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Theatrical premonitions >> Robert Lepage’s eerily prophetic 9/11 parable Zulu Time arrives in Montreal
But in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, even Lepage himself seemed taken aback by the prescience of his electro-cabaret, Zulu Time, a show that had played in Zurich but was to have its Manhattan premiere a mere 10 days after the attacks. The show, which was to be part of the Quebec-New York cultural and economic exchange, was promptly yanked after the attacks. But unlike most of Q-NY-most of which was to have taken place in and around the World Trade Center-this cancellation had nothing to do with damaged venues. Zulu Time was cancelled because of its freakish prescience. The show, which was rooted in Lepage’s own dislike of flying, was set in airports, and featured Muslim extremist terrorists (trained in Kashmir) and plane crashes (the show featured footage of actual plane crashes, shown in rear projection). Rightly fearing the show’s content would be too much to take, Zulu Time’s New York debut was iced. “I don’t want to sound pretentious or anything,” Lepage says, “but you know, our company [Lepage’s theatre troupe, Ex Machina], when we immerse ourselves in new work, sometimes things like this happen. I’m not saying we have psychic powers, but there are moments where we’re obsessed with things that are going on. Any subject matter we treat, we find a reflection of.” Lepage insists that, in the endeavour of artist creation, some art-and-life overlap is inevitable. “If you spend three years devising a piece, chances are, some of the discussions you’ve had, the ideas you’ve come up with, will actually happen.” Zulu Time meant Lepage did exhaustive research into terrorist activity. “The thing that was really strange was that we had an element where there was a bomb on the plane. I was working on getting information on terrorism, and I spoke with political science professors to ask, ‘If a flight were to blow up today, who would be responsible for that?’ So we spent a week researching terrorist training camps in Kashmir, looking into suicide commandos, totally immersed in this subject matter. We kept wondering if we had the right turban, if the guy would wear a beard. Then we sent all this stuff off to New York just five days before the attacks.” An unbelievably
bizarre bit of prophecy, undoubtedly-which begs the question: what’s
Lepage’s next gig? He’s working on a film titled simply
Tourism. But it’s not about the industry 9/11 threw into jeopardy.
“It’s about vampires and cannibalism. Not in the Dracula
sense, but in the way in which we suck each other’s blood and
feed off of each other.” : Zulu Time,
presented by the Jazz Festival, runs from Friday, June 21 until July
7 at 9pm nightly (except Mondays). Info: 521-4493 or 790-1425
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With
some of the shows that have emerged from the imagination of Quebec City
theatre guru Robert Lepage, it would seem nothing could really surprise
his legion of fans. This is the man who conducted the seven-hour epic
Seven Streams of the River Ota, which riffed on themes of Hiroshima,
the Holocaust and AIDS, and Needles and Opium, his one-man show about
Miles Davis and addiction, among others.