Playing Cards: HEARTS

Please pay attention to the new duration of the piece (4,5 instead of 2,5 hours).

Canadian director Robert Lepage was a guest last year at the Ruhrtriennale with SPADES, the first part of his tetralogy on the world of card games. The second part, HEARTS, deals with the shift from a past world dominated by magic, illusion, and belief to a modern world where materialism and science take the dominant role. The story focuses on the French automaton-maker and the father of modern magic. Due to his training in precision engineering, Houdin was able to build ›magical‹ devices that he could use to thrill the Paris audience. Dressed in elegant everyday clothing, he set himself apart from the fairground appearance of his colleagues, showing optical illusions that made use of the technology of his time and above all used intricate mechanics.

We accompany the magician to Algeria, where he was sent by the French government to undermine the authority of the local clerics. From there, we move on to today’s Québec, and here we encounter the figure of a refugee from northern Africa, like an echo from the past. HEARTS is a fantastic journey from France and colonial Algeria of the late 19th century through Europe of the 1960s to Canada of the 21st century, a journey in which different fates cross and that culminates in a decisive encounter.