ROBERT LEPAGE

Chaos is a good thing.

Why do we remember stuff from when we were 5 years old but not important facts that are more recent?

I'm not good at entertainment. I don't give myself to all the interviews, game shows, or talk shows.

I enjoy juggling four or five different projects in the air and finding connections and disconnections between them.

My taste comes from when I was 12 years old and saw Genesis or Laurie Anderson or some performance artist who had put paint on himself. I've seen a lot of theater, but that's not what woke up my taste to become a director; nontheatrical things were much more theatrical than the theater I was seeing.

Writing is very much perceived as something distinct from performance. I don't see it like that.

With the social media phenomenon, where people's opinions inform so much of what we do with our lives, where the number of 'likes' decides what we should program, I cringe.

Theatre's still expensive compared to downloading on Netflix; that has to be addressed. It doesn't mean it has to be over-subsidised by the state, but it's something we're trying to figure out.

Cirque du Soleil distinguished itself by being a circus with no animals. Before then, circus was partly about showing how man can tame other species.

A lot of people hated every moment of my 'Ring.' And a lot of people who had never been to an opera bought subscriptions to the next season.

Theatre is different. We can spend two weeks around a table talking about subtext. In opera, there is a score, and people already know their parts. And they move differently. I find all this liberating.

If you decide to work with the opera world, chances are there are going to be people who resist that.

I was a privileged observer to be there when Celine Dion opened at Caesars Palace and then the second Gulf War started. It was an odd thing to see the impact both events had on Vegas. The place was riding high after Celine, but overnight, once war was declared, it was deserted.

I admire people who can spend every aspect of their life in one discipline and really go all the way. I feel the only way I could achieve some type of excellence is if I connect to other people, other disciplines.

Sylvie Guillem is the best dancer in the world.

If Darwin's theories are true, then we have within us the physical memory of when we were fish or apes.

Reading fairytales to children expands their imaginations.

My naivety is to assume people will think there's compassion and solidarity in wanting to play someone even though we are not them.

In real life, I am not a lonely person; I have lots of good friends and am active socially. But there are certain aspects of my life when I have felt very alone, utterly alone, and one of them is when I am performing on my own.

Theatre comes alive when someone cross-dresses onstage.

For me, theater will always be very, very much alive, but not necessarily in the theatrical tradition.

During the tour of 'Circulations,' we spent a lot of time in Canadian Chinatowns. I was fascinated by the idea that you can cross the road and enter this dream world, this vision of China.

There's not a system better than another. There are some people better than others. I'm not anti-democracy, but there's no real system yet that has proven itself to be the right one.

The real writing of a piece comes only when you are performing it. It is why I like theatre. In film and TV, the image is locked forever, but in theatre, there is constant change; each performance is part of the writing process.

All of Vegas is false. There's a false Paris, a false Venice, a false Baghdad - in fact, all of the early Vegas aesthetic is Baghdad, which is also the irony. It's 'Aladdin,' the sands, 'One Thousand and One Nights.'