On the staging of Ludwig & Mae
by Louis Patrick Leroux
[Louis Patrick Leroux is a playwright, director, and professor who holds a joint appointment in the departments of English and French Studies at Concordia University where he teaches playwriting and Québec drama and literature. He is a member of the Hexagram Institute for research/creation in media arts and technology, where he runs Resonance Lab. Recent projects include a video installation, Milford Haven, at matralab, a theatrical production of Witchcraft at Concordia (codirected), and Hypertext and Performance: A Resonant Response to Baillie’s Witchcraft (theatre, dance, website). Recent publications include Dialogues fantasques pour causeurs éperdus (2012), Se taire (2010), Ludwig & Mae (2009). Originally from Eastern Ontario, he founded Ottawa’s Théâtre la Catapulte, which he ran from 1992 to 1998. He was also a cofounder of la Nouvelle scène theatre space in Ottawa. The original French productions of Ludwig & Mae and other plays such as Le rêve totalitaire de dieu l’amibe (a cybernetic anti-opera) established Louis Patrick Leroux as a leading figure of the Franco-Ontarian renewal of the 1990s. Embedded has been translated into English, German, and Spanish. This will be the Montreal premiere of the three plays and the world premiere of the English translations of Apocalypse and Resurrection.]
I wrote these plays in my early 20s. They were staged respectively in 1994 (La litière/Embedded), 1995 (Rappel/Apocalypse), and 1996 (Ressusciter/Resurrection). One was an entreaty to a dialogue between sexes and generations, a dialogue of infinite possibilities and readings but a dialogue unable to detract from the inevitable outcome; the second was a provocation through the cathartic staging of desperation; the third, a reconciliation with the other, but especially with oneself.
