Karen Graham Detail and Delight: 20 Years of FTA

Whenever dance and theatre companies finally arrive in Montreal, the first thing they want to know is where to find Karen Graham. Efficient, meticulous, and diplomatic, Karen is the liaison between the Festival and artists from overseas. She supports the artistic programming team by spending part of the year collecting information and conducting research about the shows. Once the programming is finalized, she’s the main contact for artists in the international program and their teams when it comes to organizing their stay. That includes schedules, contracts, travel, visas and everything else needed to ensure a smooth visit and successful performances. Karen dreams of one day no longer having to explain what FTA is whenever someone asks her what she does for a living. In her early days at the Festival, she was in the habit of leaving program brochures behind in taxis for the benefit of the next passenger. These days, she drops off copies at her local bakery. She continues to work out of the spotlight in the hopes of bringing “the FTA experience” to as many people as possible.

How did you end up at FTA?

I was working for the Festival international de nouvelle danse (FIND), which was about to shut down in December 2003. Without even telling me, FIND’s director, Chantal Pontbriand, called Marie-Hélène Falcon, who was the director of FTA at the time, to see if she would like an assistant. It was really generous of her to do that. I didn’t want to leave FIND. I loved my work there. I then received a call from Annie Gascon, FTA’s director of communications back then. By pure coincidence, she happened to be my old high school drama teacher. I hadn’t seen her for ages. She asked me if I would come in for an interview with Marie-Hélène. I therefore interviewed for the position of programming assistant, which did not yet exist at FTA. I admitted that while I was familiar with the dance sector, I knew nothing about the theatre world. “We didn’t know anything about it either!” quipped Marie-Hélène in response. In January 2004, I joined FTA as part of a small seven-person team. I transferred my list of tasks from one festival to another and continued to do what I’d been doing at FIND: establishing a connection with companies and preparing every last detail of their visit while simultaneously helping to organize programming activities. It was a wonderful new beginning for me.

Are there any particular Festival shows that have stayed with you and that you still think about?

Two shows come to mind. The first is a show by Romeo Castellucci that I saw before I was even familiar with FTA. While I was working at FIND, I received an invitation to see Genesi: From the Museum of Sleep (FTA 2002). Talk about a shock to the system! It was so different from anything I’d seen before—a series of disturbing, powerful tableaux and images set in an ultra-bizarre, wordless universe. I felt like I was watching a freak show, but at the same time, the whole thing was profoundly human. Castellucci never imposes a single interpretation or makes judgements. He makes us engage our own critical faculties. I was blown away. I dug up the review from Le Devoir at the time, which made me smile: “If you’re not planning to rethink your ideas about theatre, or about life itself, then Castellucci’s Genesi: From the Museum of Sleep, presented by Théâtres du monde (TdM) at Théâtre Denise-Pelletier starting tonight, is a show you’ll want to avoid—at all costs.” [caption id="attachment_24693" align="alignright" width="300"] © Vivien Gaumand[/caption] The second show is one that transports the audience elsewhere, through words more than images. The title is suggestive: Aleppo. A Portrait of Absence (FTA 2020) by Mohammad Al Attar, Omar Abusaada and Bissane Al Charif. It’s a formally complex work, constructed literally like a jigsaw, that engages with the audience in a very unusual way. Each spectator received a unique jigsaw piece representing a neighbourhood of Aleppo. A story about that neighbourhood was told to them by a Montreal actor. This one-to-one interaction made you feel so close, as the Aleppines seem to be talking to us “in person”, through the local performers, while we are so far away from them in reality. It was clever, thoughtful, and truly touching. These two works are engraved in my memory, but I could also have mentioned others by Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Euripides Laskaridis, or Lia Rodrigues. What they all have in common is that they’re very dense and very free-form. During a conversation after one of her shows, Marlene Monteiro Freitas said, “My work is like a chorizo sausage. As long as there’s room, I’m going to keep filling it. And I still see some!” Besides the shows themselves, I have to say I also love the off-stage conversations with artists. It’s like seeing an exhibition with a good audio guide or watching a companion documentary that dives deep into the work. I’ve attended hundreds of them. They’re always interesting. Sometimes, those 30 minutes are as rewarding as the show itself.

What are the biggest obstacles you’ve encountered?

We always manage to overcome challenges at the Festival. The real obstacles are the visa applications. It’s only once all the visas are approved and stamped in the passports that I can rest easy. It’s extremely stressful—if there’s no visa, there’s no show! We don’t have any control over the decisions. The process involves complicated follow-up measures that aren’t adapted to the artists’ realities or the Festival’s requirements. In the past few years, this process has genuinely jeopardized several shows at each edition. In one case, a dancer obtained her visa so late that she ended up arriving the day of the show’s second performance. She flew in from Cameroon and went straight to the theatre! I recently read an open letter by the Tunisian choreographer Mohamed Toukabri urging us to think about our privileges. He talked about the financial and psychological cost of visa denials for artists. He put into words the deep sense of unease that I feel. It makes me angry. Artists often feel humiliated by these denials. The application process is complicated and unsuited to the timeframe of our work. Right now, for example, the official waiting time for a Canadian visa in Côte d’Ivoire is 299 days! It seems to me that Canada would benefit from making it easier for these artists to enter the country. Their creative intelligence is an advantage and a valuable resource for our society. We stand only to gain from letting them visit.

How has the Festival changed you over time?

It has made me grow. It has expanded my horizons and challenged my assumptions. It keeps my mind open by upsetting and unsettling me. If I keep my mind closed, either I’ll be bored during the show or I won’t understand anything. So I remind myself that I have to let go, to abandon my usual ways of thinking. The shows I prefer are often those that are hard to define, that defy purely rational interpretation. They’re works that require me to give myself up to them. The Festival connects me to the world. It has kept me up to date with the issues and questions that matter today. My work remains the same, but the ingredients are always changing—and honestly, that’s exciting! The Festival involves all aspects of the humanities: sociology, geography, economics, politics, philosophy, psychology, history... everything!

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