Theater Icon Robert Lepage to Return to BAM with One-Man Show '887'

Theater icon Robert Lepage returns to BAM with the US premiere of 887, his deeply personal one-man show, running March 16-26, 2017.

In this one-man show, the apartment complex where Robert Lepage spent his youth-887 Murray Ave, Quebec City, Canada-comes to extraordinary life via the renowned director's signature use of cutting-edge technology. Inspired by Lepage's inability to memorize a poem for a special event, 887 soon opens out into a wide-ranging journey into the realm of memory. As Lepage revisits his childhood home and other brilliantly reconstructed spaces-from the front seat of his cabdriver father's taxi to his own ultramodern present-day flat-the questions multiply: Why do we remember the phone number from our youth yet forget our current one? How does a childhood song withstand the test of time while the name of a loved one escapes us? And how is theater-an art based in part on the act of recollection-still relevant in a digital age where megabytes take the place of memory?

IF YOU GO:

887
Ex Machina
Created and performed by Robert Lepage
English translation by Louisa Blair

Creative direction and design by Steve Blanchet
Dramaturgy by Peder Bjurman
Music and sound design by Jean-Sébastien Côté
Lighting design by Laurent Routhier
Image design by Félix Fradet-Faguy

BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St)
Mar 16-18, 21-25 at 7:30pm; Mar 18 & 25 at 2pm; Mar 19 & 26 at 3pm
Tickets start at $35
For ticket information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit BAM.org.

Talk: Robert Lepage with Paul Holdengräber
Co-presented by BAM and LIVE from the NYPL
Mar 14 at 7pm
The New York Public Library
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street)
Tickets: $25 ($20 for Friends of the NYPL and BAM Members)

Versatile in every form of theater craft, Robert Lepage is a director, scenic artist, playwright, actor, and film director. His creative and original approach has won him international acclaim, numerous awards, and has shaken the dogma of classical stage direction to its foundations, especially through his use of new technologies. Born in Quebec, he entered the Conservatoire d'art dramatique de Québec at the age of 17. Before founding his own company, Ex Machina, in 1994, he had already built an international reputation with productions such as The Dragons' Trilogy (1985), Polygraph (1990 Next Wave), and Needles and Opium (1992 Next Wave). With Ex Machina, his productions included The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1996 Next Wave), Elsinore (1997 Next Wave), Geometry of Miracles (1999 Next Wave), Zulu Time (1999), The Andersen Project (2005), and Lipsynch (2009 Next Wave), among others. His opera productions at Canadian Opera Company included Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung as a double-bill (1993 Spring Season), and The Nightingale and Other Short Fables (2011 Spring Season). He was most recently at BAM with The Blue Dragon (2013 Next Wave). In December of this year he and Michael Curry premiered a new production of composer

Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin at the Metropolitan Opera to critical acclaim; in December 2017 Lepage will be the first outside director to work with Ariane Mnouchkine's Le Théâtre du Soleil directing Kanata, an epic work commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory that explores the treatment of the indigenous people of Canada.

Photo Credit: Erick Labbé