Books by Melissa Poll
Robert Lepage's Scenographic Dramaturgy: The Aesthetic Signature at Work, 2018
Part of Palgrave's Approaches to Adaptation in Theatre and Performance series, this book theorize... more Part of Palgrave's Approaches to Adaptation in Theatre and Performance series, this book theorizes auteur Robert Lepage’s scenography-based approach to adapting canonical texts. Lepage’s technique is defined here as ‘scenographic dramaturgy’, a process and product that de-privileges dramatic text and relies instead on evocative, visual performance and intercultural collaboration to re-envision extant plays and operas. Following a detailed analysis of Lepage’s adaptive process and its place in the continuum of scenic writing and auteur theatre, this book features four case studies charting the role of Lepage’s scenographic dramaturgy in re-‘writing’ extant texts, including Shakespeare’s Tempest on Huron-Wendat territory, Stravinsky’s Nightingale in a twenty-seven ton pool, and Wagner’s Ring cycle via the infamous, sixteen-million-dollar Metropolitan Opera production. The final case study offers the first interrogation of Lepage’s twenty-first century ‘auto-adaptations’ of his own seminal texts, The Dragons’ Trilogy and Needles & Opium. Though aimed at academic readers, this book will also appeal to practitioners given its focus on performance-making, adaptation and intercultural collaboration.
Papers by Melissa Poll
Theatre Research in Canada-recherches Theatrales Au Canada, Jul 24, 2019
This article examines how La Tempête, a 2011 collaboration between Robert Lepage's theatre compan... more This article examines how La Tempête, a 2011 collaboration between Robert Lepage's theatre company, Ex Machina, and the Huron-Wendat Nation on the Wendake First Nations reserve, fostered moments of productive interculturalism both on stage and off through what I have termed scenographic dramaturgy. Lepage's process of scenic re-"writing" responds to the evocative potential of individual performer bodies and a production's given physical location to craft a postdramatic adaptation rooted in highly physical and visual performance text. This analysis draws on intercultural theory, scenographic dramaturgy, postcolonial theory, and postdramatic adaptation and includes a brief survey of Quebecois and First Nations Shakespeare productions in Canada, highlighting some of the potential traps of staging postcolonial interpretations, including power imbalances among intercultural collaborators and reductionist portrayals of difference. Ex Machina and the Huron-Wendat Nation's ability to avoid many of these traps will be interrogated through examples illustrating how scenographic dramaturgy's three central components-bodies in motion, architectonic scenography, and historical spatial mappingfunc tion as both a process and product fostering progressive dialogue between cultures. En 2011, la compagnie Ex Machina de Robert Lepage s'associait à la Première Nation huronne-wendat de Wendake pour une production de La Tempête. Cet article examine comment cette collaboration a donné lieu à des moments d'interculturalisme productifs tant sur scène qu'en coulisses grâce à ce que Melissa Poll appelle la « dramaturgie scénographique ». En effet, la ré-« écriture » scénique de Lepage met à profit le potentiel évocateur du corps de chaque interprète et l'emplacement du spectacle, afin de produire une adaptation postdramatique enracinée dans un texte scénique très visuel et physique. Puisant aux études interculturelles, à la dramaturgie scénique, aux études postcoloniales et à l'adaptation postdramatique, cette étude propose un bref survol des productions québécoises et autochtones de pièces shakespeariennes au Canada afin de mettre en évidence quelques pièges que pose la mise en scène d'interprétations postcoloniales, notamment un éventuel déséquilibre dans le rapport de force entre les collaborateurs interculturels et une représentation réductrice de la différence. Dans cet article, l'auteutre tentera de voir si Ex Machina et la Première Nation huronne-wendat ont su éviter ces écueils en examinant divers exemples qui illustrent le fonctionnement des trois composantes centrales à cette dramaturgie scénique-les corps en mouvement, la scénographie architectonique et la cartographie historico-spatiale-qui, en tant que procédés et produits, encouragent le dialogue entre cultures.
Springer eBooks, 2018
The series addresses the various ways in which adaptation boldly takes on the contemporary contex... more The series addresses the various ways in which adaptation boldly takes on the contemporary context, working to rationalise it in dialogue with the past and involving the audience in a shared discourse with narratives that form part of our artistic and literary but also social and historical constitution. We approach this form of representation as a way of responding and adapting to the conditions, challenges, aspirations and points of reference at a particular historical moment, fostering a bond between theatre and society.
Performing (in) Place: Moving on/with the Land, 2022
Should we introduce ourselves and say who we are? Melissa Poll: Yes, you go first, please. Jenn: ... more Should we introduce ourselves and say who we are? Melissa Poll: Yes, you go first, please. Jenn: Okay. Aanii, boozhoo, nice to see you, Melissa. I'm Jenn Cole and I'm mixed ancestry Algonquin from Kiji Sibi territory, which is a big, big territory of the Ottawa River watershed. My grandparents are, well, I'm not sure exactly where they're from, but at least my grandparents and my greatgrandparents settled around Mattawa and Bissetts Creek. Before that, I think we might've been more mobile. And that's something I'm interested in learning more about. .. our migration routes and our camps here. I would imagine that they had sugar camps and fish camps and stuff like that. So yeah. What else to say? I'm in Michi Saagiig territory. You can hear traffic. Some of those folks might be Michi Saagiig. I don't know. Where I'm situated right now actually is like right between the River Otonabee, which is the river that bubbles like a beating heart, and the Canal Otonabee where she's been shunted off for the Trent Severn lift lock system. So, it's like being held between two aspects of her body in a way. And in Michi Saagiig territory, there's lots of cedar, some cedar over there and yeah, and it smells like a death fungus, and I've never met that relative before. I don't know how I feel about them, but I accidentally grew something in one of my child's toys. That's enough about me for now.
Theatre Research in Canada-recherches Theatrales Au Canada, Nov 25, 2014
This article examines how La Tempête, a 2011 collaboration between Robert Lepage's theatre compan... more This article examines how La Tempête, a 2011 collaboration between Robert Lepage's theatre company, Ex Machina, and the Huron-Wendat Nation on the Wendake First Nations reserve, fostered moments of productive interculturalism both on stage and off through what I have termed scenographic dramaturgy. Lepage's process of scenic re-"writing" responds to the evocative potential of individual performer bodies and a production's given physical location to craft a postdramatic adaptation rooted in highly physical and visual performance text. This analysis draws on intercultural theory, scenographic dramaturgy, postcolonial theory, and postdramatic adaptation and includes a brief survey of Quebecois and First Nations Shakespeare productions in Canada, highlighting some of the potential traps of staging postcolonial interpretations, including power imbalances among intercultural collaborators and reductionist portrayals of difference. Ex Machina and the Huron-Wendat Nation's ability to avoid many of these traps will be interrogated through examples illustrating how scenographic dramaturgy's three central components-bodies in motion, architectonic scenography, and historical spatial mappingfunc tion as both a process and product fostering progressive dialogue between cultures. En 2011, la compagnie Ex Machina de Robert Lepage s'associait à la Première Nation huronne-wendat de Wendake pour une production de La Tempête. Cet article examine comment cette collaboration a donné lieu à des moments d'interculturalisme productifs tant sur scène qu'en coulisses grâce à ce que Melissa Poll appelle la « dramaturgie scénographique ». En effet, la ré-« écriture » scénique de Lepage met à profit le potentiel évocateur du corps de chaque interprète et l'emplacement du spectacle, afin de produire une adaptation postdramatique enracinée dans un texte scénique très visuel et physique. Puisant aux études interculturelles, à la dramaturgie scénique, aux études postcoloniales et à l'adaptation postdramatique, cette étude propose un bref survol des productions québécoises et autochtones de pièces shakespeariennes au Canada afin de mettre en évidence quelques pièges que pose la mise en scène d'interprétations postcoloniales, notamment un éventuel déséquilibre dans le rapport de force entre les collaborateurs interculturels et une représentation réductrice de la différence. Dans cet article, l'auteutre tentera de voir si Ex Machina et la Première Nation huronne-wendat ont su éviter ces écueils en examinant divers exemples qui illustrent le fonctionnement des trois composantes centrales à cette dramaturgie scénique-les corps en mouvement, la scénographie architectonique et la cartographie historico-spatiale-qui, en tant que procédés et produits, encouragent le dialogue entre cultures.
Contemporary Theatre Review, 2021
This paper examines Indigenous-settler performance-making processes in Choctaw artist Randy Reinh... more This paper examines Indigenous-settler performance-making processes in Choctaw artist Randy Reinholz’s residential school adaptation of Measure for Measure, Off the Rails, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and City Opera Vancouver’s Missing, a chamber opera dedicated to British Columbia’s missing and murdered Indigenous women with libretto by Métis/Dene playwright Marie Clements. Based on my experience observing rehearsals for both productions and in conversation with the central Indigenous creators, I have analysed the ways in which performance-making processes can foster intercultural relationship-building, recognize and engage with the land upon which they occur, and initiate a company’s long-term commitment to Indigenous artists. This work theorizes how Indigenous resistance can be enacted, either dramaturgically or otherwise, from within Indigenous-settler performance-making processes. It also examines the ways in which privileged settler researchers, like myself, can responsibly engage with Indigenous research paradigms and epistemologies.
Contemporary Theatre Review, Oct 2, 2022
In this interview, Karen Fricker and Melissa Poll speak with Martine Dennewald and Jessie Mill, t... more In this interview, Karen Fricker and Melissa Poll speak with Martine Dennewald and Jessie Mill, the new co-directors of the Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal-based Festival TransAmériques (FTA), North America's largest performing arts festival. Dennewald and Mill discuss how COVID-19 and the global racial reckoning have impacted the FTA, particularly through the festival's approach to artist-producer partnerships and ways of working.
Contemporary Theatre Review
In her interview with Karen Fricker and Melissa Poll, the artistic director of Tkaronto/Toronto's... more In her interview with Karen Fricker and Melissa Poll, the artistic director of Tkaronto/Toronto's SummerWorks Festival, Laura Nanni, discusses how the festival responded to COVID-19 and calls for racial justice in 2020 and beyond.
Interventions/Contemporary Theatre Review, 2022
In the summer of 2017, I travelled to Ashland, Oregon to audit rehearsals for Off the Rails, Choc... more In the summer of 2017, I travelled to Ashland, Oregon to audit rehearsals for Off the Rails, Choctaw artist Randy Reinholz's adaptation of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, set, in part, in an 'Indian' boarding school. My postdoctoral research continued three months later in Vancouver, British Columbia, where I attended rehearsals for Missing, a chamber opera about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls with libretto from Métis/Dene playwright Marie Clements and music by settler composer Brian Current. These two experiences formed the foundation for my Contemporary Theatre Review article, 'Towards an Eighth Fire Approach: Developing Modes of Indigenous-Settler Performance-Making on Turtle Island'. Observing the rehearsal processes for these productions was profoundly generative for me as a dramaturg, prompting questions surrounding the ways in which the principles of equity and inclusion could be incorporated directly into theatre-making processes, instead of tagged on through externally-led initiatives like EDI [Equity, Diversity and Inclusion] employee training from consulting agencies. In the summer of 2018, I began talking with a theatre colleague about the possibility of developing a creative position dedicated to advancing equity and inclusion in artistic praxis and supplanting prevailing Western working norms that marginalise diverse voices. He expressed interest, detailing how Bard on the Beach, the Vancouver-based repertory Shakespeare company where he serves as an artistic associate, had increased BIPOC representation on stage but had strides to take in better supporting artists from equity-seeking groups in the performance-making process and beyond. Below is an articulation of where my work began piloting the role of Equity and Inclusion Dramaturg in 2019, the ways in which it was contextualised by the global racial reckoning, and where, ultimately, it aspires to go.
Performing (in) Place: Moving on/with the Land, 2022
This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproductio... more This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online.
Theatre Research in Canada
This article uses Interventions, Contemporary Theatre Review's online forum, to argue that many c... more This article uses Interventions, Contemporary Theatre Review's online forum, to argue that many criticisms of Stephens’s Three Kingdoms, including the main articles in CTR's current special issue, avoid grappling with the script's ‘modern misogyny’.
An actor, critic, dramaturg, and the recent recipient of a PhD in theatre from the University of ... more An actor, critic, dramaturg, and the recent recipient of a PhD in theatre from the University of London, Royal Holloway, Melissa Poll holds a BFA in acting and an MA in theatre from UBC.
Heir to the écriture scénique introduced by theatre's modern movement, director Robert Lepage's s... more Heir to the écriture scénique introduced by theatre's modern movement, director Robert Lepage's scenography is his entry point when re-envisioning an extant text. Due to widespread interest in the Québécois auteur's devised offerings, however, Lepage's highly visual interpretations of canonical works remain largely neglected in current scholarship. My paper seeks to address this gap, theorizing Lepage's approach as a three-pronged 'scenographic dramaturgy', composed of historical-spatial mapping, metamorphous space and kinetic bodies. By referencing a range of Lepage's extant text productions and aligning elements of his work to historical and contemporary models of scenography-driven performance, this project will detail how the three components of Lepage's scenographic dramaturgy 'write' meaning-making performance texts.
Book Chapters by Melissa Poll
Book Reviews by Melissa Poll
Performance and the Global City, 2013
The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
This review contextualizes the English translation of Ludovic Fouquet's monograph through a surve... more This review contextualizes the English translation of Ludovic Fouquet's monograph through a survey of the Lepage scholarship over the past fifteen years.
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Books by Melissa Poll
Papers by Melissa Poll
Book Chapters by Melissa Poll
Book Reviews by Melissa Poll