Welcome to '887,' where memory and the script are fluid

A few years back, the French-Canadian actor-director Robert Lepage began wondering about memory. He was in his late 50s, and learning his lines took more effort. As happens with many of us, things that happened days or even moments ago could just slip away.

"But why is it I remember the opening song from 'Gilligan's Island,' which is something from the '60s?" he asked with a laugh.

With his company Ex Machina he began exploring memory, or what he calls sensitive memory. The company develops shows through improvisation. The process can take months and lead in unexpected directions. However, even Lepage seems a little surprised at what happened this time.

"I was more interested in the phenomenon of how the brain works, and how an actor's memory works," he said. "Of course, that necessarily sucks you back into your first memory, childhood memory. So I kind of got swallowed into this process, into talking about my early years."

The title of the play refers to 887 Murray Ave., the address in Quebec City where Lepage lived as a boy in the 1960s. The building appears on stage, both full size and in miniature, as Lepage tells the story.

It's a breathtaking show. At one moment, Lepage is peering through the windows like a giant seeking his own past; seconds later, he's sitting down at the full-sized kitchen table.

During the improvisation stage of the production, he said, the actors work hand-in-hand with a highly skilled stage crew to push the limits of theatrical possibility.

"It seems like a very simple poetic story," he said. "But it's told in a very contemporary manner, using iPhones and video projection and interactive projection, but always in a very integrated manner."

Lepage uses his phone to project tiny details from the set to the audience. He talks with people from his past, who materialize before him. He says it's important to acknowledge that audiences today are used to visually sophisticated stories unfolding on TV or in movie theaters.

"Theater survives if it becomes an event," he said. "It really has to be eventful if you want to drag people back into the rooms. And what they need to see is something that is told in their vocabulary."

And in this case it's a story of a particular time in Canadian history, when militant Francophones, the French-speaking community, campaigned to secede. Lepage has performed "887" in countries around the world, and he says that story of social division resonates today.

"Everybody has a life story where they have been confronted, at one point or another, by a big divide," he said. "And I think it's the case right now in the U.S. I think Americans are so divided now. Not to the point of separatism, but who knows?"

Even though Lepage and his company have toured with "887" for a number of years, he stresses that the show is still in development. He suggested that a show's real writing process begins on opening night.

"That's when the audience is there for the first time," he said. "That is where the dialogue starts, and you are so much more informed about what you are trying to say."

The show he'll perform at the Walker Art Center is changing even now, he said. He'll do it in English this week, but he also does it in French and in Spanish. Modifications in one language can lead to changes in another, and then to further refinement when those changes are translated back.

Which, in a way, leads us back to the idea of this being a play about memory. Working on "887," Lepage has acquired a new understanding about his life as a child and, as a result, about what he really remembers.

"You know, there's so many things we think that we remember well, and we actually don't really remember anything," he said.

Which may or may not be of comfort, even if you are just trying to remember your lines.