“It’s a strange time to be taking the helm of a theatre, because we’re entering a crisis,” acknowledges Édith Patenaude. Like her colleagues, the artistic director of Espace Go deplores the insufficient financial support from the Quebec government, which threatens their very production capacities. “But you don’t take the helm of a theatre if you don’t want to fight a little. It’s never calm, running a theatre, you’re always facing problems. And I like to look for solutions.”
Ginette Noiseux’s successor intends to remain faithful to the mandate of feminist theatre: “to promote the work of women artists, but also to work on developing the discipline”. To design this initial season, she first met with about a hundred artists last year. Her programming highlights newcomers to Espace Go. Édith Patenaude wanted to develop new partnerships with “free-thinking, daring” artists, to whom she could offer for the first time the opportunity to create on the large stage of her intermediate room. “It’s about finding these creators who are on the rise, but who need more oxygen to develop their practice. And who we want to see take on even greater challenges.”
Ultimately, what guided her in her choices was the thrill she felt when listening to certain projects. Not their themes. “For me, building a season is not done based on an editorial line. My vision for Go is absolutely anchored in creative freedom. A designer who interests me is one I don’t know what she’s going to do. So, I don’t want to tie things up in a year around a single idea, which would be my vision. What interests me, on the contrary, is being surprised, being taken out of my comfort zone.”
Risk-taking is inherent to Espace Go’s mission, says Édith Patenaude. And she believes that it is by offering “really exciting and stimulating” proposals that we attract an audience eager to come and feed off them. “I am aware that there is [des spectateurs] “Go’s regulars who may be a little disoriented by this lineup, because they won’t necessarily recognize the artists who are part of it,” she says. But on the other hand, she believes, curiosity is probably a driving force for many. “Afterwards, it’s a conversation, a trust that will be built, I hope, over the years.”
A festive spirit
For Xavier Inchauspé, who co-directs the Théâtre de Quat’Sous, “what’s exciting is that the public is coming back. We feel that there is a momentum. » But the challenges are certainly numerous. “We are all at a certain tipping point where the deficits [des théâtres] are beginning to be structural.”
And it is precisely because of this dark climate that Catherine Vidal and he have bet, for their first season, on a unifying, festive side in the shows. “It is a strong gesture to always be in a form of humor, even if sometimes it tips into black humor, in frontal proposals that magnify the unique stage-hall relationship of the Quat’Sous, he says. And we are very much in polysemic works this year: we navigate from one idea and one emotion to another at the heart of the same piece.”
As a guideline for their programming, the duo of directors focuses on contemporary foreign fiction and repertoire; new ways of telling a story, encouraging emulation among local authors tasked with adapting them. A niche that was missing in the Montreal landscape, notes Catherine Vidal. “At Quat’Sous, there is no mandate, the theatre takes on the colour of the management in place. And we had to pay attention to Quebec’s theatrical ecology.” To stand out, then.
While maintaining the institution’s tradition of popular theatre, the duo wants the small venue to also be a place “where we experiment, where we mix disciplines, as has always been the case since L‘Osstidcho “, adds Xavier Inchauspé. Hence a series called “Zones de turbulence”, where theatre meets other practices. A way of “mixing up what we can expect from shows in a theatre, according to the co-director. And it’s also to respond to the pulse of the environment: the younger generation is very much in this mix.”
To complement each other
For the new artistic director of Espace Libre, Félix-Antoine Boutin, it is also important, in this difficult context, to listen to what other theatres are doing, in order to define an artistic offering that is “complementary”. “With the new artistic directors, we talk a lot and we don’t want to step on each other’s toes. I always think of my colleagues when I make choices: Espace Libre is an experimental theatre, and I focus a lot on local and national creation. Less on international, because Usine C and Prospero have that in their mission and do it very well. I really try to be in a theatre that opens the limits of representation.”
In its inaugural season, the artistic director innovated with a program grouped into three series (Matières intimes, Cinéma and Variétés). “I wanted to embrace the heterogeneous side, the diversity of forms that has always been part of Espace libre. The idea of the series is to create new artistic communities. And I also wanted to guide the viewer so that they would be curious to discover other proposals than those of the artists who brought them here. Espace libre is a theater of surprises. And I really want it to become a place where, each time you open the doors, you don’t know what you’re going to see.”
What remains is what Félix-Antoine Boutin calls an “insoluble puzzle”: given the financial conditions, how can this local theater remain accessible while offering good working conditions to the artists who create there? The director has decided to “choose joy” despite everything. “It pushes us to invent new approaches. Here, we try to modulate our approach with the artists, and with the audience, for each show. At the moment, we can’t be a show factory. We have to take care of the artists, the spectators. And always try to invent the impossible…”