Conceived in 1987 as a continuously evolving international project, the first....Plates were formed in June 1988 by Robert Lepage, his regular core of author-performers in Théâtre Repère and the Canadian designer Michael Levine. The result - a work in progress - was shown during the World Stage Festival at Harbourfront, Toronto, in a former ice-house.

Through the collaboration of Montréal's Festival de Théâtre des Amèriques, a restructured version of Tectonic Plates was presented in November 1989 at Implanthéâtre, Repère's Québec home base - a one-time synagogue where the Company still seem to share offices with the local Rabbi. This version of the work, whilst rooted in similar emotional and narrative concerns, had undergone a radical re-edit. What Lepage and company had created was a flexible, modular structure which allowed Tectonic Plates to be taken apart and put back together in a different way, so that it could easily incorporate the integration of performers and ideas from other cultures.

Tectonic Plates was filmed in 1991 by Hauer-Rawlence and Rhombus Media and shown on Channel 4.