Gascon-Thomas Award 2003

Robert Lepage and Thomson Highway:
Recipients of the 2003 Gascon-Thomas Award

Montreal, October 21, 2003 – The National Theatre School of Canada (NTS) is proud to announce that this year’s Gascon-Thomas Award is distinguished upon two multidisciplinary artists and remarkable pillars of Canadian theatre: Tomson Highway and Robert Lepage. They will be addressing the student body of the NTS on Friday, October 31, at noon at the Salle Ludger-Duvernay of the Monument-National.

The Gascon-Thomas Award recognizes exceptional achievement in theatre. Each year, two artists (one Anglophone and one Francophone) are singled out and honoured for their efforts to shape the world of theatre, and for their status as role models to NTS students. The NTS’s Board of Governors created the award in 1990 in memory of two of the School’s founders, Jean Gascon and Powys Thomas.

Robert Lepage

Internationally-renowned artist Robert Lepage has made a lasting impact on Quebec’s stages. He studied at the Conservatoire d'art dramatique de Québec and went on to create a number of very important works, including his epic play, La Trilogie des Dragons, which has toured Canada and Europe in English, French and Chinese and won a Dora Mavor Moore Award. He served as director of the National Arts Centre French-language Theatre from 1989 to 1993, and in 1992 he became the first North American director to direct a Shakespeare play at London’s Royal National Theatre. In 1994 he formed Ex Machina, a multidisciplinary company where he serves as Artistic Director. Lepage has received a number of awards for his work, including the Governor General's Award. He has also directed a number of films, including Le Confessionnal, Nô and the recently released La Face cachée de la lune. Currently, he is collaborating with Cirque du Soleil on their next permanent Las Vegas show, which should open in June 2004, and with Maestro Lorin Mazel, on an opera based on George Orwell’s 1984.

Thomson Highway

A multi-talented artist who began his performance career as a classically trained musician, Tomson Highway was born to a Cree family in Northern Manitoba. He went on to excel in piano and studied briefly in England before coming back to Canada to work with native political and cultural organizations from across the country. At age 30, he decided to describe what it was he saw; his first work, The Rez Sisters, catapulted him into renown. It was performed across the country and won him a Dora Mavor Moore Award as did his next play, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, which also won the Chalmers Award. He was the Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts (NEPA) from 1986 to 1992, and in 1994 he became the first aboriginal writer to be inducted into the Order of Canada. In 1998 he published his first novel, Kiss of the Fur Queen, that became a Canadian bestseller and was subsequently nominated for several prestigous literary awards. His latest book, Fox on the Ice, is the third of a bilingual trilogy of children’s books in Cree and English.