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Transience and Connection in Robert Lepage's The Blue Dragon: China in the Space of Flows

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2012

CHRIS HUDSON  and
DENISE VARNEY
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Abstract

Despite the stylish blend of multimedia and live performance in Robert Lepage's The Blue Dragon, touring in 2010 and 2011, critics are surprised by the reappearance of the archetypal love story in the space of contemporary intermedial performance. This article argues that the performance, set in contemporary Shanghai, explores the lived experience of transience and mobility through a narrative in which individual lives are implicated in a transnational, transcultural and transgenerational romance. Drawing on Zygmunt Bauman's work on liquid modernity and liquid love, we argue that the performance grapples with the experience of being unbound and disconnected in a liquid world.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , July 2012 , pp. 134 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2012

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References

Notes

1 Alison Croggan, Theatre Notes at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/2010/10/miaf-diary-2-intimacy-blue-dragon.html

2 Comments on ‘Blue Dragon – review’, The Guardian, 19 February 2011, www.guardian.co.uk./stage/2011/feb/19/blue-dragon-review, accessed 4 November 2011.

3 Michael Billington, ‘Blue Dragon – review’, The Guardian, 19 February, 2011, www.guardian.co.uk./stage/2011/feb/19/blue-dragon-review, accessed 4 November 2011.

4 Bauman, Zygmunt, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

5 Marx, Kark and Engels, Frederick, Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), p. 38Google Scholar.

6 Bauman, Liquid Modernity, p. 7.

7 Ibid., p. 8.

8 Bauman, Zygmunt, Liquid Love (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

9 Ibid., pp. 119–56, here p. 142. Italics in the original.

10 Ibid., p. vii.

11 Wylam, Lisa Wolford, ‘Printemps du Lepage’, Canadian Theatre Review, 141 (January 2010), pp. 101–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 101.

12 Dundjerovic, Aleksandar and Bateman, Ilva Navarro, ‘Robert Lepage Inc. – Theatre for Festival Audiences’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 19, 4 (2009), pp. 413–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 414.

13 Rebellato, Dan and Harvie, Jen, ‘Theatre and Globalisation: A Symposium’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 16, 1 (2006), pp. 144–64Google Scholar, here p. 145.

14 Dundjerovic and Bateman, ‘Robert Lepage Inc.’, p. 415.

15 Innes, Christopher, ‘Puppets and Machines of the Mind: Robert Lepage and the Modernist Heritage’, Theatre Research International, 30, 2 (2005), pp. 125–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 125.

16 Ibid., p. 126.

17 Ibid., p. 127.

18 According to Edward Said, the East was something that bright young Westerners found to be an all-consuming passion. Said, Edward, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin, 1995), p. 5Google Scholar.

19 Farrer, James, ‘Intermarriage between Chinese Nationals and Western Expatriates Residing in Shanghai’, Asian Studies Review, 32, 1 (March 2008), pp. 7–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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21 Bauman, Liquid Love, p. 4.

22 Auslander, Philip, Liveness in a Mediatized Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 2Google Scholar and passim.

23 ‘Interview: Tai Wei Foo on Robert Lepage and the MIAF’, Crikey, http://blogs.crikey.com.au/curtaincall/2010/10/05/interview-tai-wei-foo-on-robert-lepage-and-the-miaf, accessed 4 November 2011.

24 See, for example, author Wei Hui's story of 1990s underground Shanghai in Hui, Wei, Shanghai Baby (London: Constable Publishers, 2001)Google Scholar. For an analysis of this novel and the world of the Shanghai Girl see Hudson, Chris, ‘Shanghai Baby: Imagining the Passionate City’, in Morris, Brian and Verhoeven, Deb, eds., Passionate City: An International Symposium (Melbourne: RMIT University, School of Applied Communication, 2004)Google Scholar, available at http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/search;rec=0;action=doSearch

25 Said, Edward, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 6Google Scholar.

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27 Farrer, ‘Intermarriage between Chinese Nationals and Western Expatriates’, p. 11.

28 Said, Orientalism, (1995), p. 6.

29 Augé, Marc, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London: Verso, 1995)Google Scholar.

30 Bauman, Liquid Modernity, p. 117.

31 Maglev is fast train technology that uses magnetic levitation. The maglev that runs from Pudong Airport to downtown Shanghai reaches speeds of 431 kilometres per hour and takes seven minutes and twenty seconds to run the thirty kilometres.