Giving Shape to Imagination: A Portrait of Danièle Lévesque

by André Lavoie and Valérie Rhême
translated by Andrée Tait

"When she speaks with admiration of film-makers Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma, or expounds on the difficulty of creating suspense or juggling strong images, one wonders if it’s a case of mistaken identity. Are we really talking to set designer Danièle Lévesque? The same person who was appointed Director of the Scenography Program last August?

In a word, yes! Danièle Lévesque, whose approach to theatre is very “cinematographic,” answers enthusiastically when asked about her art. Her hands dance through the air and the words light, movement, space, matter, and volume colour her speech. She emphasizes the importance of the designer’s point of view of things, of his or her ability to decode what surrounds them, and to perceive the detail which will give meaning to the whole. “She has eyes that see” — this is what painter Pierre Gauvreau said about her when she worked on the set design of the play Les Oranges sont vertes. This quality is probably the most important one that the students in her program must strive to develop.

She embellishes her explanations by recalling the scene from the film The Silence of the Lambs in which a character dons special glasses allowing him to see things undetected by the naked eye. “When you approach a piece, you have to immerse yourself totally in its universe in order to question, dissect, and extract matter for imagination. You have to be able to zero in on the incisive detail and magnify it to better confront it to reality.” Danièle Lévesque also stresses that you must keep the technical constraints in mind as well as the fact that the set is part of a larger whole, which is first and foremost a dramatic space inhabited by bodies and light. Because, as Greek set designer Yannis Kokkos — to whom she often refers — also puts it, the actor is the one, constant measure that you must take into account within the space. Everything is built around the actor and by the actor.

Although Danièle Lévesque puts a lot of emphasis on sets and space — her trade and all-consuming passion — the program she heads also trains costume designers. All the students are initiated to and must master the many technical components of their trade: they paint, work with colour, draft technical plans, create maquettes and accessories, sew… During their last year, they have to create the sets and costumes for the public performances presented at the School and the Monument-National. They are thus immersed in an environment closely resembling the professional milieu. A team to manage, a budget to respect, the ideas of other designers to reconcile with — these are all an integral part of the learning process.

Danièle Lévesque took her first steps in design at the NTS under renowned costume designer François Barbeau, who was then head of the Design Program. Barbeau has amassed a large number of honours and accolades during his 45-year career. He is the recipient of a Governor General’s Award, a Banff Centre National Award, and the Order of Canada, among others. His designs have graced stages in Montreal, Toronto, Stratford, and Ottawa, as well as a number of films. Having been trained under his watchful eye, Danièle Lévesque shares his rigour and sensitive approach to her work. She feels that students should come into contact with the other scenic components at an earlier stage. This is why, during workshops on set design for example, she wants students to work not only with a director, but also with a technical director and lighting designer thereby giving the projects a concrete dimension.

“A scenic space constitutes an architecture of living images. It calls upon light: it is light that directs sight, creates the atmosphere, makes plans appear. The costume is the actor’s intimate, physical space, it is a volume in the environment, it punctuates the canvas’s geometry. The soundscape helps to set the ambiance, and the direction reveals it all. It is from these different elements that movement is born and that the real space is created.”

To benefit every day from the skill and know-how of a renowned set designer like Danièle Lévesque is an extraordinary opportunity not only for the francophone and anglophone students in the Scenography Program, the only bilingual program at the NTS, but also for all the students in other disciplines. Her artistic vision, her work with countless directors and her experience with theatres of all sizes make her an invaluable resource for her colleagues as well. A sampling of her many collaborations includes projects with some of the province’s top directors, such as Lorraine Pintal (Artistic Director of the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde) and René-Richard Cyr (a NTS graduate who has enjoyed a successful career as an actor and director. He is currently in Las Vegas directing the Cirque du Soleil’s upcoming cabaret.).

Few artists have such wide experience in theatre. Since her debut in 1983, Danièle Lévesque has worked on most Quebec stages and has explored repertory, creation, and avant-garde theatre, as well as opera and dance. Audiences in France recently got a taste of her work when the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde’s production of L’Hiver de force was presented at the Odéon, in Paris, in February 2002. For her, it was a second foray onto the European scene: in 1998, the Femmes, corps et âme II exhibition by the Musée de la civilisation du Québec, for which she had designed the environnemental setting, had been selected to take part in the Printemps du Québec à Paris. That show also won an Outstanding Achievement Award in the Presentation category, given by the Canadian Museums Association.

During the ten years prior to her appointment, Danièle Lévesque was often invited to the NTS by Michael Eagan and Guido Tondino, her predecessors in the Scenography Program. She has now ardently taken up residence at the NTS with all the fervour she brings to any new artistic challenge. For this architect of the imagination, the curtain can now rise and the spotlights shine on her quest to conquer new spaces.

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