Review | Japanese puppetry helps tell the story of a gay teenager’s trauma in 1970s Quebec in dazzling Robert Lepage production at Hong Kong Arts Festival

Courville, Canadian Robert Lepage’s play performed at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, used Japanese bunraku puppetry to create intimacy and amazing special effects

This wasn’t your typical puppet show – the story, about trauma and sexual awakening during Quebec’s 1970s independence movement, is intense

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Olivier Normand, the only actor in Robert Lepage’s Courville, with the puppet of protagonist Simon’s alcoholic uncle. The play made deft use ofJapanese-style bunraku puppetry to tell an intense story of teenage trauma in 1970s Quebec. Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival

Published: 5:15pm, 22 Mar 2024

Canadian director Robert Lepage entranced audiences in Hong Kong with his autobiographical 887 five years ago, a solo performance aided by his masterful use of toy-size props.

For this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival, he and his group, Ex Machina, brought something a bit different. Courville is loosely based on memories of his youth and told with life-size puppets inspired by the Japanese bunraku tradition.

Set in 1975, it centres on 17-year-old Simon and his small world in Courville, a town about to be absorbed into Quebec City and which, after 1976, would no longer exist.

Like Lepage, who grew up in Quebec, Simon is gay. And echoing Lepage’s childhood alopecia, Simon has a physical condition that he is deeply self-conscious of: a scar on his chest that resembles Batman’s symbol, a result of a domestic accident.

A scene from Courville. Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival

But Simon is not Lepage; he is one of about 10 different characters that the only actor on stage, Olivier Normand, brings to life mainly just with his voice, and by working seamlessly with three puppeteers unobtrusively covered in black.