Please consult the page in French to find out more about the project.

S’ENJAILLER

“S’enjailler” (to have fun, to let loose) is a neologism that has emerged from Ivorian slang. Given the representation of women of African descent on stage, and also in the issues addressed in the text, it’s important to me that the audience be as diversified as the play’s creation team. We will of course reach out to audience members who are regulars at CTD’A productions, but we also want to expand our audience while ensuring that young people who are members of visible minorities, and more specifically people of African descent, can attend the show.

We want to offer free tickets to young adults from racialized communities, and more specifically people of African descent, because they need to see themselves in Quebecois works and to see creations that reach them through topical and inclusive themes.

By having a theatre that promotes inclusivity and diversity, we encourage young people to open up to the theatre arts and we can inspire them to become theatre artists in their own right and to create works that are rich and daring and that bring people together.

This project is a continuation of our artistic and political work with the troupe Joussour. It consists of integrating, mixing, and confronting a vision and a Palestinian theatre practice in our dramaturgy. This is first articulated through joint research work, and next through the production of (digital) content, to conclude with the dissemination of this content on a Canadian stage as an epilogue to the creation work.

Stephie Mazunya Biography (Ontario)

Born in Burundi and raised in Ottawa, Stephie Mazunya is fluent in French, English and Kirundi. At the National Theatre School, she had the opportunity to work on a varied repertoire with a number of seasoned directors, including Frédéric Dubois, Michel-Maxime Legault, Véronique Côté, Simon Lacroix and Pierre Bernard, to name just a few.

Outside school, she has gained artistic experience as an actress, in both English and French, in productions such as Le Règne de Karugaju (directed by Diane Ntibarikure) and MUD by Makambe K. Simamba (directed by John Collins) at the Ottawa Little Theatre. On screen, she appeared in 2018 in the youth show Vraiment Top! broadcasted on TFO and produced by Xavier Hovitov.

In 2019, she acted professionally in SOIFS Matériaux, based on the work by Marie-Claire Blais, directed by Denis Marleau and Stéphanie Jasmin and performed at FTA, and in Les Louves by Sarah Delappe, directed by Solène Paré and performed at Espace Go and at the NAC. In 2020, she performed in Notre innocence by Wajdi Mouawad at Théâtre La Colline.

Stephie is a multidisciplinary artist; she is also interested in singing, writing and translation.

ATELIER DE POÉSIE

Zoé Ntumba biography (Quebec)

Born in a small neighbourhood of Kinshasa, Zoé arrived in Montreal at the age of four. At a very young age, she discovered a true passion for the theatre, and joined her high school troupe. After she made a detour into psychology, her love for performance had not faded, and she decided to fully dive into her vocation. In 2020, she auditioned for the Interprétation program at the National Theatre School of Canada and began her studies in the fall of 2021. When she’s not setting fire to the stage, she likes to write, talk about Afrofeminism and develop projects that inspire her.

Aimé Shukuru Tuyishime biography (Quebec)

My name is Aimé Shukuru Tuyishime, I’m 21 years old and I’m from Rwanda. My initiation to art happened in my first year of high school, when I chose the saxophone as my instrument for my music class. That’s when I got on stage for the first time, and I haven’t left it since. Shortly after that, I transitioned toward rap, which let me express myself through writing, discover myself as an artist and get more comfortable in front of an audience. My love for the stage led me to the National Theatre School, where I discovered a limitless world that I had never encountered before and that I continue to explore every day.

Subbed is a two-person drama about roleplaying, power and the manipulation of trans identities for personal gain. First written in my time at NTS, this script directly engages with highly charged discourse about the intersection of trans identity and cancel culture. The play features a trans woman and cis man dealing with an online cancellation. He attempts to prevent real-world consequences from harming his business, while she grapples with the choice to either help him change for the better or potentially destroy his career for her own benefit. Subbed places trans women’s experiences with cancellation and online culture at the forefront and directly engages with the growing rhetoric from wealthy individuals which target marginalized individuals. The nature of these subjects means that in the short time since this play was written, discourse and world events have drastically changed. Attitudes around cancellation have changed, as more and more people develop a more complex perspective around morality, policing thought, and what accountability means within queer communities. Meanwhile, anti-trans rhetoric has taken the forefront of political conversations in North America.

Jonathan Mourant, aka Nora Vision is a playwright, drag performer and robotic emissary sent from the future. Before their time at the National Theatre School, Nora performed as an improviser and sketch comedian in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where they produced work independently and developed their voice as a writer and performer. Their work at NTS includes Subbed (dramaturgy by Erin Shields), an adaptation of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (Nick Carpenter) and God of Mars (Andrea Romaldi). As an artificially intelligent robot, Nora is interested in creating work that confronts identity, culture and propaganda, questioning how each contributes to, limits and undermines our sense of reality. Nora is a performance artist at heart, and her theatrical writings use her own identity as a cipher through which she challenges assumptions of subjectivity and viewership. They performed in drag in their play SYCOPHANT (Marcus Youssef), produced this spring as part of the 2023 New Words Festival.