{"id":29265,"date":"2026-06-03T03:50:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T07:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/?p=29265"},"modified":"2026-06-03T04:17:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T08:17:04","slug":"banff-playwrights-lab-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/banff-playwrights-lab-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon Rioux at the Conservatoire national sup\u00e9rieur d’art dramatique in Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A year ago, I was wrapping up my final year in the Mise en sc\u00e8ne<\/em> program at the National Theatre School of Canada. Right before the year kicked off, an opportunity came up: a placement in Paris at the Conservatoire national sup\u00e9rieur d’art dramatique. The two schools have a long history of collaboration, and I was being offered a chance to study inside walls that have seen generations of theatre-makers \u2014 Isabelle Huppert, Pierre Niney, Maria Casar\u00e8s, Muriel Robin, Jonathan Cohen, Laurent Lafitte, among so many others. Slowly but surely, it became real, until the day I finally got on the plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I left, NTS Artistic Director Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Dubois told me: “You’ll see \u2014 the moment you walk in, you feel it. Something happens.” He was right. On Monday, May 18th, I stepped through the front doors of the CNSAD for the first time. The columns, the mirrors, the books piled on long tables, costumes draped over everything \u2014 theatre was everywhere. You didn’t just see it, you felt it. Racine was being recited somewhere nearby. A cry rang out from the third floor. The whole building seemed alive with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marie-Jos\u00e9 Malis, who runs the Jouer et mettre en sc\u00e8ne<\/em> master’s program, welcomed me and walked me through what the next three weeks would look like: acting classes, rehearsal observations, masterclasses, one-on-ones with artists. I sat there in the lobby of the Paris Conservatoire thinking \u2014 a kid from the Gasp\u00e9sie, here? After everything the NTS had already given me, this felt almost unreal. The kind of thing that makes you believe anything is actually possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On my very first day, I was introduced to Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Sivadier, a guest director working with half the second-year class on a month-long workshop \u2014 a project that will eventually become a full production next year. I spent the next two weeks sitting in on his sessions. Long days watching him build from improvisation, working through Shakespeare, Chekhov, and \u2014 of all things \u2014 Jean-Luc Lagarce, the same playwright whose Juste la fin du monde<\/em> I had directed for my graduating project. Watching those students work was humbling. Their commitment and the ease with which they handled such demanding material were something else entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In between, I had conversations that I’ll carry with me for a long time \u2014 with Rapha\u00ebl de Almeida Ferreira, director of the Jeune Th\u00e9\u00e2tre National, and with Andr\u00e9 Markowicz, the dramaturg and translator, who talked with me about Chekhov, about translation, about poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, halfway through my stay, another door opened. I got access to rehearsals for Julien Gosselin’s new production \u2014 the show that will open the Festival d’Avignon in the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes this July. A few evenings a week, I’d head to the Ateliers Berthier and watch this enormous production come together \u2014 fifteen people working at once, a large and remarkable cast, the whole thing slowly finding its shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paris gave me more than I expected. I moved between rehearsal rooms and theatres, catching show after show. I spent time in museums, at the opera, wandering through the city. I came back fuller \u2014 with ideas, questions, influences, and a renewed sense of what this work can be. It’s an experience that has already changed me, and I know it will keep doing so for years to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simon Rioux<\/strong>, graduating student, Mise en sc\u00e8ne (2026)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year ago, I was wrapping up my final year in the Mise en sc\u00e8ne program at the National Theatre School of Canada. Right before the year kicked off, an opportunity came up: a placement in Paris at the Conservatoire national sup\u00e9rieur d’art dramatique. The two schools have a long history of collaboration, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":29271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[120,128,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-directing","category-news","category-non-classifiee"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29265"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29287,"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29265\/revisions\/29287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ent-nts.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}