The Seven Streams of the River Ōta

In 1994, Robert Lepage created the cornerstone of his Canadian company Ex Machina, The Seven Streams of the River Ōta, illustrating three plagues of the 20th century, an unforgettable experience that established him as one of the most important contemporary directors. The seven-hour film presents a comprehensive historical account of the past century: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the existence of concentration camps, and AIDS. It does so by weaving together the intimate experiences of unknown people. Lepage has recently revived this dramatic piece, which features characters who challenge traditional notions of adversity. These characters include an irradiated hibakusha who overcomes her wounds, an artist who discovers the path of the Middle in unexpected ways, and a young dancer who travels to be initiated into Butoh.

"It is something I have made my own. My objective is to make people remember, to implant something in their memory so that they can experience something through their senses that they would not do through books," Lepage stated regarding the condition of memory that his theatre has for him. The memory of the world, as he left it in 2012 at the Festival de Otoño (in reference to the US invasion of Iraq), is characterised by the presence of Playing Cards 1: Spades. Additionally, his own memory, as evidenced by 887, the staging that in 2022 transported the spectator at the Festival de Otoño back to Lepage's childhood and his family relationships.

This revised version of The Seven Streams of the River Ōta has not involved a complete rewrite of the original staging. Instead, it has been refined to a certain extent, with minor adjustments made to enhance clarity and visual impact. The narratives, which are arranged in seven sequences, remain consistent throughout, encompassing 50 years of world history. They include a soldier photographer's visit to Hiroshima to document the devastation caused by the atomic blast and his encounter with a blind girl and her disfigured mother; the experiences of an 11-year-old girl in the Theresienstadt concentration camp; and the friendship between two male inhabitants of a 1950s New York boarding house; the AIDS infection of one of them sometime later in Amsterdam, where he has summoned family and friends; the theatrical performance of a Quebec group in Osaka in 1970; and the visit of a journalist to Hiroshima to conduct interviews on the 25th anniversary of the bombing.

The intimate narratives are set within a scenographic framework of boxes, which are open at the front and transformed into a variety of settings evoking Japanese architectural styles. These settings feature sliding doors, partitions and frames. The succession of stories subtly delineates Lepage's conceptual landscape, which is defined by an existential quest for meaning and serenity amidst a world characterised by death and horror.