I never questioned if I was effeminate or not. That didn't matter in the theatre.
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.
Opera should be a place for art forms to meet. I've worked a lot with Peter Gabriel; his music isn't operatic, but he creates big, popular gatherings to which architecture, dance, and music are all invited.
I'm not good at entertainment. I don't give myself to all the interviews, game shows, or talk shows.
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.
The first time someone stood up in front of the fire and told the story while illustrating it with shadows on the walls of the quarry, that was the birth of theater.
In everything I've done, I've always tried to make room for indigenous people, to include them.
Opera needs a major makeover; the large opera houses are too in thrall to their conservative patrons.
When I directed the 'Ring' cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York recently, there were people texting all through the show. But theatre isn't a communication device: it's a communion.
The first 'Ring' in Bayreuth was about the poetical world, the mythological world.
I wouldn't be happy to be a specialist. There are some very interesting artists in history who refused to be nailed down into a category, like Da Vinci or Jean Cocteau. You could say Cocteau was a great poet but also a film-maker, interested in theatre, sculpture, and could never identify with any of these forms exclusively.
We should never overestimate an audience's culture, but we should never underestimate their intelligence.
The thing that's interesting about Trump is that when you read 'Coriolanus,' you'd be tempted to draw parallels. But I don't do that.
Of course theater will always be associated intimately to literature, but the themes or whatever have to penetrate you by the senses. Theater is a sensuous experience, and that's its main difference from film or any other dramatic art.
I'm trying to tell history with a capital H through histories with a small h. It moves people, because you know in your own personal relationships, your own story, there's an echo to a much larger reality.
I studied as an actor at the theatre conservatoire in Quebec, but by the time I got to my third year, I was more interested in directing. There's more to it than helping actors get round a stage: it's a wonderful way of telling stories.
We have a tendency in Quebec - and I include myself in this - to describe ourselves using the past. We're always nostalgic.
I was interested in theatre, and the only experience that I had in high school was as an actor. But when I got in Conservatoire, my teachers would give me a lot of flack because I wasn't rehearsing my lines; I'd be doing stage management. I was interested in sound. I was interested in architecture. I was interested in every aspect of theatre.
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.
There's nothing sadder than when things happen the way you've planned them, because we don't have a lot of imagination, you know.
