À LA RENCONTRE DES RUELLOIS.ES / MEETING WITH THE ALLEYANS

Contes et légendes de la Petite-Patrie is a process that marries the art of spoken word with socioecological transition. In 2023, I will accompany three citizen groups that are already involved with their alley (the “La Girafe” Collective), their park (“Le Nord des Possibles”) and their commercial artery (“Petite Plaza”). This project aims to deepen and reaffirm the collective identity of residents in their environments, and to help us discover the history, nature and relationships that exist there. By its end, these communities will be positioned to anchor these discoveries in the collective writing of their own theatrical tales.

This project is primarily designed to allow youth in all disciplines, of all sexual orientations and interests, to have a safe place to express themselves and be part of a Yukon-wide community. All workshops and skills learned are transferable to any future job that youth may apply for. This proposal will also share how community engagement can promote healthy living and lifestyles. The project is entertainment, education, Yukon-wide engagement community support and above all, a unique voice for youth. Youth guests who take part in the project will learn how to broadcast, live-cast, podcast, and gain confidence of who they are at any stage of their life.

Katherine Kellner is a Montreal-based lighting designer and director. Through contrast, colour and texture, her goal in design is to always tell the most authentic story possible. She is inspired by the work of Michel Tremblay, Susan Benson, Norval Morrisseau and Marc Chagall.

Behind the scenes, she is passionate about Canadian class structure, human behaviour, the evolving use of language, and the impacts of technological innovation. Prior to NTS, she studied linguistics and English theatre at McGill University. She has eight years of experience in the performance industry (dance, theatre and film) and has worked as a designer, technician and manager. She brings energy, enthusiasm and efficiency to all projects.

L’ÎLE EN PÉRIL

La terre est gronde

A creation by Michel Ouellette, directed by Dillon Orr.
In front of a cottage, on an island, in the middle of a river, Hubert and Henriette, bellies hollow with hunger, are waiting for the end. Two rich people arrive: Trudy and Crayon, the island’s owners, along with Hugo, a professional golfer. The trio has just left the city to escape the economic, environmental and health crises. Later, Mimi, Dodo, Nini, Titi, aka, Nono and Tata will emerge from the earth. They were digging the mystery, the mystery of the hole. Why were they in the hole? Maybe Earth is not an entity that’s separate from humans, is not simply an object or a background. Maybe today, a certain kind of ecological thought can only be reached through the arts.

Dillon Orr Biography (Ontario)

Originally from the Detroit area, Dillon Orr is a franco-Ontarian director. He is a graduate of the University of Ottawa’s Department of Theatre and of the National Theatre School of Canada. Dillion is strongly interested in the development and production of new dramaturgies, and has received the Prix Paulette Gagnon (2016) and the Prix national d’excellence RBC (2019), awarded by the Fondation pour l’avancement du théâtre francophone au Canada, as well as the Pauline McGibbon Award (2021) from the Ontario Arts Council. His theatre and speaking work, full of passion and sometimes grating, is accessible and shot through with humour in the spirit of popular entertainment, demonstrating his uniqueness and thirst for representation within an intrinsically franco-Ontarian theatre. His numerous creations include Le club des éphémères (Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario, Théâtre français de Toronto), Ceci n’est pas une lettre d’adieu… (Théâtre Catapulte), Toutou (Vox Théâtre), Jeff Koons (Théâtre du Trillium, Centre Phi) and Vaches, The Musical (Créations In Vivo).

S’ENJAILLER

Sel is an epic for teens that stars a fat princess whose story does not revolve around her weight, but around her quest for a reconciled realm. The story takes place in a decadent and bulimic realm where it’s the custom for people to forget about all their negative emotions by eating until they vomit. Inspired by the Hungarian tale The Princess and the Salt, Sel is a fable that breaks out of storytelling codes and addresses contemporary issues such as body inclusivity, trauma healing, our relationship with food, and the emancipation of a toxic political system, all done with a feminist sensibility, openness, humour and a pop aesthetic that’s inspired by teenage social media networks.

The creation team will collaborate with a drama therapist who specializes in eating disorders among youth. A tour of high schools, along with cultural mediation workshops, is planned for the coming months.

Éléonore Brieuc Biography (Ontario)

Éléonore Brieuc is an author who wears many hats. After earning a DEC in literary creation, she obtained a massage therapy diploma in 2015 and a visual arts certificate in 2018. She then started a law degree in 2020, and the following year began her training in playwriting at the National Theatre School, which she will finish in May 2024. She worked for six years with the Qui Dit Vain theatre collective as a performer, author and co-director. As interested in collective creation as she is in solo writing, Éléonore shines in projects that allow her to express her taste for rebellion, poetry, the visceral, and incongruous worlds.

Anne-Marie St-Louis Biography (Ontario)

Anne-Marie St-Louis is a director who defines herself by her unstoppable passion for the performance arts and community. She is the recipient of the Fonds de recherche du Québec scholarship for her investigation of food and theatricality for her master’s degree at UQAM’s École supérieure de théâtre. She seeks to create more inclusive, friendly and creative directing methodologies. Since 2017, she has co-directed the youth theatre company Créactifs, with which she has produced projects noted for their exploration of unusual theatre spaces, their sparkling and philosophical dramaturgy and their participative elements. She also works in cultural mediation with various partners, including Théâtre Espace Libre, Fusion Jeunesse, Théâtre du Nouveau Monde and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.

YOUTH COMMUNITY WORK

We want to create specialized cultural mediation workshops for students age 5 to 8 at École Ludger-Duvernay, an under-resourced school in the Saint-Henri area. We want to bring two young apprentices, recently trained through the Mentor’art program, into our creation process. The teens in this program are grappling with issues surrounding dropping out of school.

The process

We are currently working to create a youth play called Éva et Porée. We will provide cultural mediation workshops to accompany our work in under-resourced primary schools, where access to art is limited due to a lack of resources. The stage of the work for which we’re applying for the TEC bursary is split into two parts; community engagement will be at the heart of our artistic process.

FIRST PART: Mediation

In collaboration with École Ludger-Duvernay, we want to design, develop and lead cultural mediation workshops with classes and teachers. We will give six workshops in two primary-school classrooms (first and second grade). Our encounters with these children will greatly influence the next steps of our creation and our rapport with audiences. We are very pleased about this upcoming collaboration with École Ludger-Duvernay, because we are very affected by the striking inequalities within the public school system. So it was crucial for us to provide our workshops in an under-resourced school where the children have less access to art than in more privileged schools.

Since we also come from a remote area that doesn’t value culture and from an underprivileged area, we know from experience that art needs to seek out its audience and that awareness-raising is all the more effective when it reaches people at a young age. This is what happened to us, Esther Duplessis (Interprétation, 2020) and myself, Alice Tixidre (Écriture dramatique, 2021), and we made art not only our careers, but our reason to get up in the morning.

SECOND PART: Participation of two apprentices in creating the play

In December 2023, we will undertake a one-week research and creation residency at the performance hall at Patro Villeray and two weeks at the Maison de la culture de Pointe-aux-Trembles. We want to bring two teenage interns with us. With training through the Mentor’art organization under their belts, these interns will accompany the members of the creation team. Their technical skills and abilities will be valued and may be put to use in service by our technical, creation and stage directors. We are planning to pay them the same hourly rate as we receive.

These residencies will make it possible for us to create our production. We will design the play with a touring context in mind. The interns will learn the various constraints of this specific context. For example, the various design elements will need to be able to adapt to the range of spaces in which we’ll be performing.

LA MESURE DE NOS ENVIES

Description of the project La mesure de nos envies: writing commission for a creation workshop in the Villeray area.

Théâtre Harpagon is engaged in both creative theatre and the community milieu, among others through their “Théâtre à ciel ouvert” (open-air theatre) project in collaboration with Ville de Laval. For several years, mini-productions have been offered to people who want to have a first theatre experience. For the mini-production of fall 2023, Théâtre Harpagon is inviting an author to create a tailor-made play with and for the participants. The author will be Pierre Berlioux.

Pierre Berlioux (Toronto)

After starting with street theatre, Pierre Berlioux studied the dramatic arts at Conservatoire du Grand Avignon as well as the Théâtre rural d’animation culturelle and at Académie Internationale des Arts du Spectacle. He then turned toward theatre machinery and worked as a set builder and set designer. In 2013, he founded a stage theatre company, Comédie du Fol Espoir, for which he was a coauthor and actor. In parallel, he danced with the company Les Roses du Pavé.

He joined the NTS Écriture dramatique program in 2020, where he wrote Sept stations avant terminus (coaching by Diane Pavlovic and reading directed by Frédéric Dubois), Archéopunk (coaching by Simon Boudreault and directed by Philippe Racine) and L’amour vient du futur (coaching by Olivier Kemeid and directed by Véronique Côté). Throughout his career, he has also written scripts, texts for young audiences and song lyrics.

Leading a too-short existence on a fragile planet lost in an icy universe, he rejoices in knowing that life has no meaning, because he can give it one—which oscillates between politics, poetry and love.