This text is part of the special Spring Break booklet
The Quebec scene remains very much alive throughout this school break thanks to a range of performances for adults and children alike.
Festival
The Casteliers Festival offers around ten puppeteer shows for adults or children from 1er to March 5. The festival welcomes creations from Quebec, Canada, France, Belgium, Czechia and Taiwan, among others.
Among them, The Reincarnation Potion, by the Taiwanese company Jin Kwei Lo, offers a rare incursion into the age-old art of Bo De Hi hand puppets while giving it a contemporary aura. The show without words Choo Choo ! Wowwow! proposes, meanwhile, to follow the story of a dog who braves his fear of the unknown to join the loved one. This creation by Naivni Divadlo Liberec, one of the first professional puppet theaters in the former Czechoslovakia, which is on its first tour in Montreal, is intended for toddlers, train-loving children and dog lovers alike!
Shows
Place des Arts also offers a colorful free program at the Georges-Émile-Lapalme cultural space on 1er to March 4. Offered as part of Montréal en lumière, the interactive exhibition Fabuloscope brings Native legends to life through pioneering animation technologies such as zoetropes and praxinoscopes. Families will also have the opportunity to see two storytelling shows, Little Mouse’s wish And Orpheus with Fairy Fingerspresented at different times in the afternoon.
From February 27 to March 4, head to La Tohu to meet the specialist in ombromania, the art of casting shadows forming silhouettes with the hands, Philippe Beau. His solo show Magic of shadows… and other trickss combines the genius of filmmakers who have become masters of illusion (Bresson, Méliès and Allen) with its own ingenious sequences.
At Pointe-à-Callière, some twenty Montreal artists from communities from Africa, Asia and Latin America will celebrate the city’s cultural diversity. From February 25 to March 4, the public will be able to feast on Japanese KotoAn wagashi pastries while drinking stories, dances and music from these three continents.
Theater
In residence at the Center du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, Olivier Arteau and his collective blur the traditional codes of theatrical performance with autofiction Piss standing up without lifting her skirt from March 2 to 11. The playwright and director draws inspiration from his experience to address received ideas revolving around gender identity. Through performance, video and music, his creation aims to be an “autopsy of a world [où chacun] tries to indefinite itself”.
On the youth theater side, the Parc-Extension broadcast room is offering the play on February 26 Word of water which retraces the friendship between Mamby and Hélène. Between Senegal and Canada, they discuss the contrasts of their relationship with water, while one walks in search of oases and the other struggles with snow banks.
In Quebec, the theater for young audiences Les Gros Becs presents from February 23 to March 12 the clownish work Over there. The creation, aimed at 5 to 12 year olds, stages the incredible adventures of a trio of zigotos on the road. Also in the provincial capital, the Théâtre le Diamant, from March 2 to 4, gives a voice to actress Maude Laurendeau and her autistic daughter who must navigate through the vagaries of the school system, clinics and their own beliefs. In an intimate staging by Edith Patenaude, Rose and the Machine highlights the realities and limits of a world that is called to adapt to neurodivergence.
Dance
From 1er on March 3, choreographer Catherine Gaudet and her company present The pretty things at Édifice Wilder, a choreography for five dancers working to the rhythm of a metronome. In the east end of Montreal, the Maison de la culture Mercier unveils youth creation on March 2 and 5 The treasure by Pierre-Paul Savoie, who takes a luminous look at the greatness of the little ones.
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, pertaining to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.