This text is part of the special Theater booklet
Theater outside major centers is alive and always presented to curious audiences. However, players in the theatrical community in the region are raising their voices to make their particular challenges known. Among these, the difficulty of hosting productions from Montreal and Quebec at home… and vice versa.
Benoît Lagrandeur, artistic director of Théâtre La Rubrique, in Saguenay, is transparent about his situation. “Here, in the regions, the challenges are really enormous,” he states from the outset. To receive productions from major centers on tour in the regions, whether remote or not, you need staff , equipment and funding, three imperatives that seem quite difficult to meet. The shortage of trained technicians, which prevails throughout the province, is thus added to that of technical equipment. Necessary for the dissemination of shows designed in the metropolis and the capital, this one is missing in some rooms in our regions.
Pascale Joubert, general and artistic director of Théâtre À tour de role, located in Carleton-sur-Mer, in Gaspésie, knows the problem well. “Here, we don’t have places or training establishments. Workers and artists have to be recruited from outside, which entails transportation, accommodation and per diem which become huge for us,” she explains.
Financial challenges
Mme Joubert devotes nearly 30% of its annual budgets to questions of transportation and accommodation — a reality specific to its remote region which, one guesses, considerably limits its programming. “I usually try to work with people who are already on tour because they already have travel support. It would be impossible for me to welcome people and pay for transport and accommodation myself each time,” she says.
The costs accumulate, therefore, but the subsidies allocated to regional theaters, they do not move – and the price of tickets remains lower than in town, even for productions of the same ilk. “People here are only going to be willing to pay top dollar if we have a big headliner in our show,” says Benoît Lagrandeur. otherwise, is “absolutely non-existent”, notes Mr. Lagrandeur, also co-artistic director of the Festival international des arts de la marionnette in Saguenay, one of the most important events of its kind in the country and which is however little or not covered by the major daily year after year.
Build relationships
This sad observation raises an important point: the feeling of difficult communication between the major centers and the regions. “The people of Montreal and Quebec have a terrible misunderstanding of the realities outside their centers,” continues Benoît Lagrandeur unequivocally.
Pascale Joubert agrees with this. “We sometimes have the impression that in the regions, we are outlets for Montreal productions, but we are more than that! » she insists, underlining in passing that artistic creation in Carleton-sur-Mer, fundamentally alive, also seeks to navigate outside its bosom. Pascale Joubert mentions the great competitiveness of the Montreal environment (and that of Quebec City), where small companies in our regions are struggling to carve out a place for themselves, however abundant they may be.
“One of my dreams is to be able to make people understand that there is a center for creative theater here, in Gaspésie, and that we are open to exchanges and partnerships with major centres,” underlines Ms.me Joubert, which also welcomes artists in the framework of creative residencies in its theater by the sea. From the city outside, therefore, but also from the outside to the inside, the theater here wishes to open up to others… and to himself.
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, pertaining to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.