A puppet, for example, is just a piece of wood, a couple of rivets, but put them together, and if you know how to do it, and the audience's imagination joins in with this, then a miracle will come out of that machine. That is what we and the audience do in the theatre - we create miracles in that space.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the collaborative power of imagination in creating art and experiences.
Robert Lepage highlights how raw materials alone are insufficient to create magic; it is the combination of skillful craftsmanship and the audience's imagination that brings art to life. In theatre, this collaboration transforms simple elements into extraordinary experiences, illustrating the profound impact of creativity and shared imagination.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech at a theatre opening to emphasize the power of collaboration in art.
Often, particularly towards the end of the process, I think of myself less as a theatre director and more as someone who just directs the traffic. My job is to move the ideas and bits of the show into the places where they work best. Sometimes my job is also to say, 'No.'
I will always demand the right for theatre to talk about anything and anyone. Without exception. None.
I think all the great studio filmmakers are dead or no longer working. I don't put myself, my friends, and other contemporary filmmakers in their category. I just see us doing some work.
I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
I just want different narratives for people of color, especially women of color. I just want something that's different. I don't want us to be put in a box. I want it to be kind of a redefinition of who were are. If I can even achieve that in a tiny way, I'll be good. I'll be good.
Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us.
Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.
Photographers usually want to photograph facts and things. But I'm interested in the nature of the thing itself. A photograph of someone sleeping tells me nothing about their dream state; a photograph of a corpse tells me nothing about the nature of death. My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.
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