On Monday, March 21, the fifth and final ‘Journée de Réflexion’ — a series of formal consultations run by the Minister of Post-Secondary Education’s Office on the creation of a new policy concerning sexual violence on campuses — took place at Centre Mont-Royal. This conference was organized as the last formal consultation in a series of five similar “Days of Reflection” to take place across Quebec — the first four taking place in Chicoutimi, Sherbrooke, Quebec City, and Gatineau. Although announced in October by the Quebec government after the highly publicized outrage over a series of sexual assaults at Laval University in Quebec City, these initiatives have not adequately consulted students or groups working around these topics on the ground.

There was no doubt that the atmosphere of the conference was not particularly welcoming – in a room of almost two hundred invited participants, I was one of maybe ten student representatives in that space. There were even less than ten Black, Indigenous, or people of colour participants. Instead, the room was a sea of middle-aged white mid-level education administrators being presented information that was collected by other middle-aged white mid-level education administrators. This leads us to a very important point — the conference was not open to the public. Instead, you could only participate if you were explicitly sent an invitation – and there were multiple stories I heard of student associations being sent an invitation less than a week before the conference, or finding the invite in their junkmail after the RSVP deadline. The only way I was aware of this was as a member of the incoming Executive at Student Society of McGill — not as someone who has been doing grassroots work around combatting sexual violence on campus. Although there was regular contact between Québec Contre les Violences Sexuelles (QCVS), a nonpartisan group of organized activists who are working to tackle how sexual violence is received by society, neither QCVS nor other organizations already working around sexual violence were not consulted during the formation of these events – and QCVS was one of the only groups working around sexual violence that was invited. It became very clear that ultimately, if you didn’t have contact with the Minister of Education’s office, you didn’t get an invite, and therefore did not get a chance to have a say about what this new policy should look like.

The first half of the day was organized around a series of presentations by the Minister herself, and others who presented on either the findings of reports that were commissioned by the provincial government on this subject in October (the most interesting of which was Sexualité Sécurité Interactions En Milieu Universitaire (ESSIMU) – for those who speak French, I highly recommend looking through the findings), or presentations of campaigns that have already have been launched such as “Sans Oui C’est Non” (which I would argue is a good reflection of the overall approach of the government’s: well-intentioned and great in theory, but in practice very superficial in the change it implements), and “Ni Viande Ni Objet.” Halfway through, and after these presentations, there was a 15 minute question period for feedback.

During one of the question periods, McGill graduate and current Asssociation for the Voice of Education in Quebec (AVEQ) Coordinator of Mobilization and Associative Development, Kristen Perry, got up to criticize the lack of accessibility in the space, choosing to switch to speaking in English in solidarity with the English-speakers in the room who did not have access to translation of what was being said, or the information that was being presented. This became especially evident during what was undoubtedly the most important part of the day: when three survivors from the McGill chapter of Silence is Violence stood up during the question period and presented their stories, called for their voices to be included in this space, and in one case, publicly called out particular members of the McGill administration for mishandling and/or dismissing their cases – particular members who were sitting in that room right behind them.

This tactical disruption of proceedings was incredibly important and accomplished two pertinent things. Firstly, it linked the situations and concerns that were being theoretically discussed in these presentations and reports to real experiences, and secondly created a dialogue of accountability that hadn’t been in the space before. The dialogue shifted and was picked up by others in the room – how do we hold ourselves accountable as administrators? How do we hold our peers accountable?

I found myself in the absurd situation of having to translate and summarize what the survivors (who had presented in English) had said to the woman beside me who was a representative from a CÉGEP near Mont-Tremblant, and who only spoke French. I’m sure I was not the only person in the room failing to do justice to the powerful words that the survivors had just spoken. There is no doubt that the room was dominated by French-speakers, which is to be expected, however little to no accommodation was made towards Anglophones in the space, including the Anglophone associations who had been invited. This proved especially problematic in the case of the survivors’ intervention, as all three of the women spoke mostly in English. Without live or even whisper translations offered, there was no way to ensure that these supremely important voices were able to be understood by everyone sitting in a room in order to decide what would happen to cases like theirs.

AVEQ has been very involved in this process since the beginning, including drafting a statement with ASSÉ which heavily criticized the lack of student consultation and survivor-centred frameworks within the process of the consultations. I was told later by Perry that AVEQ had also requested several other accommodations which were not met, such as having active listeners in or outside the space, or that there be a way for people to contribute their thoughts or opinions in a way that did not require them to stand up in front of two hundred people and present into a microphone. It is clear that the conversation as to how to truly make spaces accessible to survivors was not one that was had. It is incredibly brave what the survivors from Silence is Violence did — and not something they and other survivors who spoke up during the day should have been forced to have to do. It was incredibly emotional, and because of the lack of supports in the space, the survivors in turn ended up having to comfort each other. Although each of the testimonies was arguably well-received (with Minister Helène David answering each speaker directly – in French — and an encouragement of the dialogue that was brought up made), there is no doubt that in an initiative led by mid to high-level administrators will be lacking in critical understanding. We have yet to see if they follow-up on the points of accessibility, intersectionality and accountability that was brought up in the room.

Now that the formal consultations are over, AVEQ and other student organizations’ efforts are going into affecting the actual outcome of these consultations — the creation of legislation at the provincial level about how to deal with sexual violence on campuses. Quite a few student groups and grassroots organizations who were present at at least one of the consultations are now in the process of writing a letter to the minister of education’s office with their reflections after these consultations: what went wrong, what was done right, what their hopes are for the new policy, and – most importantly – that they expect to be consulted during the drafting. This is crucial, especially as most of the drafting will be happening over the summer (the hope is to have a policy to implement at the beginning of the new school year in September), when many student organizations are their weakest due to the break in the school year and subsequent dispersion of the student body.

Leaving the conference, I felt both invigorated and frustrated. Invigorated because there was a room of two hundred people firmly committed that “c’est assez” (“enough”), and “il faut agir” (“we must act”), but frustrated because of who was leading this action process, once again rendering the incredible labour done by survivors and their allies on a day-to-day basis invisible. Good intentions can only go so far. If we want to make lasting, sustainable change on our campuses that directly addresses the gendered violence that happens on a day to day basis, those changes need to be implemented from the bottom-up, suggested and crafted by those who have been most affected by these systemic issues, not by our traditional policy-writers. This is exactly the same situation we are now facing with SSMU as we enter into the consultation processes for the creation of a new Gendered and Sexualized Violence Policy. We need to make sure that we work to prioritize the voices of those who have been working tirelessly on the ground and who against all odds — lack of institutionalized memory, an administration that dismisses student labour and pats itself on the back for a new policy but has a horribly long history of not believing nor supporting survivors etc – have remained resilient.

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Founded in 1987 by Andrés Hausmann, Imago Theatre began as a bilingual company intent on producing socially relevant work, which remains in their mandate to this day. Imago continues to produce new work by women and femmes that unpacks some of their lived experiences that theatre is oftentimes hesitant to address. In 2013, Micheline Chevrier became the company’s Executive and Artistic Director, focusing the company’s mandate towards supporting both emerging and established female artists, or artistas, and telling their stories.

The Daily sat down with Chevrier to talk about supporting women’s work, making theatre accessible, and why socially responsible theatre matters.

The McGill Daily (MD): Imago embraces the idea of a women-led initiative towards making art accessible to all – could you speak about accessibility and what that means to you and your company?
Micheline Chevrier (MC): We want to make sure that everyone can come and see what we’ve produced, so we’ve removed any financial or physical impediment for coming to see our work. We’ve started to have a Pay-What-You-Decide policy […] People can pay for their ticket beforehand, and they can also pay for their ticket after the show. They can pay whatever they want – anywhere from a nickel to a hundred dollars [The policy] is there for people to have complete accessibility to have no financial barrier. It is also important to us to make sure we’re in theatres that are [physically] accessible to everyone.

Imago [produces] new work by women and femmes that unpacks some of their lived experiences that theatre is oftentimes hesitant to address.

MD: Do you feel that Imago’s emphasis on financial accessibility addresses a lack in the Montreal, or even Canadian theatre scene?
MC: There is a misconception on the part of many theatres that if you don’t give [the show] a price, you are removing value from the product, which I couldn’t disagree with more because there is a lot of work that is offered for free either by the city or by the provincial government and I don’t think it diminishes [its value] at all. For example the Jazz Festival, the outdoor shows at Place des arts – you can see all these things for free, and I don’t think it diminishes the value of the art. I don’t know if we’re addressing a lack – it’s more bringing in a belief within the company. We believe in making things accessible.

MD: Could you tell us about your “Artista” program?
MC: “Artista” is a mentorship program for women between the ages from 16 to 21. It’s a free mentorship program […] The idea came from us wishing to [facilitate] a safe space for young women who are really working at identifying the conversation they want to be having, or finding a creative way to manifest what they’re thinking […], experiencing, [and] feeling, and then being able to share that with more established artists under their guidance and with their advice […] So [we are] creating an environment of learning but also of pursuing a conversation about being a young woman in 2016 […] That’s the idea behind the Artista program. It takes place over 13 weeks, between January [and] May […] These young women [will be] taking workshops in all kinds of theatre disciplines.

“[We are] creating an environment of learning but also of pursuing a conversation about being a young woman in 2016.”

MD: It is in your mandate to take up urgent social themes. Why do you think theatre is the best medium for these stories?
MC: First, theatre chose me and then I developed a way to use it. It’s funny because when I started out, I really wanted to tell stories. I loved the immediacy and the intimacy of theatre – it’s live, [and] it’s never the same night [to] night. Your connection to the audience is extremely unique every night and I liked that immediacy and the physical, sensorial experience of theatre. I always have felt that stories are what define us – they help us link [ourselves] to the past and to the future, they tell us where we’re from, where we’re going. [Theatre is] fiction based on truth, based on real events – sometimes inspired by them – but it’s a safe place to experience them and discuss those particular issues. [For example] the last production we did [about] Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (Pig Girl) [tackles] a really difficult, complex topic. And we can do that while creating characters that are involved in the situation, but they are fictional […] Theatre to me feels the best way to experience both emotionally and intellectually a discussion around [difficult] topics.

MD: What is your five year plan for Imago?
MC: What I love about a small company is that you are free to let it become what it needs to be, so that it’s leading the conversation, but it’s also responding at the same time […] It’s hard for me to say where I think we’ll be in 5 years […] I hope we’re still doing the kind of work that we’re doing now, [and] I hope that we’re able to do more of it. I [hope] that we would have more activities involving more artists, that we would be able to diversify our activities so that we can have a [broader] conversation. [I hope] the work that Imago does [continue to excite] both artists and audiences alike to the point where it could have an impact on the community here in Montreal and beyond. Inspiring people […] to put on theatre that provokes, that takes risk, that is dangerous, work with a consciousness, and also that has a responsibility attached to it. So that’s what I would hope, is that we would lead the way of people saying “I feel braver”’ and put on plays that really get us to talk and to think and all the while making great art, of course.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Imago Theatre is offering a series of professional workshops for both emerging and established artists next weekend as a fundraiser for the Artista program. Workshops will be led by artists such as Leslie Baker, Martha Ross, and Anana Rydvald, and will cover a broad spectrum in development of theatre craft. For more information, visit http://www.imagotheatre.ca/atelier-workshops/.

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As part of the feasibility study that guides the decision regarding the RVH site, the Principal’s Task Force on the Academic Vision and Mission of the RVH has been accepting proposals and suggestions regarding the use of space to get a representative picture of students’ voices. Metcalf’s initiative, in turn, aims to respond to students’ needs by making sure that new performing arts spaces reflect an interaction of music, dance and theatre. In particular, the petition suggests using the space at RVH to create 18 rehearsal spaces of different sizes, all with large windows, which would be outfitted with upright pianos, plug points, and light dimmers. Metcalf is convinced that her idea to use the space for performing arts “will not go to waste,” as McGill students are “intellectual, driven, and diligent,” and all they need is an incentive to continue growing.

“Ultimately, the goal would be to create an incorporated, collaborative space for the performing arts to flourish here at McGill, and to encourage communication across our many [diverse] communities,” Metcalf told The Daily. She hopes to make it possible for students outside of performing arts to cultivate their talents further and continue growing artistically. “Having space that could be rented by any student, no matter what faculty, […] would change drastically the relationship between McGill and its students, allowing students to keep up with extracurriculars [that] they […] do not have a space for on their own,” she added.

According to the petition, the performing arts community at McGill often has difficulties finding rehearsed spaces on campus, leaving only inconvenient alternatives. “[This includes] praying [that] the English Room isn’t booked, grabbing any free SSMU [Students’ Society of McGill University] room you happen to get your hands on, […] or sometimes even sneaking into the proper rehearsal spaces at Concordia,” Anurag Choudhury, an English major who has been involved in many shows on campus, told The Daily.

Sophie van Bastelaer, the director of Players’ Theatre’s upcoming Dinner production told The Daily, “Trying to find rehearsal space for Dinner […] we […] would trudge to the Sherbrooke 688 [building] in the evenings, competing with hordes of other groups, prowling around the building looking for open, cramped, [and] loud rooms in which to rehearse.”

The university administration says that, although it is “keenly aware of McGill’s space deficit,” long-term planning is what is on the agenda for reconstructuring the RVH site. “The key with RVH is to develop an exciting long-term vision for this new campus that is seen as furthering our academic mission and other strategic priorities,” McGill’s Vice-Principal (Administration, and Finance) Michael Di Grappa told The Daily in an email. Notably, the first phase of the project is estimated to take no less than five to seven years.

In her proposal, Metcalf gives examples of students who had to give up practicing artistic hobbies in their free time because there was no space for them to self-improve. Oscar Lecuyer, an English Department Drama and Theatre representative, told The Daily, “I have heard of countless amazing ambitious projects pitched by my fellow colleagues and peers that have slowly shrivelled and died under the organisational pressure that this lack of spaces is forcing students to undertake.”

Metcalf’s petition aims to collect 500 signatures by tonight. In mid-February, Metcalf will send her proposal and petition to the University. If it approves the proposal, it will then be compared with other suggestions for RVH’s space redistribution. Metcalf is worried, however, that the University’s focus on sciences and research will skew the perspective and result in the RVH space being turned exclusively into labs. “RVH is a huge facility, it could hold fifty groups. I just want to be sure that the performing arts are a part of it,” she said.

Groups such as Seeing Voices Montreal and Players’ Theatre have been very supportive of the project. “There are professors willing to support this initiative as well, so even if you don’t take it from us, take it from them,” added Metcalf.

Metcalf, and all of the students backing her proposal, are convinced that these spaces are an essential interdisciplinary resource to facilitate learning, sharing, and creating. According to van Bastelaer, “Vague citations about money and spatial concerns should no longer be an excuse for the physically and artistically cramped environments McGill performers are told they have no choice but to deal with.”

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Heart’s Desire feels like David Ives’s comic play Sure Thing (where the characters similarly go back in time and make different choices at the ring of a bell). A middle-class family — father (Max Katz), mother (Amalea Ruffett), and aunt (Sasha Blakeley) — waits in its kitchen for the return of the daughter (Natalie Liconti) from Australia. However, every time the buzzer goes off, the family resets, doing the scene or a certain part of the scene over again, with small permutations that gradually become more and more absurd. All of a sudden, the audience finds itself moving from Ives into the more fantastical and farcical absurdity of Arthur Kopit’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad.

Here, the tech team, headed by José Camargo, steals the show, not missing a single beat on the quick light and sound cues of the first act. The constant repetition induced by the buzzer gives the sensation that the characters are marionettes, helpless against a force larger than themselves. However, as they go further into the scene, it seems as if they may be incapable of deviating from their own inner fears, desires, and internal monologues, attempting to both articulate and escape from self-repression at each ring of the bell.

The constant repetition induced by the buzzer gives the sensation that the characters are marionettes, helpless against a force larger than themselves.

The second one-act, Blue Kettle, continues the theme of a manipulatable narrative as Derek (Martin Seal) goes about convincing women that he is their son. Gradually, more words in the dialogue are replaced with the words “blue” or “kettle,” alienating the audience by forcing them to analyze the fragmented dialogue.

Although this second piece does not seem as well-worked as the first, there are some wonderful moments of character-play, particularly from Anna Lytvynova as Mrs. Vane, Kelly Lopes as Mother, and Maxine Dannatt as Miss Clarence. A sense of incompleteness rings throughout, with the decontextualized narrative, missing words, and Chip Limeburner’s set design, which is scaled down further from the fairly realistic kitchen set of the previous piece.

However, this incompleteness is much more engaging than the over-rehearsed quality of the first play. The feeling of risk in the play draws in the audience as the actors work through delivering dialogue that becomes more and more nonsensical.

A sense of incompleteness rings throughout, with the decontextualized narrative, missing words, and Chip Limeburner’s set design, which is scaled down further from the fairly realistic kitchen set of the previous piece.

English language theatre in Montreal has seemed to be obsessed with Caryl Churchill in the past couple of years — there have been at least five productions of Churchill in Montreal within the last three years – ranging from Top Girls at the Segal Centre to Love and Information at Dawson College — and not without reason. The postmodernist, feminist British author has written over thirty plays, and is arguably the only woman who has gained popular recognition alongside big names like Beckett, Pinter, and Chekov, as a playwright who revolutionized the language of theatre.

The language used in the more surrealist plays of the second half of her oeuvre (of which Blue Heart is part) is hard to describe, being an amalgam of Cixous, Ives, and Beckett — a sort of deconstructive, absurd écriture féminine. However, in Heart’s Desire, the focus seems to be on the destruction of time, rather than the normally Churchillian focus on the structures of language.

What will strike theatre-goers most about Blue Heart is the thick undercurrent of fear and panic in Heart’s Desire. The constant repetition of a middle-class family giving freedom to their latent anxieties — fears of death, of change, of unhappiness, of entrapment, of “not doing things right” — welds itself into a palpable suburban terror. The permutations of these themes seem endless while watching, and suddenly, the Ives-like silliness of what started as a benign game of forward-reverse, is gone.

Blue Heart plays at 8 p.m. from November 25 to 28 in Morrice Hall.

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I first heard of the great feminist actor/director/writer/pedagogue (and self-proclaimed neo-clown) Pol Pelletier in a McGill course on Quebec literature, where her name was inextricably linked to the fierce creativity of the feminist theatre scene in Montreal in the 1980s, before the movement disappeared completely after ten short years. This disappearance was never explained, and no matter whom I asked, no one really seemed to have an answer as to why all of a sudden this great movement ended. Then, through happenstance, I ran into Pelletier.

McGill hosted the annual Women and Theatre Program conference over the summer, which I was very excited for and ultimately very disappointed by. It was yet another room of mostly white women talking about their research on feminist theatre undertaken in the nineties. To add insult to injury, the majority of the panelists were American and had little to no knowledge of Montreal’s theater scene, past or present. Not once was the feminist theatre of today – in Canada or elsewhere – ever discussed.

The lights dim and Pol “Je suis une rèvolution!” Pelletier walks toward us from a side door at the end of the room, white gloved in all black clothes with red high heels – La Robe Blanche begins.

Enter Pelletier. Invited to speak at a roundtable on feminism and Canadian theatre (the only French-speaking artist invited), she swept into the room, dramatically opened all of the curtains covering the windows, patiently waited for her turn as each of the women introduced themselves, and launched into a twenty-minute speech about the disappearance of feminist theatre in Quebec and why roundtables on the subject are meaningless. It was one of the most powerful and impassioned performances I had ever seen. And the most impressive part? After her speech, she sat back down and participated in the rest of the discussion.

Her goal was to shake up the palpable complacency and sense of a ‘job well done’ in the room in order to stimulate some dialogue. She succeeded – what followed was by far the most stimulating dialogue of the entire conference.

At the Centre Humaniste, I had the pleasure of seeing La Robe Blanche, the autobiographical play Pelletier wrote in 2012 after a major bout of burnout – something that has plagued her throughout her career. La Robe Blanche follows Pelletier’s life, starting with the sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of her town’s priest, Father Desjardins. Pelletier utilizes her personal experience with abuse in order to highlight the clergical oppression entrenched within the history and life of Quebec. Forty-five years after the Quiet Revolution, this point might seem irrelevant to the contemporary Quebecois experience. However, Pelletier reminded the audience with her piece that the aims of this revolution are far from achieved.

Montreal’s new religion is its art, its church, its theatre, its priests, its famous Robert Lepages. It continues to repress the voices and bodies of women just like its Catholic predecessor. The patriarchy still rules, and Pelletier has been trying for her entire artistic career to fight it.

The audience watched as Nicole Pelletier, the victimized three-year-old and then troubled teen, grows up to become Pol Pelletier, the formidable force we know today. Pelletier tells us that the figure of le curè, the priest, has not disappeared in Quebec – he is now simply taking on different forms. Montreal has in fact created a new kind of church, one where the same patriarchal values of the Catholic Church still reign.

Montreal’s new religion is its art, its church, its theatre, its priests, its famous Robert Lepages. It continues to repress the voices and bodies of women just like its Catholic predecessor. The patriarchy still rules, and Pelletier has been trying for her entire artistic career to fight it.

What’s the mother of the Montreal feminist theatre movement’s take on why it ended so suddenly? Her view, expressed both at the panel and in La Robe Blanche, is that Quebec’s feminist awakening of the eighties died an abrupt and violent death on December 6, 1989, along with the 14 women at École Polytechnique. That same year, the Quebec government engaged in a battle with the its most celebrated archetype of the woman: its nurses (examples include Jeanne Mance, Marguerite Bourgeoys, et cetera). When the nurses went on strike over wages, the government responded by fining them for every day of work they missed. All of a sudden, women’s voices were being violently silenced – something that affected the crèatrices in Montreal profoundly. According to Pelletier, they all moved away or stopped making art out of fear: fear of the backlash, of the message being sent that if you were a woman who took up too much space, you would be punished.

All of a sudden, women’s voices were being violently silenced – something that affected the crèatrices in Montreal profoundly. 

By 1995, the Thèâtre Expèrimental des Femmes, a theatre Pelletier founded with two other women in 1985, decided to broaden its scope, rename itself Thèâtre Espace Go, and move away from its mandate of strictly feminist creation that Pelletier had been directing. When it moved to its new home on St. Laurent, Espace Go decorated its facade with 12 quotes – all by men. The administration later added six quotes from women, but none from its founder Pelletier.

One of the things Pelletier speaks about is the shame attached to the radical feminist Quebecois creations of the eighties. In Pelletier’s own theatre theory titled “Thèâtre des Sauvages,” she focuses on centralizing the woman’s marginalized voice and body in order to combat sexist stereotypes. To Pelletier, the theatre is a house that can heal through the linking of the collective unconscious and facilitating the voice of the woman.

La Robe Blanche leads us through all of this and more, leaving the audience blinking in the light as Pelletier takes her bows. One thing is certain: Pelletier not only is one of the most powerful performers I have ever seen, but has also perfected the skill of weaving art and politics into the fabric of performance. At 67, she continues to be one of the loudest and most energetic voices in the Montreal theatre scene, even as fewer and fewer people turn to listen and write her off as eccentric and militantly feminist. Pelletier’s aim is to tell us that the battle is far from over; there is no time to rest on our collective laurels. We are still fighting against a patriarchal society, and Pelletier will say this as loud and as long as she can in little rooms around the city until people start to listen and invite her to perform in bigger ones.

The post Je suis une révolution appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Although it has faced several large obstacles over the years, Fringe today is snuggly woven into the fabric of the Montreal community.  

When The Daily spoke to Amy Blackmore, now in her 5th year as executive & artistic director of the festival, one thing was clear – her championship of the shows’ accessibility to the greater Montreal community and of the festival’s role in community building.  One of her current projects for the festival is to promote the creation of bilingual work, reflecting the identity of the city which hosts the festival. This plays directly into the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals’ (CAFF) ideals of producing work “selected on non-juried basis,” having no artistic censorship, and being easily accessible to all artists and audience members.

It is not surprising that with the amount of theatre work happening at McGill – through Players’ Theatre, the Tuesday Night Cafe (TNC) Theatre, and the like – a hub for marginal, new theatre has emerged on campus. 

It is no secret that McGill remains, to a large extent, an upper-middle-class-anglo bubble removed from the greater Montreal community, despite the work done by various student groups to remedy this.  So, it is endlessly fascinating that from this isolated world, such a long-lasting and comprehensive community-based festival has emerged. It is not surprising that with the amount of theatre work happening at McGill – through Players’ Theatre, the Tuesday Night Cafe (TNC) Theatre, and the like – a hub for marginal, new theatre has emerged on campus. However, when Fringe outgrew its academic home and moved to its current Plateau location, it suddenly had to cater to the needs of a community much more diverse than that of McGill.

Since its inception, Fringe and Montreal quickly became the thickest of thieves, with the festival making adjustments as it went along, such as mandating that half the local shows be in French and, recently, adding a ‘bilingual’ category for shows. Fringe has been successfully responding to the pulse of its host city.

This is not as easy a feat as it may seem. Fringe is one of the few festivals that foster discussion between francophone and anglophone artistic communities in the city. This is thanks to, in large part, Fringe’s beer tent. The ability to chat with anyone involved with the festival over a beer in a casual environment is vital to the life of Fringe, successfully dismantling any schmoozing stigmas attached to inter-artist discussion. The festival has taken this even further, introducing the 13th Hour at Petit-Campus as a nightly after-party, giving shows an advertisement opportunity as well as creating a casual atmosphere for artists and audience members to mingle.

The ability to chat with anyone involved with the festival over a beer in a casual environment is vital to the life of Fringe, successfully dismantling any schmoozing stigmas attached to inter-artist discussion.

It is in the creation of this environment that Montreal differs from other Fringe festivals, preserving a calm, unceremonious, and uncompetitive vibe that is typically absent from other Fringes.  It is easy for those who have been to the larger Toronto or Edinburgh Fringe festivals to associate the idea of Fringe with an overwhelming experience. Montreal is refreshing with its open, non combative air – but don’t let that fool you into thinking that it’s not as ground-breaking as other Fringes.

Montreal is the perfect incubator for new work, with the mixing of cultures and electric undercurrent of social unrest.  Speaking to The Daily, Blackmore stressed that audiences want to see stories that are relevant to them, presented by people who have lived those same experiences. Although Montreal’s Fringe still needs to take active steps to distance itself from the white privileged space of  mainstream theatre (the audience members and performers still remain predominately Anglo and white), it is invigorating to step into a world that fosters new and multidisciplinary work, made for the people of this city largely by those who live within it.  

On its 25th birthday, Montreal’s Fringe remains an integral part of the city’s summer arts culture, and an important place for artists of any kind to create and share.

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Curating the festival’s 18th year, Nutter is making the mission of pushing conventions in English theatre very clear with her eclectic lineup of shows. This year, the Wildside shows promise to shock curious attendees with mature content portrayed through not so mature perspectives. With shows ranging from an epic rock opera (Johnny Legdick: A Rock Opera) to hypnotic poetry and dance (Coming and Going), Wildside brings something new to the local scene.

The idea of community is key to Nutter’s vision of the festival. A theatre creator herself, she found while touring her work that in places as close as Winnipeg and as far as Brussels, there was not a knowledge of the English-speaking theatre scene in Montreal. It became a personal mission of hers to create a dialogue about this scene, first within Montreal itself and then at an international level.

“It was frustrating. […] I want to [create] bridges – have people from different arts and groups come together and get to know each other’s work and support each other,” Nutter explained to The Daily.

Wildside is showcasing many local talents with shows from comedy troupe Uncalled For, homegrown dance collective For Body and Light, local creator Leslie Baker, and up-and-coming production company Playwright Hero. Stéphanie Morin-Robert, choreographer of Coming and Going – For Body and Light’s blend of dance, light, and spoken word – emphasized the importance of collaborative opportunities within the festival. “My cross-disciplinary [and] cross-generational collaboration with spoken word artist and musician Ian Ferrier has been an extremely enriching experience. […] Our company aims to not only break the boundary between physical and verbal expression by colliding both into a show, but it also [attempts] to push the approachability of both disciplines by making them accessible to all types of audience members.”

Wildside is giving artists from local, national, and even international (UK’s The Way You Tell Them) levels a chance to get familiar with each other’s work. The sense of comraderie, both between the artists and between the artists themselves and the audience, was palpable on opening night last Wednesday. In the audience you feel as much a part of the event as the performers. Most of the seven shows at Wildside this year are also collective creations rather than plays, which means they are able to constantly evolve in a way that many plays written by a single writer cannot. As Nathan Howe, co-creator, director, and composer of Aiden Flynn Lost His Brother So He Made Another told The Daily, “It is very refreshing to find different audiences in different centres. It really changes the show on the go.”

What the festival’s shows all have in common is that they invite us to join this community of artists in reflecting on our modern existence in strange and unexpected ways.

“I like to think of [the festival] as a banquet, or a big family dinner,” Nutter told The Daily.

A personal must-see is Coming and Going, which I caught at the Victoria Fringe over the summer. Morin-Robert described her poetry and dance show to The Daily as being “for anyone willing to set sail and float away on an unforgettable ocean dream. […] For anyone willing to just be.’” When I saw the show, I was sucked into the sensorial world of subtleties between light and darkness, sound and silence, movement and stillness.

While the plays are promising, the festival does not stop at theatre this year. The Offside Festival, now in its second year, is the wilder side of Wildside. It begins at 11 p.m. every night except for Sundays. Several young artists have been commissioned to create pieces in a limited amount of time, such as an improv slideshow. The Offside will also include an open mic night, and two Tom Waits tributes. Aside from the performances, The Offside provides a chance to connect with Montreal’s theatre community – to chat over drinks with other theatre-makers and theatre-lovers.

Lastly, the Wildside Art Exhibit, a ‘first-come-first-serve’ gallery, keeps true to the theme of unconventionality. For all ten days of the festival, Centaur’s Seagram’s Gallery will be filled to the brim with as much art as it can handle. All name-dropping is pushed aside in a defiance of general gallery convention. The first people to sign up in December now have their art on the walls, no fancy credentials required.

Under Nutter’s direction, Wildside is again fulfilling its vision of cultivating homegrown theatre in Montreal. However, we should keep in mind that there is perhaps too much comedy in the lineup to full-heartedly back the festival’s claim of producing all ‘risky’ theatre – some of the shows may go for the laughs above innovation. But even if not all performances are challenging boundaries, they are uniquely theatrical. The shows won’t let you sit back comfortably and tune out, pushing the audience to be active participants. In the age of Netflix, theatre has been given up by some as a dead art. But by supporting emerging artists who revitalize archaic conventions, Wildside is helping to bring the art form back to life.

Wildside Theatre Festival runs from January 7 to 11 and 13 to 17.  at the Centaur Theatre (453 rue Saint Francois-Xavier). Student tickets are $12.50 and a Student Superpass offers 4 shows for $40.

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