For 26 years, I have been teaching theater for my own school where children, teenagers and adults gather, on weekday evenings or weekends, to express themselves, create and vibrate on the boards!
Posted at 2:00 p.m.
For many of them, art is not a hobby, but a necessity.
It’s not a whim, it’s a way of life. It is a look at the world.
It’s a place where they can be themselves in all their differences.
It is their space of freedom!
For 22 months, schools like mine have been shut down intermittently, as have restaurants and all “non-essential” businesses. (Besides, what a pain to hear that we are “non-essential” when we are training the young people of tomorrow. We are less essential than a doctor, I agree, but less fundamental than a shrink? the question !)
Since the beginning of the pandemic, during press briefings, we have heard about the importance of sport for young people: the power of physical activity on mental health in order to evacuate stress and achieve fulfillment.
But never do we mention the importance of culture as an outlet for thousands of young people!
Not all young people love the Canadiens and many don’t give a damn about having a hockey team in Quebec. These young people are the creative people of tomorrow that we will need as artists, engineers, architects or authors!
Schools like mine don’t have the power of big sports associations to make their voices heard in the media! But, please, when the time comes to revive “leisure”, pay equal attention to both cultural and sporting activities.
At the same time, you will restart our art schools, which have been struggling for 22 months. You will tell dance teachers that their work is liberating, improv teachers that their creativity brings ideas and theater teachers that to build a sensible world, it takes sensitive humans.