Christian Lapointe

Christian Lapointe
Born
Quebec City region, Quebec, Canada
EducationConservatoire d'art dramatique de Québec; National Theatre School of Canada
OccupationsTheatre director, playwright, artistic director, actor, teacher
AwardsJohn Hirsch Prize (2010)

Christian Lapointe is a Canadian theatre director, playwright, artistic director, actor and teacher from Quebec. He first became known for staging several plays by the Irish writer W. B. Yeats, and is the author of a group of his own plays gathered under the title Cycle de la Disparition (Cycle of Disappearance). He is the founder of Théâtre Péril and the artistic director of Théâtre Carte Blanche.

Early life and training

Born in the Quebec City region, Lapointe was admitted as an acting student at the Conservatoire d'art dramatique de Québec before training in stage direction at the National Theatre School of Canada, from which he graduated in 2005. In the autumn of 2001 he directed a first triptych of short plays by W. B. Yeats. Following a co-production with a theatre institution in Hanoi and the staging of a second Yeats play, he entered the National Theatre School's advanced directing programme in 2003.

At the age of 19, while working as a fire-breather, Lapointe was injured during a live television broadcast marking the first anniversary of Julie Snyder's programme Le Point J. The accident required skin grafts to his neck and torso and, by his own account, reshaped his relationship to mortality.

Career

Approach

An heir to the symbolist tradition, Lapointe's writing for the stage borrows from performance art, is conceived from and around scenic devices, and verges on video installation. As a teacher he has developed a method centred on observable aspects of stage acting, aimed at thickening the performer's presence through the modulation of scenic positioning. Text and gesture are closely bound in his productions and may shift with the energy and attention of the audience, with particular attention paid to the relationship between stage and house, and between reality and fiction. His Petit guide de l'apparition à l'usage de ceux qu'on ne voit pas and Les Jours gris set out this approach.

Death is a recurring theme in his work, rooted in a preoccupation with inhabiting a body of finite duration. In Sepsis, the final instalment of the Cycle de la Disparition, six actors reflect philosophically on their existence from within a morgue.

Productions

Lapointe appeared as a performer in Le 20 novembre, directed by Brigitte Haentjens, a performance that earned him a nomination from the Association québécoise des critiques de théâtre; he also worked with Larry Tremblay on the staging of L'Enfant matière.

In 2013 he staged Peter Handke's Offending the Audience (Publikumsbeschimpfung). He removed the performers entirely, leaving synthetic voices to speak the text within a direct-cinema installation that showed the audience to itself and, midway through, replayed its own presence in reverse.

At the 2015 Festival TransAmériques he presented — and himself performed in — a piece drawn from the work of Antonin Artaud lasting close to three days and two nights.

His 2016 production of Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde recast the symbolist allegory through an audio-visual staging.

In October 2023 he staged Parents et amis sont invités à y assister, a drama in four scenes built around six stories, adapted from the book by the Saguenay author Hervé Bouchard, winner of the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal.

His work has been presented in numerous Quebec institutions as well as at the Festival d'Avignon, the Royal Court Theatre in London, the Schaubühne in Berlin, and on several occasions at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, the Carrefour international de théâtre de Québec and the Festival TransAmériques in Montreal, in addition to presentations elsewhere in Europe, Asia and Australia.

Teaching

After teaching at the National Theatre School of Canada for close to eight years, Lapointe began a residency there as artist and teacher. He subsequently taught acting at the École supérieure de théâtre of the Université du Québec à Montréal until 2021.

Constituons!

In 2019, in partnership with the Institut du Nouveau Monde, Lapointe launched Constituons!, a project proposing that Quebec be given a constitution written entirely by citizens selected by lot and representative of the demographics of Quebec society — conceived as a test of theatre as a popular agora. It drew support from more than a dozen theatre institutions across Quebec as well as from Quebec academics. The resulting citizens' constitution was formally tabled in the National Assembly of Quebec on 29 May 2019 by the independent member Catherine Fournier. A documentary play of the same name was subsequently toured through many regions of Quebec.

Deepfake and moving-image work

In June 2022 Lapointe directed the British playwright Martin Crimp as the performer of his own play Not One of These People, Crimp's first stage appearance. For the production, Lapointe devised a live deepfake system animating GAN-generated avatars through facial recognition.

In 2024 he extended this interest with an experimental film made entirely by the same process, adapted from Head in Flames by the American author Lance Olsen. The film brings back the filmmaker Theo van Gogh and the painter Vincent van Gogh, adding the figure of van Gogh's killer to form a cinematic "oratorio" for three voices, following the structure of Olsen's book. Lapointe has described the work as an act of commemoration of the murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam on 2 November 2004.

Music

Lapointe is the composer for the group LiY, alongside the Montreal creator Laurence Dauphinais (voice and melodic line) and the British playwright Simon Stephens (lyrics).

Published works

Selected stage productions

Awards and nominations

References

  1. 1 2 3 Burke, Jim (22 January 2016). "Christian Lapointe's audio-visual extravaganza breathes new life into Maeterlinck's vintage symbolist allegory". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 "Christian Lapointe". Agence RBL (in French).
  3. 1 2 Tremblay, Larry (2018). "10 fragments d'un Christian Lapointe explosé". Jeu: revue de théâtre (in French) (167): 26–30. ISSN 0382-0335.
  4. 1 2 Bouchard, Jacqueline (2010). "Le prophète virulent et la spirale". Spirale (in French) (231): 57–60. ISSN 0225-9044.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Christian Lapointe". Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui (in French).
  6. 1 2 3 "Biographie de Christian Lapointe". Théâtre Carte Blanche (in French).
  7. 1 2 Chanonat, Michelle (2018). "Une folie dans les yeux". Jeu: revue de théâtre (in French) (167): 50–54. ISSN 0382-0335.
  8. ↑ Kettani, Assïa. ""J'avais le sentiment de ne pas être un étudiant" – Christian Lapointe". Le Devoir (in French).
  9. ↑ Doyon, Yves (2010). "Des extrémismes et de la cruauté". Jeu: revue de théâtre (in French) (135): 16–20. ISSN 0382-0335.
  10. 1 2 "Christian Lapointe: un homme de feu". La Presse (in French). 12 January 2016.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Pelletier, Jocelyn (2018). "Highjacker le réel". Jeu: revue de théâtre (in French) (167). ISSN 0382-0335.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Arriola, Sylvio (2018). "Les rapports d'immédiateté dans le théâtre de Christian Lapointe". Jeu: revue de théâtre (in French) (167): 36–40. ISSN 0382-0335.
  13. ↑ Labrecque, Marie. "Le spectateur comme sujet". Le Devoir (in French).
  14. 1 2 Guay, Hervé (2012). "De souvenir et d'oubli". Spirale (in French) (240): 86–88. ISSN 0225-9044.
  15. 1 2 Cadieux, Alexandre. "Théâtre – Les outragés du dimanche". Le Devoir (in French).
  16. ↑ "Christian Lapointe: d'outrage à hommage au public". Le Soleil (in French).
  17. 1 2 Chanonat, Michelle (2015). "Ce fou d'Artaud". Jeu: revue de théâtre (in French) (156): 7–9. ISSN 0382-0335.
  18. 1 2 Saint-Pierre, Christian (24 October 2023). ""Parents et amis sont invités à y assister": libérer la parole". Le Devoir (in French). Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  19. 1 2 Boulanger, Luc (26 September 2023). "Le double d'automne de Christian Lapointe". La Presse (in French). Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  20. 1 2 3 4 Chanonat, Michelle (2018). "Dans la tête de Christian Lapointe: présentation". Jeu: revue de théâtre (in French) (167): 12–13. ISSN 0382-0335.
  21. ↑ Bourgault-Côté, Guillaume. "Le théâtre pour secouer la peur des élus". Le Devoir (in French).
  22. 1 2 "Les 299 voix de Martin Crimp". Le Soleil (in French). 30 May 2022.
  23. 1 2 "Christian Lapointe – Head in Flames". Sporobole (in French).
  24. ↑ "LiY sortira un premier album le 15 mars prochain". Le Lien Multimédia (in French).
  25. 1 2 Morin, Julie-Michèle (2018). "L'image comme terrain de jeu". Jeu: revue de théâtre (in French) (167): 31–35. ISSN 0382-0335.
  26. ↑ Constant, Marie-Hélène (2015). "Dans l'espace, you're a firework". Liberté (in French) (308): 62–63. ISSN 0024-2020.
  27. 1 2 Roy, Andréane (2018). "La fiction et son double". Jeu: revue de théâtre (in French) (167): 14–19. ISSN 0382-0335.
  28. 1 2 "Finalistes des Prix de la critique" (PDF). Revue Jeu (in French).
  29. ↑ Elawani, Ralph (2018). "La grâce du foreman de maisons de couvertes". Jeu: revue de théâtre (in French) (167): 46–49. ISSN 0382-0335.
  30. ↑ "John Hirsch Prize". Canada Council for the Arts.

Biography

In October 2023 Christian Lapointe staged Parents et amis sont invités à y assister, a drama in four scenes with six stories at the center, which earned its author, the Saguenéen Hervé Bouchard, the Grand Prix du livre de Montreal.

References

  1. ↑ Saint-Pierre, Christian (24 October 2023). ""Parents et amis sont invités à y assister": libérer la parole". Le Devoir. Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  2. ↑ Boulanger, Luc (26 September 2023). "Twice a month, La Presse presents news from the world of theater, circus and dance, in Montreal and Quebec". The Press. Retrieved 14 February 2024.