The Joe, Jack and John Theater Company is celebrating its 20th anniversary next summer. A celebration that occurs accompanied by a great recognition: an invitation to the Festival TransAmériques (FTA) to present its new creation, Cispersonages in search of authorship.
Catherine Bourgeois, who has been at the helm of Joe, Jack and John since its inception, was inspired by Luigi Pirandello’s classic, Six characters in search of an author, to launch the writing of this new show.
“I wanted to think about ethical and moral questions about how our society could be more inclusive,” explains Catherine Bourgeois. My posture is more on the left, but as I have an interest in dialogue, I read texts from the right to deconstruct the preconceived ideas I had. Because, as we know, the theater is rarely interesting if it presents only one point of view. »
This dialogue continued in the rehearsal room with his “fellow actors”, most of whom live with cognitive disabilities. “All these questions about appropriation, rights and privileges, the culture of banishment… My colleagues must be concerned with all this, but the vocabulary used in the public square is not accessible to them. So I worked to make this debate more inclusive for them. »
Each arriving with a different background, the confrontation of ideas was rich within the team, particularly with regard to the question of appropriation.
All these group reflections led to the creation of Cispersonages in search of an author, a title that sums up in itself the abundance of labels to juggle with these days.
The play features a troupe of neurodivergent actors who rub shoulders with the creation of their future show, because, let’s face it, the plays that concern them are not legion in the libraries of theater schools. Everyone tries to bring their stone to the building, but it is not easy to agree. And it is not easier to find oneself in what can or cannot be said on stage…
In this text, imbued with humour, philosophical questions are anchored in a very concrete way. The tone is direct and uninhibited; at Joe, Jack and John, we don’t do heavy stuff. “We laugh while preparing the show and we hope that the public will laugh just as much, launches Catherine Bourgeois. We add the prism of neurodivergence into the equation, which is not often part of the debate. However, the confusion of the characters clearly reflects our own confusion as a society, as an artist. »
With this project, Catherine Bourgeois arrives with a proposal different from what her company has accustomed us to so far. The often multidisciplinary shows give way here to a more theatrical, more spoken piece. “All those words to memorize are already a challenge for actors. It is also the first time that I have led such a large cast, with seven actors and actresses on stage. »
“In life, not everything is black or white and that’s what I wanted to tackle with Cispersonages in search of an author,” adds the director and playwright. In Pirandello’s text, written in 1921, everything is already there: the clash between fiction and reality, between appropriation and the experience of individuals. The notion of play is very present there. For 100 years we have been asking certain questions. »
“I have the desire to move the dialogue forward, but I can’t come up with any solution. Maybe I will even make these questions more confusing, but I will have brought another angle of reflection to the debate,” concludes Catherine Bourgeois.
Revival at the Prospero Theater of this beautiful show signed by Quebecer Dominique Leclerc and directed by Olivier Kemeid. Here, the loss of a father serves as a driving force for a reflection on what we leave – or not – behind us. This is a great opportunity to reflect on the notions of transhumanism and posthumanism, in addition to looking at the new biotechnologies that risk upsetting our relationship to death. The playwright and actress does this with a lot of humor and delicacy, based in particular on numerous video archives.
In Inuktitut, qaumma means light. And it is through light – and poetry – that artists Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and Vinnie Karetak wish to tell the forced displacements that marked the lives of their ancestors and the collective memory of theirs. A show that draws in particular on the feminist tradition of Greenlandic mask dancing, an art transmitted from mother to daughter. A way for Inuit families to reclaim their place and space in history.
In a recent outing in France to say that she was stopping making films, Adèle Haenel said that she wanted to devote herself to theater and collaborate with director Gisèle Vienne. French critics wrote that the actress was “amazing” in L’Étang, a play by Robert Walser, directed by Vienne. With Henrietta Wallberg, the actress embodies a dozen characters in this little drama of youth that the “cursed poet” of German-speaking literature offered to his sister. “A teenage fight against family and society. Intimate, even incestuous, but highly political. »
This is not the first time that choreographer Dana Gingras has collaborated with members of the legendary Montreal group Godspeed You! Black Emperor (Monumental). This time, she called on four of them for her new creation, which could well cause a sensation at the start of the FTA with a free outdoor presentation, at nightfall, on the Esplanade Tranquille. They composed the music and will be accompanied on stage by four string musicians and as many singers; with them, eleven dancers will give the spectators a “metaphysical” experience, in a piece that combines virtuosity and sobriety, which poses as a call to environmental action. The London collective United Visual Artists signs the video projections. A reminder that humans are as capable of destroying as of creating beauty. It promises !
Choreographer Oona Doherty offers works that are said to be haunted by Northern Ireland’s past. Navy Blue poses as his most ambitious creation to date, bringing together on stage a dozen performers in overalls, of varying ages and faces. Their bodies unite all of humanity, the band pulsing in unison to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2; a flamboyant ballet that falls apart, bodies that smash, reflecting the free fall of a devastated world, but where the response to social collapse takes shape in the furious and lively dance of men.
