The Lepage Affairs

Representation and presence in the scenario of the SLĀV and Kanata controversy

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4000/mimesis.2661

Keywords:

Cultural appropriation, Robert Lepage, Kanata, Representation, Presence

Abstract

The controversy that erupted following the accusation of cultural appropriation triggered between 2018 and 2019 by Robert Lepage’s plays SLĀV and Kanata is analysed in the Canadian context and in the political and cultural specificity of Quebec. Favouring the lens of Performances Studies, the polemic, as a symptom of a social malaise, is studied as a performance and reveals a scenario of embodied imaginaries within which to observe a crisis of the worldview built on the power relationship between a majority identity and minority otherness. The conflict between representation and presence within the living arts reveals the erosion of the mimetic paradigm of representation: it is the immanent body on the stage of the actor belonging to a historically oppressed minority that demands an ethics of representation

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Author Biography

Daniela Sacco, Iuav of Venice

Daniela Sacco is a researcher in Performing Arts at IUAV, University of Venice. She was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow, within the framework of the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, at the University of Milan and UQAM, Université du Québec à Montréal, where she taught at the École supérieure de théâtre in 2019 and 2022. Among his publications: Tragico contemporaneo: forme della tragedia e del mito nel teatro italiano [1995-2015] (2018); Mito e teatro. Il principio drammaturgico del montaggio (2013).

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Published

2023-06-10

How to Cite

Sacco, D. (2023). The Lepage Affairs: Representation and presence in the scenario of the SLĀV and Kanata controversy. Mimesis Journal, 12(1), 73–90. https://doi.org/10.4000/mimesis.2661

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 1 (2023)

Section

Essays