Performed by Yves Jacques
"The use of modern technology to flip from time to place and place to then and now ˇK is always pleasing to the eye and ear. The visual and sound technique here is used to great effect."
"The play is utterly beguiling, funny and moving. Its elegiac, mesmerizing beauty is breath-taking."
"an absorbing, brilliantly scored quest for fulfillment. It stirs the imagination."
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The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia |
The Andersen Project - A Fairy-tale for Adults
The playwright appears on stage and announces to the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, the show tonight is cancelled!" But that's only the beginning of the storyˇK
Having come to Paris at the behest of L'Opera de Paris, which has commissioned him to write the libretto for a children's opera based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, a Quebecois songwriter settles down in a friend's apartment. During his stay, he meets the Opera's manager, a man with some odd and unusual likings, a graffiti artist of North African descent, as well as a dog who could be guiding the tale along its way.
And even Hans Christian Andersen comes out from the dream.
Freely inspired by two stories by Andersen, The Dryad and The Shadow and from anecdotes drawn from the famed Danish author's Parisian travels, The Andersen Project calls on some of Lepage's recurring themes: the confrontation of romanticism and modernism, of recognized and underground art forms, between past and present. However, in this solo work, he also explores more troubling territories: questions about sexual identity, unfulfilled fantasies and a thirst for recognition and fame that are drawn from Andersen's life and writings, only to serve as a filigree to the modern tale.
The production toured extensively in Canada, Denmark, France, Australia, U.K., Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, Korea and Taiwan and received critical acclaims since its premiere in 2005.
Robert Lepage was born in Quebec, Canada, in 1957. He was the Artistic Director of the Theatre Francais at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa before founding his own company, Ex Machina, in 1994. Lepage is known for creating multidisciplinary productions multi-media visual effects. Some of the best known productions include The Seven Streams of the River Ota and The Dragon's Trilogy. He is also known for staging solo works that he writes and directs, such as Elisinore, Needles and Opium, The Far Side of the Moon and The Andersen Project and has won many international awards.
Long known for his adapt use of stage technologies and multi-media, Lepage has conjured up a visual marvel of the virtual and the real on stage, with seamless change of scenes, unimaginable use of props and a highly innovative, modernistic stage design that take the audience's breath away.
Yves Jacques was born in Quebec, Canada, in 1956. He is an actor well-known in the fields of films and theatre productions. He was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2001. He has participated in films include Jesus of Montreal, La Petite Lilly, La Veuve de Saint-Pierre and The Barbarian Invasions. He took part in Lepage's solo works since 2001 and was awarded Montreal's Theatre du Nouveau Monde's Best Actor with his performance in The Far Side of the Moon. In The Andersen Project, Yves Jacques is the virtuoso actor who plays the songwriter from Quebec, the manager of L'Opera de Paris and the Moroccan immigrant to Paris all in one, metamorphosing easily and convincingly from one character to another as he takes on different looks, accents and a different age. He has made this one man show a triumph that easily captures every heart in the audience.
Ex Machina (Canada) is a multidisciplinary company believes that the performing arts ˇV dance, opera, music ˇV should be mixed with recorded arts ˇV filmmaking, video art and multi-media. That there must be meetings between scientists and playwrights, between set painters and architects, and between artists from Quebec and the rest of the world.
