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.

Sketch Comedy in the Community is a free class in sketch comedy creation offered by actor, director and sketch comedian Allison Moira Kelly. The class will offer participants an understanding of how to dissect jokes, focus on the responsibility of the comedian, explore what we mean by “sketch comedy,” write sketch in various forms, and act in sketch comedy. At the class’s culmination, participants will write and act in a small showcase of sketch comedy!

Allison Moira Kelly (they/them) is an actor, director, sketch comedian and acting teacher from Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador. Allison has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Memorial University of Newfoundland and a Master of Fine Arts from York University (acting), and is now studying directing at the National Theatre School of Canada. Allison has worked as an actor with companies such as Riding Tide, Perchance Theatre, Two Planks and a Passion, and Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland. Allison is one-fourth of the sketch comedy troupe Mom’s Girls, who were the top-selling show at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival in March of 2023.

Wanna be on a first-name basis with the Bard? Call Me Billy is a comprehensive, practical, inclusive and fun video series detailing how to approach and perform a Shakespeare monologue. The series breaks it down into easy-to-remember steps with helpful exercises folks can do at home. This series will culminate by inviting the audience to participate by filming their own monologue with the help of the tools they learned to use along the way. The project will evolve into a collection of work from people of all levels, experiences and ages engaging in the epic storytelling of Shakespeare!

Leanna Williams is a South-African-Canadian actor, writer and musician from Regina, Saskatchewan. As a graduate from the National Theatre School’s acting program, she is most excited to delve into the world of Canadian theatre, film and television. She’s also interested in connecting people of all ages to the storyteller within themselves and empowering them to speak their imagination into existence.

Witty Fools is an acting podcast created by Megan Murphy for endlessly curious artists with an intellectual bent. Through monologue and interviews, Megan explores a variety of theatre-related topics, varying from a SparkNotes history of theatre, to science and art, to what they’ve learned at theatre school. They’ll ask the big dumb questions so you don’t have to.

Megan Murphy is a 20-year-old non-binary Canadian actor, writer, singer and artist from Fredericton, New Brunswick (with proud family ties to Newfoundland). Megan hopes to act in television, film, voice-over and theatre. They are passionate about vibrant new work as well as timeless classical tales. A lover of history, comedy, film and art, it is her dream to inhabit characters of all types—all genders, backgrounds and stories. Megan is a curious, ambitious, and dedicated young artist, with a bright & brilliant future. also dreams of writing, producing and directing their own work in the company of fellow artists and the friends they make along the way. Find them online at meganlilianmurphy.com and on Instagram at @meganmurphz and @meganmurphyart.