’

by John Coltrane ‘I Gaze at the Moon’

by Michael White ‘Space Dryer’

by Michael White Soviet space images The Ultimax Group, Inc. Director’s Agent Lynda Beaulieu Produced by Ex Machina

In co-production with Aarhus Festuge; Auckland Arts Festival; Festspillene i Bergen; Berliner Festspiele, Berlin; BITE:03, Barbican, London; Bonlieu scène nationale, Annecy; Cal Performances, University of California at Berkeley; Change Performing Arts, Milan; Cultural Industry Ltd., London; Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg; Dublin Theatre Festival; Espace Malraux Scène Nationale Chambéry-Savoie; Festival de Otono, Madrid; Festival Internacional Santiago A Mil; FIDENA, Bochum; Göteborg Dans & Teater Festival; Harbourfront Centre, Toronto; La Comète scène nationale de Châlons-enChampagne; La Coursive, scène nationale La Rochelle; Manège Maubeuge – Scène Nationale; Le Théâtre du Trident, Québec; Le Volcan Maison de la Culture, Le Havre; Les Cultures du Travail – Forbach 2000, Forbach; Le Maillon – Théâtre de Strasbourg; Les Célestins, Théâtre de Lyon; Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Bruxelles; Maison des Arts, Créteil; Northern Stage at Newcastle Playhouse; Onassis Cultural Center, Athens; Perth Festival; Pilar de Yzaguirre – Ysarca, Madrid; Schauspielhaus Zurich; Setagaya Public Theater, Tokyo; SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs, Vancouver; Steirischer Herbst, Graz; Tallinna Linnateater; Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre; Théâtre de Namur; Teatro Nacional São João, Porto; Théâtre d’Angoulême, Scène Nationale; Le Théâtre de la Ville – Paris; Théâtre de Sartrouville & des Yvelines; Theatre Royal Plymouth; Théâtre Sénart, scène nationale; The Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater, New York; The Irvine Barclay Operating Company; The Lowry, Salford Quays; The Royal National Theatre, London; The Sydney Festival; TNT-Théâtre National de Toulouse; Tramway Dark Lights, Glasgow; UC Davis Presents, Davis; Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff; Wiener Festwochen, Wien Associate Producer, Europe, Japan Epidemic (Richard Castelli, assisted by Chara Skiadelli, Florence Berthaud and Claire Dugot) Associate Producer, The Americas, Asia (except Japan), Australia, New Zealand Menno Plukker Theatre Agent (Menno Plukker, assisted by Sarah Rogers and Isaïe Richard) Photography David Leclerc (cover)

ex machina is funded by the canada council for the arts, quebec’s arts and literature council and the city of quebec. this production has been subsidised by the millennium arts fund of the canada council for the arts

with support from platinum patrons janet clarke & john judge

THE SHOW

2hrs no interval

“Before Galileo turned his telescope towards its surface, people believed the moon was a polished mirror, its dark scars and mysterious contours reflections of our own mountains and seas. Much later in the 20th century the Soviets launched a probe to circle the moon. When it returned images of the hidden face of the moon, the one we can never see from earth, we were shocked to learn that there existed a pounded and scored face of the moon, wounded by countless meteors and storms of celestial debris. For many years American scientists called this the disfigured side of the moon. Perhaps this was because the features that comprise the far-side of the moon bear the names of Soviet cosmonauts, poets, and inventors.”

the mysterious teachings the universe holds for those brave enough to look up to the stars and ponder. Time and place are secondary to Philippe’s search for meaning in the universe and his place in it.

So begins the epic story of Philippe, a man coping with the recent loss of his mother, the estrangement of his only sibling, his younger brother André; and

Also performed by Yves Jacques, The Far Side of the Moon premiered at Le Théâtre du Trident in Quebec City on February 29th, 2000, and has since been shown in over 45 cities all over the world.

The competition between the Soviets and Americans during the Space race, the SETI programme (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence), and memories from childhood and adolescence act as touchstones for this one-man show dealing with the fundamental question, “Are we alone?” Punctuated by Laurie Anderson’s otherworldly score, The Far Side of the Moon is a show which takes the audience to other worlds on the steady wings of Robert Lepage’s theatrical magic.

ARTIST’S NOTE After we probed it, mapped it and visited it, our interest in the moon diminished considerably. Already in the early 1970s, the last Apollo missions didn’t even make it to television. Still, even though the moon has lost a lot of its mystery, it has lost none of its poetic force.

I had been trying to push back that moment for a long time, but creating this new play left me no choice. The most difficult part for me was certainly when I realised that my younger years, which I believed to be a sunny time in my life, were more often than not set in moonlike colours – blues and greys.

By turning my attention towards certain moments of the space race, I was forced to revisit my childhood and an important part of my teenage years.

I hope that my clumsily disguised story can touch you and bring you a bit of lunar nostalgia.

Robert Lepage, Director

BIOGRAPHIES

ROBERT LEPAGE

YVES JACQUES

LAURIE ANDERSON

Versatile in every form of theatre craft, Robert Lepage is equally talented as a director, playwright, actor and film director. His creative and original approach to theatre has won him international acclaim and shaken the dogma of classical stage direction to its foundations, especially through his use of new technologies. Among his most noticed work for the stage: Dragons’ Trilogy (1985), Needles and Opium (1991), The Far Side of the Moon (2000), The Andersen Project (2005), Lipsynch (2007), his solo performance 887 (2015) and his most recent production Quills (2016); his multimedia creations The Image Mill (2008) and The Library at Night (2015); and at the opera, The Damnation of Faust (1999), The Nightingale and Other Short Fables (2009), Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (2010) and L’Amour de loin (2015).

His career led him from his native Quebec City to Montreal, then Paris where he’s been playing since, on stage as well as in movies. Working with French Canadian director Denis Arcand on five films including Decline of the American Empire, Jesus of Montreal and The Barbarian Invasions, along with French director Claude Miller with whom he worked on seven films including La Chambre des Magiciennes, La petite Lily and Voyez Comme ils Dansent, Jacques confirmed his talent, and his renown grew steadily in France and in Quebec. On stage, he has been touring worldwide for almost ten years with two Robert Lepage’s plays, The Far Side of the Moon (from 2001) and The Andersen Project (from 2007) in their French and English versions. His work with Lepage made Luc Bondy, the late Director of the Odéon Théâtre de l’Europe in Paris, to offer him to play alongside Isabelle Huppert in Marivaux’s Les Fausses Confidences (False Acquaintances).

Laurie Anderson is one of America’s most reknowned – and daring – creative pioneers. Known primarily for her multimedia presentations, she has cast herself in roles as varied as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, electronics whiz, vocalist, and instrumentalist.

EX MACHINA In 1994, when Robert Lepage asked his collaborators to help find a name for his new company, he had one condition: the word theatre could not be part of the name. Ex Machina is thus a multidisciplinary company bringing together actors, writers, set designers, technicians, opera singers, puppeteers, computer graphic designers, video artists, contortionists and musicians. Ex Machina’s creative team believes that the performing arts – dance, opera, music – should be mixed with recorded arts – filmmaking, video art and multimedia.

That there must be meetings between scientists and playwrights, between set painters and architects, and between artists from Québec and the rest of the world. New artistic forms will surely emerge from these gatherings. Ex Machina wants to rise to the challenge and become a laboratory, an incubator for a form of theatre that will reach and touch audiences from this new millennium.

A film inspired by the play was also produced for ARTE with the same director and cast. Other directors with whom Jacques has had the privilege to work include Xavier Dolan (Laurence Anyways), Jean-Paul Rappenneau (Belles Familles), Olivier Dahan (Grace of Monaco) and Martin Scorsese (The Aviator). Jacques was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, in February 2001, and he is an Officer of the Order of Canada since 2009 for his achievements as an actor in theatre, television and film, in Canada and abroad.

‘O Superman’ launched Anderson’s recording career in 1980, rising to no. 2 on the British pop charts and subsequently appearing on Big Science, the first of her seven albums on the Warner Brothers label.

Laurie Anderson’s visual work has been presented in major museums throughout the United States and Europe. In 2003, The Musée Art Contemporain of Lyon in France produced a touring retrospective of her work, entitled The Record of the Time: Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson. This retrospective included installation, audio, instruments, video and art objects and spans Anderson’s career from the 1970s to her most current works. It continued to tour internationally from 2003 to 2005.

As a composer, Anderson has contributed music to films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme; dance pieces by Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley; and a score for Robert Lepage’s theatre production, The Far Side of the Moon.

In 2002, she was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance “The End of the Moon”.

In 2015 her first feature film, Heart of a Dog, inspired by the life and death of her terrier Lolabelle, and dedicated to her late husband, Lou Reed, was chosen as an official selection of the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.

She lives and works in New York City.

photography: jocelyn michel (lepage); pierre dury (jacques); noah greenburg (anderson)

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1–25 March DAILY UNTIL LATE

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In the centre of the Aotea Arts Precinct, this comfortable and upbeat pop-up club is your place to gather before and after a show, grab a delicious meal from a bespoke menu, enjoy live music from instrumentalists and DJs, or unwind over the long summer nights with a special Festival cocktail.