Archives

Albertine en cinq temps

Albertine en cinq temps

Michel Tremblay’s most recent play is devoted to one of the most complex and least known of the women he has created: ALBERTINE, a character fragmented in time and space, generously portrayed by five actresses. The confrontation and interaction of five facets of a single individual are observed by the quiet and irritatingly confident Madeleine, her sister and most intimate witness observer. Albertine’s double alienation as a woman from an underprivileged family means that her revolt can only be expressed through her cries, despair and refusal to recognize herself in her daughter. But a cry is already a first form of liberation….

Bolivar

Bolivar

On stage, a concentration camp, the ever present danger of fascism in the world. Beyond the camp, a vision of repression in South America today, and in counterpoint, the “Libertador.” With cruel irony, the camp guards force the prisoners to write and stage a play about Simon Bolivar.

Circulations

Circulations

With tapes of “English in twelve easy lessons” in her Walkman, a young woman from Quebec City leaves her job and family and sets off for adventure in the United States. Along the coast of New England, in Provincetown and New York, she meets up with men and myths: “John and Bob, and Clark Kent alias Superman” and all the others! Her inner journey, a flight from herself, comes to an end in New York, where she is ultimately reconciled with herself and her father figure.

Dreamland Burns

Dreamland Burns

As we write these lines, the latest creation of the Squat Theatre has not yet taken final shape. Theatre lovers in Montreal will be among the very first to discover DREAMLAND BURNS (working title), even before New York does. Built around the narrow frontier between illusion and reality, the play draws visually on both cinema and theatre. On the screen, a day in the life of a young girl. On stage, the dream that haunts her nights. The Squat Theatre has set itself the challenge of depicting reality through film and using the stage to evoke magic, illusion and fantasy. A seductive and efficient dream machine. Plus a musical background that intrudes into the play and ultimately transforms one episode in the girl’s life into opera.

Facundina

Facundina

When anthropology becomes theatre Facundina is a stage production based on research into the true story of a Chiriguana woman in the northwest region of Argentina who died at the age of 110. The anthropological study on which the play is based relates the individual and collective tragedy of the last members of the indigenous Chiriguano tribe, whose culture is derived from that of the Guarani. The purpose of the work, however, is not to depict the life of a Native woman, but to look at the story of a woman by examining certain conflicts related to her children, upheaval and uprooting, the couple, death and loneliness.

Katajjak

Katajjak

KATAJJAK is the name of the traditional throat singing from arctic Quebec. Six smiling women, two younger and the others older, move casually into the performing area. Closely surrounded by the audience, whose reactions will shape the course of the performance, they pair off, face to face and very close to each other. Each woman uses the mouth and throat of her partner as a resonator for one or more words that are repeated in precise intonations, modulated by the many varied rhythms of their respiration.

La lumière blanche

La lumière blanche

Three women meet in the desert. The first is monstrously ugly, the second is a spontaneous and colourful penguin, while the third is well brought up and pregnant.

Le porteur des peines du monde

Le porteur des peines du monde

“I am fighting for my brother who lives drunken and uprooted, like a wailing open wound… Show them what you have in your bag, Show them what burdens your soul.”

Le rail

Le rail

First, the earth… its odour, its stifling presence… A nameless place… Fog pierced by the tracks, the railway. A convoy of men, women and goods: travellers, an opera singer, soldiers, desire.

Les Paradis n’existent plus… Jeanne d’Arc

Les Paradis n’existent plus… Jeanne d’Arc

Conceived as a dramatic poem, LES PARADIS N’EXISTENT PLUS… JEANNE D’ARC pits the language of the imaginary against that of daily life.

Les purs

Les purs

A play that is taken apart and put together. The audience spreads across the stage, becoming the play. Life improvises, life becomes theatre…

Mansamente

Mansamente

In a severe setting evoking the everyday life of Brazil’s peasants and Indians, Marcos and Rachel Ribas, clothed in black, hover over a Lilliputian world and tenderly manipulate their puppets. Three short, wordless stories from their corner of the world, thrce slices of life, three poems: an old peasant dies in the arms of his wife; a child and a bird make a mysterious journey through the luxuriant jungle; and two teenagers woo each other.

Maria Antonia

Maria Antonia

In a pre-revolutionary Cuba doomed to poverty and underdevelopment, Maria Antonia, a young prostitute, falls in love for the first time.

Mein

Mein

A young man on his way up fast in the business world, “I” wants power now. His goal: president of the big company for which he works. Five actors—three men and two women— take turns playing “I”. All dressed in grey suits, they are five complementary but sometimes contradictory facets, five compartments of “I”‘s mind and spirit.

Ne blâmez jamais les Bédouins

Ne blâmez jamais les Bédouins

Where can you find on a single stage: a hideous, short-sighted monster an Italian opera singer tied to the railway track, a young Teuton, two military trains on a collision course, a little Quebecois boy at the top of his class, helicopters, a battery of percussion instruments and a single actor—smack in the middle of nowhere in an Australian desert? In NE BLÂMEZ JAMAIS LES BÉDOUINS, that’s where.

Novedad de la patria

Novedad de la patria

NOVEDAD DE LA PATRIA is built around a borderline situation: five man and three women wait for the next train, cut off from each other, each in their own cell. There is no attempt at realism in this alienated universe filled with signs and symbols. The characters are just as marginal. The whore, the priest, the young man from a good family, the old maid, are all nameless apart from the social position or role they represent, stereotyped facets of the reality of Mexico at the turn of the century.

OMER VEILLEUX

OMER VEILLEUX

Clowns have their own very special way ot understanding and experiencing situations, and Omer is a clown. He likes to live dangerously, without a safety net, acting out fragments from daily life common to everybody.

Out of the Bin

Out of the Bin

From Newfoundland comes a king of comedy, a variegated, almost clown-like character equipped with nothing but a bed and a garbage can.

PROVINCETOWN PLAYHOUSE, JUILLET l919, J’AVAIS l9 ANS

PROVINCETOWN PLAYHOUSE, JUILLET l919, J’AVAIS l9 ANS

“When we stop playing, we die. Or else we go mad.” Charles

SORTIE DE SECOURS

SORTIE DE SECOURS

Incisive texts by eight authors, intense performances and a remarkable production SORTIE DE SECOURS is a humorous but troubling look at the disconcerting problem of runaway teenagers.

Stuff as Dreams Are Made On

Stuff as Dreams Are Made On

A “tempest” seems the inevitable outcome when the masician Prospero, his daughier Miranda, Prince Ferdinand, Ariel and the monster Caliban try to co-habit in a single actor. But challenges are nothing new for Fred Curchack: previous endeavours include a Kathakali dance version of Hamlet English performances of nô theatre plays; and a show drawn from the poetry of William Yeats.

The Real Talking People Show

The Real Talking People Show

From Vancouver, a nosy show that eavesdrops on private conversations on the beach, in the street, in bars restaurants and laundromats, at bus stops, etc. It all adds up to THE REAL TALKING PEOPLE SHOW, 90 minutes of private talk caught in passing by the tape recorders of Tamahnous members.

Through the Leaves

Through the Leaves

Franz Xaver Kroetz’s work is characteristic of German postwar realism—abrasive, unyielding, ruthless in its examination of all forms of decay and depravity. In a manner reminiscent of Fassbinder—with whom he has worked in the past —Kroetz subtly shifts form and meaning: the ugly becomes likeable, and the scandalous or offensive, moving.

Titanic

Titanic

In 1898, Majan Robertston wrote a novel about a steamship much, much bigger than any that had yet been built. He launched it on its maiden voyage filled with rich and peaceful passengers. During that first trip, it struck an iceberg and sunk on a cold April night.