A Tone-Setting Opening Show

The Festival opened with Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge by the New York company Elevator Repair Service, a verbatim theatre performance on racism in the United States that set the tone for the entire Festival. Autothérapie, a deeply moving solo by Franco-Haitian artist Mackenzie Bergile, explored the journey of diaspora communities through a combination of visual and performing arts. Accompanied by the artist Webster, the initiators of these two shows sat down at FTA Headquarters to discuss the importance of defiance, drawing inspiration from the work of James Baldwin.

Raising Ecological Awareness

On the Festival’s first weekend, the Decolonial Ecology Day, which included a seed exchange led by Chilean artist Taina Villalobos, attracted almost 5,000 people to the Esplanade Tranquille. Orchestrated by Brazil’s Clarice Lima and performed by around twenty Montrealers, Bosque was a poetic occupation of public space that transformed Place des Festivals and then Place d’Armes into a forest of legs.

Other Places, Other Spaces

Since its establishment in 1985, FTA has made a point of moving beyond conventional theatres to stage performances in other spaces. The audience of YOU CANNOT CAN followed Dana Michel’s adventures while dangling their feet in the water of a swimming pool. The only show this year from beyond the Americas, Chagaldak Zamirbekov’s Nest, brought the audience inside the confines of a Kyrgyz apartment meticulously reconstructed on the stage of Espace Libre. Meanwhile, a basketball court in Little Italy provided the perfect urban setting for slidin’ thru, a participatory work by Jeremy Nedd that got hundreds of festivalgoers dancing.

Outstanding Careers

While FTA always gives pride of place to young creators, it also offers the opportunity to appreciate artists at the peak of their craft. Audiences won’t soon forget the wildly charismatic performers of The Romeo, a flamboyant parade led by Trajal Harrell. Marie Brassard presented her latest work, The Ether, a profound and deeply moving tale of grief and transcendence. Remember that time we met in the future? by Lara Kramer was a challenging and exhilarating group piece that sought to find a shared pulse.

Cheers to Self-Reflection!

In Monga, the fearless, intense, and uncompromising performer Jéssica Teixeira posed thought-provoking questions to spectators, while shots of cachaça helped break down the barrier between stage and audience. This Brazilian show, which is always translated in the local sign language, served as the starting point for a passionate discussion about accessibility as a source of creativity. Mexico’s Lukas Avendaño presented two pieces of rare intensity: Bardaje and Réquiem para un alcaraván, a ritual and a celebration that demonstrated the integrity and power of live performance. Before these performances, twenty local artists took part in a two-day workshop that introduced Avendaño’s creative method.

Dances of Resistance

In a sign of the times, line dances and soul line dancing were everywhere this year, with artists seeking to reinterpret these traditions and turning them into tools of transformation and empowerment through joy. Two pieces by Jeremy Nedd—from rock to rock… aka how magnolia was taken for granite and slidin’ thru—opened up a collective space for celebration and self-affirmation. The first work by Stacey Désilier and Jossua Satinée, Braids & Heritage was a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Western, upending the assumptions of the genre to create a playful piece tailor-made for this athletic and charismatic duo. On closing night, ten performers assembled by Alexandra ‘Spicey’ Landé in 2par2 brought the crowd to their feet with the energy and sophistication of their Hip Hop dancing.

Fabulous Actors

Vampyr by Chile’s Manuela Infante skilfully combined a frenetic style, verging on farce, with serious environmental and social themes. The bloodthirsty figure of the vampire offered a distorted reflection of our boundless appetite for energy, whether green or otherwise. In Querelle de Roberval by Olivier Arteau, a stellar cast assembled from across Quebec delivered the words of Ève Lambert with a blend of lyricism and exuberance, giving voice to the concerns of regions affected by the socioeconomic crisis.

“This year’s edition of Festival TransAmériques shocked us, moved us, and transported us out of time. […] A magnificent festival [where you can] applaud visionary artists from all over the world and experience aesthetic revelations that only happen once a year!”
— Jacqueline Van de Greer, Les ArtsZé

A Family Affair

In Mi madre y el dinero, Anacarsis Ramos playfully subverted the conventions of documentary theatre, while poking fun along the way at international festivals’ eagerness for stories from the Global South. What unfolds on stage is something else entirely: a son’s raw but luminous tribute to his mother Josefina. A one-of-a-kind character who has seen and done it all, she delighted audiences night after night with her natural charm.

Embracing Sexuality

Rejecting moral judgment and prudishness, several shows embraced sexuality as a space for playful exploration and political action. Emile Pineault’s Bottommost created an immediate buzz: in this generous musical and sensorial performance, the artist and his collaborator Baco Lepage-Acosta dared to make themselves completely vulnerable. The return of Éric Noël’s gripping play Ces regards amoureux de garçons altérés, directed by Philippe Cyr, allowed new audiences to experience its depiction of a downward spiral of chem-sex and addiction, featuring a superb Gabriel Szabo. At the end of the Festival, Janaina Leite and her team of collaborators presented História do olho, an outrageous celebration that interrogated our relationship to pornography, pleasure, and pain, as well as consent.

“In this sensual, physical, and transcendent edition of Festival TransAmériques, many of the pieces have shown us liberated bodies defining their own rules and boundaries all across the Americas. Intimacy is revealed, exposed, and asserted.”
— Philippe Mangerel, JEU

Playful Trios

Three playful trios developed choreographic forms based on unique methodologies, creating their own worlds of dance. One was linked to the bowels of the earth: Mystic-Métallic by Audrée Juteau, Catherine LavoieMarcus, and N. Zoey Gauld staged a visceral, punk-inspired ritual to purge the harmful effects of extractivist mining in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. In conjunction with this show, a delegation of activists from Rouyn shared beautiful and profound thoughts on the subject. In Adentro!, Diana Szeinblum—a leading contemporary dance figure in Argentina—and a trio of performers deconstructed national traditions to create a new choreography free of folk dance clichés. In BOLT by Jeanette Kotowich, three performers and a musician produced dazzling moments of imaginative renewal through synchronicity, laughter, and friendship.

Solidarity in Struggle

Several works dealt with struggles being fought across the Americas that affect all of us. In The Chains, Evan Webber drew inspiration from the defiant figure of Antigone to stage a personality test that examined our moral codes and belief systems, with the aim of encouraging civic engagement and revolutionary action. María Galindo, a militant feminist from Bolivia, presented her film Revolución puta at a packed FTA Headquarters. Guadeloupean author Olivier Marboeuf teamed up with some thirty Afrodescendant artists and collaborators from Montreal to give a group reading of La nuit juste avant le feu. Critics amilton de azevedo (São Paulo) and Jeannot Clair hosted three Récoltes critiques sessions that encouraged discussion and debate about the Festival’s works and, in their words, stimulated “fluidity amid discomfort.” In total, the 20th edition’s FTA Playgrounds brought together 11,500 people through gatherings, conversations, workshops, and unforgettable parties, providing a valuable, accessible space that offered inspiration and new ideas for future editions.

This year, FTA welcomed 184 presenters from both Quebec and Canada and from abroad, confirming its role as a catalyst in promoting local creativity. With the Festival team’s support, these professionals moved between FTA, OFFTA, and various fringe events, discovering a diverse and open artistic landscape of extraordinary richness.

“Festival TransAmériques 2026 represents more than a schedule of performances; it is a signal about Montreal’s continued attractiveness as a global arts city. […] The festival represents a broad and ambitious program that foregrounds cross-cultural exchange and a multi-genre approach to the performing arts.”
— Sophie Beaulieu, Montreal Times

“We can’t wait for the next edition of this event, which remains one of the best festivals of its kind in North America.”
— Hadrien Volle, ScèneWeb

FTA 2026 in Numbers

+ 110 performances of 25 shows from 9 countries (Canada, France, Mexico, Argentina, United States, Chile, Brazil, Kyrgyzstan, Switzerland)
+ 246 artists from 17 countries
+ 9 coproductions (Mystic-Métallic, 2par2, YOU CANNOT CAN, Bottommost, BOLT, Remember that time we met in the future?, The Ether, Querelle de Roberval, Braids & Heritage), 6 of them presented as world premieres
+ 73 Playgrounds activities involving almost 11,500 people
+ 184 presenters and programmers from 30 countries
+ 194 journalists covering the Festival, 83 of whom are accredited
+ 1,764 nights of accommodation generated directly by the Festival’s activities
+ Almost 1,000 students from 28 schools in attendance

Join us next year from May 26 to June 10 to celebrate the 21st edition of Festival TransAmériques!

Review of FTA 2026

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