1999
FESTIVAL DE THÉÂTRE DES AMÉRIQUES — 8th EDITION
En Français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize
JACOB WREN (QUÉBEC| ONTARIO)En Français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize
When there are no ideas left for which to lay one’s life on the line, what is left is theatre, music, books, one’s body, someone else’s body and criticism.
House/Lights
ELIZABETH LECOMPTE (NEW YORK)House/Lights
With its mastery of multidisciplinary collage and montage, the Wooster Group transfuses Gertrude Stein’s opera libretto, Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights, with a ’60s soft-core film, Olga’s House of Shame, by Joseph Mawra.
Human Colision / Atomic Reaction
STACEY CHRISTODOULOU (QUÉBEC)Human Colision / Atomic Reaction
What if the movements of atomic particles reproduced the very logic of human behaviour? Inspired by astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who has not let a degenerative disease keep him from being active in the world, this new multi-disciplinary play questions the place of people in the universe, with their human frailties and their infinite capacity, in spite of everything, to believe in immortality.
Insomnia
DANIEL BROOKS ET GUILLERMO VERDECCHIA (CANADA)Insomnia
Two baby-boomer couples are driven to the end of their rope, facing their last illusions. They express, in a dense, terse manner, what is rarely said aloud. The play roams the corridors of a chaotic consciousness, that of an author who can neither write nor sleep, a man submerged in systematic doubt and the rage of powerlessness.
Iwouskea et Tawiskaron
ONDINNOK (QUÉBEC)Iwouskea et Tawiskaron
Perched in the theatre, like the archaic matrix of Native and nomadic culture, is a tent inviting the audience to enter a different world, to witness the unfolding of an act of theatre that adopts from wampum ceremonies the rites of purification and blood atonement.
LA FERME DU GARET
THÉÂTRE DU MARAUDEUR (FRANCE)LA FERME DU GARET
An invitation to take a trip on the back of a kite or in the belly of an accordion. Entering into the text and photos of Raymond Depardon’s La Ferme du Garet (dedicated to his two sons), the audience is drawn into a subtle interplay between appearances and associations. Marc Feld reconstructs the sensitive tissue of memory – its music, smells and tastes, all the sensations that lead to emotion.
La raccourcie
JEAN-ROCK GAUDREAULT ET MARIE-LOUISE LEBLANC (QUÉBEC)La raccourcie
In a forest at the end of the world, a son, completely adrift, helps put his father back on his feet, a man who had abandoned everything seven years before.
Le Mahâbhârata
ANTOINE LAPRISE (QUÉBEC)Le Mahâbhârata
Following their presentation of Voltaire’s Candide, Antoine Laprise and his puppet theatre interpret one of the most ancient poems ever written. This epic that is the basis of Indian thought fills a book fifteen times as thick as the Bible.
LE SOLDAT DE BOIS
JEAN-CLAUDE CÔTÉ (MONTRÉAL)OLIVIER CHOINIÈRE (MONTRÉAL)
LE SOLDAT DE BOIS
Four young people caught between adolescence and adulthood must find the story of their beginnings, their own “Once upon a time.”
Les 4 ronds sont allumés
NATHALIE DEROME (MONTRÉAL)Les 4 ronds sont allumés
This is a play that is hard to classify, for Nathalie Derome is a theatre unto herself, firing up her audience one by one, each time in a different way.
Les bacchantes
PAULA DE VASCONCELOS (MONTRÉAL)Les bacchantes
Dance-theatre or theatre-dance, this is a performance that has fun playing with the idea of a feminine cosmogony cooked up by five self-taught bacchantes who are both nymphs and Amazons.
lets op Bach
ALAIN PLATEL (BRUSSELS)lets op Bach
“This little thing about Bach,” with its horde of fallen angels who float through life on his music and famous melodies, is a diamond in the rough. Surrounded by an extraordinary band of musicians and singers, Alain Platel fully masters the arts of the fugue and the punch in the gut.
Maquina Hamlet
EL PERIFÉRICO DE OBJETOS (ARGENTINA)Maquina Hamlet
A raw and rock-solid work written in red ink. Heiner Müller casts an infrared gaze on the memory of his century, on the liver, kidneys and diseased brain of a contemporary Hamlet.
Noces de sang
OMAR PORRAS-SPECK (SWITZERLAND)Noces de sang
Love and the absolute freedom of love are the grand concerns of Federico García Lorca. The story is drawn from a news item in the Catholic, macho Spain of the 1930s, soaked in the blood of vendettas and the bitterness of tribal violence.
Pitié pour les vieilles chiennes sales
MARIE-ÈVE GAGNON (QUÉBEC)Pitié pour les vieilles chiennes sales
In an era of zapping and of virtual everything, Marie-Eve Gagnon’s play jumps wholeheartedly into burlesque, leaving nothing and no one unscathed.
Pour un oui ou pour un non
COMPAGNIE JACQUES LASSALLE, POUR MÉMOIRE (FRANCE)Pour un oui ou pour un non
“That’s it exactly!” This little sentence, slipped into conversation, starts a confrontation that unravels an old friendship between two men. Nathalie Sarraute’s fugue casually reveals the anguish and radical solitude of one man, given the unequivocal “no” of the other “like a comedy of survival,” as Jacques Lassalle might say.
Rêves
WAJDI MOUAWAD (MONTRÉAL)Rêves
The impetus is a dream waiting to take shape, imposing a framework, then a situation. In a hotel room somewhere a man sits and writes, as though he were walking in words, developing the fabric of active meditation.
The Trial of Kicking Bear
MATO SKA PRODUCTIONS (CANADA)The Trial of Kicking Bear
A true story, obscured by history — the story of the plundering of a sacred mountain, the abduction of a territory, the defeat of a peaceful people.
The Urban Dream Capsule
NEIL THOMAS (AUSTRALIA)The Urban Dream Capsule
Weatherproof street theatre, right downtown, running for fifteen days during the festival. Four men with shaved heads set up their headquarters in the windows of The Bay. Their made-to-measure habitat is crammed with a myriad of details that give a sense of home, including their clothes and collections of teddy bears.
