Seven Streams Of The River Ota

"Of all Lepage's magic boxes, this is the masterpiece" (Independent on Sunday)Early one August morning in 1945, several kilos of uranium dropped over Japan changed the course of human history. Fifty years later, Hiroshima's vitality is striking: the city where survival itself seemed unimaginable today incarnates the notion of renaissance.Robert Lepage and Ex Machina's The Seven Streams of the River Ota makes Hiroshima a literal and metaphoric site for theatrical journey through the last half-century. In The Seven Streams, Hiroshima is a mirror in which seeming opposites - East and West, tragedy and comedy, male and female, life and death - are revealed as reflections of the same reality.

Robert Lepage studied at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique de Quebec and with Alain Knapp in Paris and subsequently worked with Ligue Nationale d'Improvisation and Theatre Repere. Actor, director and writer, his international work includes his first solo show Vinci (best production, Festival de Nyon and Prix Coup de Pouce, Festival d'Avignon, 1987), Polygraph (Time Out Award, 1989; Chalmers Award, Toronto, 1991), The Dragons' Trilogy (Grand Prize of the Festival of Amercias, 1987). Tectonic Plates, Needles and Opium (one-man show, Prix de la Critique Francaise, 1991), The Seven Streams of the River Ota and Elsinore (one-man show). He also directed the films Le Confessional (1995) and Polygraph (1996). From 1990 to 1993 he was Artistic Director of the French Theatre at National Arts Center, Ottawa and co-founder of Ex Machina in 1994. He was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1990 and the Governor General's Award for Performing Arts in 1994.

Eric Bernier is an actor from Quebec, known mainly for his work in television. He trained at the Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Montreal in 1989 and made his acting debut with numerous Shakespearean roles.