The artistic director of the Théâtre Espace Libre, Geoffrey Gaquère, unveiled Monday evening the shows that will be part of the 2022-2023 season of the hall, which is located on Fullum Street, in Montreal.
Posted at 5:45 p.m.
This season will be propelled by some sixty performing artists who will explore the notion of space in all its forms: physical, virtual, social, intimate, geographical and, above all, imaginary. Among them, we will find Laura Bilodeau-Côté, Joanie Guérin, Daniel Brière, Catherine Bourgeois, Michael Nimbley…
Alice Ronfard will open the ball, on August 27, with a river reading-show entitled The crossing of the century. Based on novels and plays by Michel Tremblay, based on an original idea by André Brassard, she will produce an eight-hour podcast series, in six chapters, available next fall. The series will go through all of Tremblay’s work to portray three generations of women in the XXand century in Quebec. A huge project, on which Ronfard and Brassard have been working for a long time. The main characters (Albertine, Thérèse and Victoire) will be surrounded by several other figures such as The Duchess. They will be defended by around 30 performers, including Rachel Graton, Dominique Quesnel, Violette Chauveau and Alex Bergeron.
The “real” season will start with the company Joe, Jack and John, in residence at Espace Libre, and their theatrical production The waitresses are sad, a play by Michael Nimbley, co-directed with Catherine Bourgeois. This will be followed by the New Experimental Theater (NTE) and Ondinok Productions, which will present The Wabush Pen, a piece already available on webcast. The NTE will also close the Espace Libre season with a show-event that will take place on the three floors of the building. A literary cabaret in homage to Jack Kerouac, with among other things the proposal to redo the translations of his novels in Quebec, then to publish them in a “printing-theatre”!
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Geoffrey Gaquère, artistic director of Espace libre
After The posterauthor and director Philippe Ducros will create echo chambers, a new play in which he explores the war in Syria and the conflicts in the Middle East. In mid-November, the company Pleurer Dans’Douche will present a sequel to its Drag Kings show, Rock Beerwith a documentary piece “on the place of women in the LGBTQ+ space” nourished by testimonies and performances.
With the creation of Sportriarchy in the spring of 2023, the feminist group Les Précieuses fissures, made up of young up-and-coming creators, explores the world of spectator sport “and its troubled relationship with the perpetuation of sexual violence”.
Finally, the LNI will return to Espace Libre in January 2023 with The Potential Theater Factorywhere the public will be invited to choose “the dramaturgical and scenographic elements that will serve as a framework for the performance”, to produce a live improv show.