New impetus for the FTA

After two years of scarcity, the Festival TransAmériques (FTA) is preparing its big comeback with both local and international programming signed by two new artistic co-directors who give their colors and breathe new life to the event.

Iris Gagnon Paradise
The Press

This first program signed jointly by Martine Dennewald and Jessie Mill allows “to initiate certain gestures” by laying the beacons for future editions, because “we like to think things over time”, launches M^me Mill in interview.

If Jessie Mill is a regular at the festival – she worked there, under the leadership of Martin Faucher, as an artistic and dramaturgical advisor – it will be a first experience for Martine Dennewald, who “crossed an ocean for the FTA”, illustrates-t -she. The native of Luxembourg was notably responsible for the artistic direction of the Festival Theaterformen, in Germany, for six years.

The two new artistic co-directors of the FTA, who first met at festivals in Europe, applied jointly, inspired by a common reflection on the direction they wanted to give to the festival.

Thinking about international differently

What does it mean to make an international festival today in 2022? What territories and communities can it encompass? This is a question that guided the co-directors in the choice of artists appearing on the abundant program of this 16^and edition, which will take place from May 25 to June 9.

“We want to think less of the international aspect of the program as a vis-à-vis with Europe, but rather to create a strong counterweight to European festivals, by traveling to other territories, by accompanying other artists”, sums up M^me Dennewald.

The program thus initiates a new link with the African continent, through the presence of artists such as Qudus Onikeku, from Lagos (Nigeria), who will open this edition with Re: Incarnationa large stage with ten dancers and two musicians, a show with “crazy” energy, ensure the artistic directors, where the spectator accompanies a man in the kingdom of the dead.

The choreographer from Côte d’Ivoire Nadia Beugré comes on her side with the rare man. A show that looks at masculinity and the notion of gender, exploring a whole range of gestures around the pelvis, buttocks and hip sway.

tracks, a “bright and intelligent” text written by Felwine Sarr, a Senegalese writer, tells the story of an exiled African man who returns to his country, recounts his odyssey there, tracing the possible future of the continent. It is the actor Étienne Minoungou who will defend the text on the stage of the Maison Théâtre.

Finally, two Burkinabe performers will perform a theatrical reading of The most secret memory of mennovel by Senegalese Mohammed Mbougar Sarr, winner of the 2021 Goncourt Prize.

This link with the rest of the world is also echoed in the presence of the diasporas at the FTA, in particular with the show My name is Muhammad Alia text by Congolese Dieudonné Niangouna in a creation by Théâtre de la Sentinelle, a Montreal company whose mission is to promote diversity on local theater stages.

Troubled waters

Even if the programming was not built around specific themes, that of water emerged by itself. Think dams, rivers, rivers and marine mammals.

For example, Los Angeles performer Lars Jan will set up shop on the new Esplanade Tranquille with a large 14-foot-tall aquarium, in which five performers recreate scenes from everyday life as they quickly become submerged in 14 tons of water. ” Holoscenes is an imposing spectacle that questions climate issues and manages to go beyond scientific discourse by creating an emotional image of this imminent danger,” summarizes Ms.^me Dennewald.

The Théâtre À tour de role, which comes to us from Carleton-sur-Mer, will present on the Place de l’Horloge The conquest of the beluga. Five actors from the Gaspé will perform a theatrical reading of the art book by visual artist Maryse Goudreau, which brings together various statements from the Canadian Parliament around marine mammals.

Another show that “comes from afar, but resonates here” is Altamira 2042, by Brazilian artist Gabriela Carneira da Cunha. She evokes the construction of a dam on a tributary of the Amazon, one of the largest in the world, and the protest movement born among the indigenous populations against the destruction of their ecosystem. A “techno-shamanic” performance where the public is called upon “to also oppose the construction of this dam, and who knows, contribute to its destruction”.

Brazil, remark M^me Mill, is fertile ground from which strong creations emerge. The FTA also welcomes for this edition the artist Alice Ripoll with Washinga show built around the notion of cleaning, both literal and metaphorical, which promises to be energetic and jubilant.

Returns expected

FTA regulars will be happy to find artists from here and elsewhere who made an impression during previous editions. Among them, Euripides Laskaridis with Elenit. The iconoclastic Greek creator and actor, present at the FTA with Titans in 2018, returns with this eccentric creation where he interprets a creature decked out in a gigantic dress speaking in an invented language.

Some will remember Korean artist Jaha Koo’s rice cookers in Cuckooin 2019. This time, it offers with The History of Korean Western Theater a theater drawing on both the documentary and the imaginary.

Longtime accomplices, Alix Dufresne and Étienne Lepage offer their first collaboration with Civilization malaisea performance for four actors that questions the limits of theatre.

Montreal choreographer Catherine Gaudet, for her part, will conclude the trilogy begun with The fading of the marvelous with The pretty thingsa creation for five performers, while Mélanie Demers offers at Théâtre Prospero Public confession.