We should never overestimate an audience's culture, but we should never underestimate their intelligence.
In everything I've done, I've always tried to make room for indigenous people, to include them.
'The Blue Dragon' uses very filmic language and involves a lot of technology. It is more cinematic than theatrical and was inspired by comic strips and graphic novels.
A puppet, for example, is just a piece of wood, a couple of rivets, but put them together, and if you know how to do it, and the audience's imagination joins in with this, then a miracle will come out of that machine. That is what we and the audience do in the theatre - we create miracles in that space.
When we work on a new theatre piece, we improvise a lot. But it's the opposite in opera, where everything is fixed.
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.'
I can't really define myself as a dramatist or as an actor or as someone who is interested in music.
Technology can become a crutch. Sometimes it's there just to hide behind when you're shy of what you're trying to say.
Theatre comes alive when someone cross-dresses onstage.
I've always been a little scared of technology, which is why I explore it.
I like doing very small, intimate things in the morning and then, in the afternoon, to be working on something in a big stadium.
Nothing is worse than having your dreams come true.
Everybody loves Vegas, and everybody puts it down, especially intellectuals and artists. We have to rub our feet on it, but we're all secretly thrilled to be there.
I haven't become a satanist, but I am fascinated by the character of the devil.
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.
Making art in big cities is often frustrating and difficult. It's why artists are drawn to smaller places.
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.
There is a way to grow old and still have dignity.
We have a tendency in Quebec - and I include myself in this - to describe ourselves using the past. We're always nostalgic.
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.
