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4 X 4

THÉÂTRE OFFICIEL DEL FARFADET (TOF) (QUÉBEC)

4 X 4

Hubert, Manu, Stella and Marianne are four characters in their early thirties, living in their own separate worlds. They are the age of a group of writers who, without consulting each other, study their case and decide to have them meet for the first time. Fiction is called in to push the action along, and four times rather than once, for there are four writers provoking these games of chance.

Allemaal Indiaan

ALAIN PLATEL (LES BALLETS C. DE LA B. & VICTORIA)

Allemaal Indiaan

On stage are two houses complete with rooms, hallways, balconies, roofs, doors and windows that open, close, slam shut and smash into pieces. Bustling about inside, outside or around a drainpipe are the cells of a medium under pressure, the tale of survival in a poor urban neighbourhood. Street punks, broken homes, overwhelmed parents, a few outsiders and the cat Aida act out a soap opera devoid of context and kind feelings.

Anatole Felde et le canard bleu

MICHEL BÉRRUBÉ (QUÉBEC)

Anatole Felde et le canard bleu

These two joyfully absurd short plays were written by a playwright who prefers to remain anonymous, hiding under the pseudonym Hervé Blutsch, in sympathy no doubt for the characters that he transforms with impunity into the butts of his jokes in this burlesque piece. He takes them out of their boring, absurd lives ­ the life of the office, of the office clerk working five days a week for a lifetime.

Aube

ISABELLE LEBLANC (QUÉBEC)

Aube

Restless and wide awake late at night is a woman named Rosa, as in Rosa of romantic song ‹ my rose, my love. She tells her tale while waiting for us to come get her, while waiting to be freed. The characters in her life come and go to the music of the accordion like little waltzes in the night, brief shards of memory, of guns, of moments of love, of dreams of freedom.

Catoblépas

DENIS MARLEAU (MONTRÉAL)

Catoblépas

Alice, a little girl who was once too fond of matches, discovers after twenty years in a psychiatric institution the child taken from her at birth. Between her and her son Robert is a nun devoted body and soul to protecting him from life and the influence of others. The two women claim maternity over this strange, fascinating beast, a creature as freakish as the mythical catoblepas.

Ceci n’est pas une pipe

STEPHANE HOGUE (QUÉBEC)

Ceci n’est pas une pipe

Despite appearances, this is not a comedy. Every evening at the same hour, Junior’s parents do the same thing as Sophie’s parents. They talk about what they’ve seen and heard on the radio or television, at the office and on the subway, on the phone, in the drawer of Junior’s desk and under Sophie’s skirts. The news of the day is soaked in horror. All things being equal, horror has the lightness of a news flash or a caption or a rumour, the depth of a Reality Show.

girls ! girls ! girls !

PETER HINTON (QUÉBEC)

girls ! girls ! girls !

Four adolescents, by all appearances normal kids, come up with an idea for something to do on a Saturday night. They decide to avenge the honour of a member of their gang who lost out in a gymnastics competition. Once the gymnastics champion falls for the trap, the violence feeds on itself until satiated.

House

RICHARD MAXWELL (NEW YORK)

House

Richard Maxwell écrit et met en scène avec la précision d’un scanner, la neutralité d’une caméra fixe et l’efficacité d’une couverture de Vogue. Des phrases toutes faites, collectionnées et ré-agencées, disent ce qu’elles disent, en admettant les pauses, les silences et les éclats métalliques d’enregistreuses bon marché. Les personnages, collés au mur, n’ont d’autre identité que d’être un père, un enfant, une épouse et un étranger par qui la tragédie arrive.

JIMMY, CRÉATURE DE RÊVE

MARIE BRASSARD (MONTRÉAL)

JIMMY, CRÉATURE DE RÊVE

Count on Marie Brassard to concoct a piece of theatre that is lots of fun! Her metamorphosis onstage is incredible, and indeed the character of Jimmy fits her perfectly. He is a being of pure fiction, half-man or half-woman or something in between, someone who is both a child and an adult, a creature dreamed up by a rather lustful American general.

La face cachée de la lune

ROBERT LEPAGE (QUÉBEC)

La face cachée de la lune

Alone on stage, Robert Lepage faces the mirror of the world, a man alone. Philippe is an unemployed philosophy professor in his early ’40s. The recent death of his mother and a forced reunion with his brother reopen old wounds. Suffused throughout is a child’s fascination with Russian cosmonauts, his heroes ousted by the Americans in the space race.

Mil quinientos metros sobre el nivel de Jack

FEDERICO LEÒ (ARGENTINA)

Mil quinientos metros sobre el nivel de Jack

In a bathroom complete to the last detail are a mother in a bathing suit and her son in diving gear. Seated in a bathtub full of water, they engage in conversation. A television set is turned on but displays no image, adding another element to this perfectly surreal tableau. The script, full of allusions and veiled terms clearly heard, makes reference to the father who has disappeared at sea and to life flowing by all around them as they withdraw in seclusion, cut off from the world.

Petits miracles misérables et merveilleux

CLAUDIE GAGNON (QUÉBEC)

Petits miracles misérables et merveilleux

Everything in this cabaret performance is homemade, recycled and put together by fairies with incredible imagination. With pieces of cardboard, fabric, feathers, leaves, plants and food, Claudie Gagnon creates surrealistic pearls that she threads together in a pleasingly festive order. Inspired by the four seasons and famous paintings, twelve tableaux vivants are presented one after the other like the pages of a calendar.

Recent Experiences

STO UNION & CANDID STAMMER (CANADA)

Recent Experiences

Very simply, spectators take their seats among the actors around a big dining table, a place for telling tales, and the magic of theatre takes place. A blackout, a voice in the dark that says “1900” and then the lights come up on two actors seated opposite each other. In a few minutes the audience witnesses five years of absolute love and the great whirlwind of life.

Road to Heaven

THE YOUNG@HEART CHORUS (ÉTATS-UNIS)

Road to Heaven

More invigorating than an aerobics class, more rock n’roll than Elvis, the Beatles or Travolta and as disturbing as an unlikely Bob Dylan/Devo duo, the Young@Heart Chorus is, in full performance mode, all that and more. These 25 golden agers (average age 78) are talented singers, each one with an individual style and musical register coupled with a gift for joyous celebration.

Rwanda 94

GROUPOV (BELGIUM)

Rwanda 94

Driven throughout by a desire for symbolic atonement, this play is deeply moving in its artistic courage, a grand epic and tragic form sustained by an oratorio that is utterly compelling. In order to bury with dignity one person a million times and to avoid repetition, the piece modulates in every register. This route to truth consists of eyewitness accounts, choral forms, fiction, dialogue, musical comedy sketches, dreamlike scenes, a lecture, Rwandan odes and chants and television images.

Tambours sur la digue

ARIANE MNOUCHKINE (PARIS)

Tambours sur la digue

This tale of a thousand and one breathtakingly beautiful moments, a raging river, drums in the night, all-powerful overlords and peasants caught up in the debacle is a legend with contemporary resonance. Human puppets carried at arm’s length by shadowy handlers unfold in a dance that accentuates their excessive humanity, fragility and ambiguity.

Urban Tattoo

URBAN INK PRODUCTIONS (CANADA)

Urban Tattoo

In telling the story of Rosemarie, a young Native woman who heads to the big city hoping to escape her destiny, Marie Clements draws on the traditions of the Amerindian storyteller and the ritual of healing. She revives the traditions by adapting them to a theatrical form where video, photos, music, words and performance beat a chaotic tattoo of a life of disillusionment and a wounded psyche.