 I'm still waiting for you to say love me so, but your body's telling me to go, time just can't wait for you to say love me so, but your body's telling me to go, time just can't wait for you to say love me so. It's academic and it's the place where they both meet. You've got vlogging and part of the story that's going on. We've made some practices and we're starting with practices. Samples of linen. Sharing what it means to share a house with you back. There's nobody you can ignore that you know that you aren't. Well, tomorrow I'm going to come and sit and talk about it. What time is it now, uh, Danielle? It started out about different people and about different things. A whole scene of an armor theater for everybody. Yes, everybody. That's it for two weeks now. And in two months we're spending a brighter relationship today. I'm already sure. So welcome everybody to the Markely Siegel Theater Center here at the Guadé Center. Clearly my name is Frank Henschka. I'm the executive director and director of programs together with Antio Ugel. This is a very special evening tonight for us. I think it's hopefully an opening of a long lasting dialogue again with the Quebecois playwrights and playwrights from Canada. These two countries are so very close. They share a border but they seem to be so far away. And often Canadian writers, Quebecois writers are better known in Paris or Berlin or Barcelona than they actually are in New York City. And I think that should not be the case. Not only that we should listen always to our neighbors and know what is going on. Also it is actually really good work. It's good work for the theater. And you will hear tonight from the offerings. We are very, very lucky to have with us three playwrights. So there's Sarah, Michael, and David. Well, who you are. Here there's Eric. They flew in from Montréal which is the center of the Canadian theater and to be with us tonight. And I hope you will join us afterwards. We have at the archive bar. It's around the corner a reception with some food and drinks. The address is in here. It's on 36 between 5th and Madison on the south side. But we also will have after the readings a little some discussions about the work. I would first like to thank Emmanuel Siroir who was a visiting scholar at the Siegel Center. And Emmanuel at that time became a project manager for international relations of C'est Attes et Sontres. It is création artistique, parmatique. No, c'est de vous faire de la main. Yeah, so it is a playwright organization, a very significant one, important one. And that's when we also said we should take off, keep on the dialogue. It helped us also all the other part just got to come this later the fall of November also you should be helped us to get this done. And also the key back of our office here in New York City of the government, the delegation made this happen with also financial support. It is actually a big thing. And what I really do come, we have three directors, actors, playwrights of that. And I would like to say Caroline and Jean Pierre who are over here. This is one of the delegation. And it's really truly an important dialogue we all should be having. We also have Brigitte, another Canadian playwright and multi-media artist director also with us. We will leave out a little bit of forward she's here for six months to be inspired by the city to create a new work. So Emmanuel will tell us a little bit about theater but this evening and then Eve, a teacher of theater or a professor of theater he was a little context for theater in Quebec in Montreal. I think it's always good to learn a little bit of the surroundings to know a little bit about what we don't know and how it will also inspire all of you to go to Montreal, to go to Quebec but perhaps also for our Canadian friends to come here. One of the writers I think, Michael, right? David, who said he was the first time? Yeah, it was my first time. So you're the first time you came to New York City? Yes, today. Yes, today. So it's amazing, it amazes me and this is also what we do. The evening should not last longer than close to two hours and the reception will be afterwards. We'll be here in the archive bar if you have a cell phone now it's the time to take it out and do the same and just check that it is not ringing and thank you all again for coming and I'll handle what you did in my room. Hi, everyone. So I will speak about Lucie and me which is a playwright's centre-based in Montreal and also will introduce the artists and the plays of the corpus that we're going to stage tonight. But first of all, I would like to thank French Fetch Coeur and the entire family of the Seagull Centre for their kind support and kind invitation. I would also like to thank Jean-Pierre Villon and Caroline Dufresne from the delegation of Québec in New York. Thank you. Playwrights and artists that are with us tonight and my amazing colleagues in Montreal of the CED, especially Nicole Doucet for her trust and leadership. So about the CED. It's a found in 1965. The CED now has close to 250 Francophone members from Québec and Canada and provides support for playwriting, development and promos cubiqua plays and playwrights. Renowned internationally of the main reference in contemporary French language, Dramaturgy from Québec and Canada, the CED regularly organises its events in partnership with other countries. It has been over the last few years a strong international network of Dramaturgs, artistic directors, translators, also as scholars and artists, especially in France, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. Over the years, we have worked with numerous cultural organisations such as the Deutsche Theater, the KBS, which is the Flammish Royal Theater, Tarmac, France, also La Maison, the Playwrights Studio in Glasgow, the Recrétaire Hall in Ouagadougou and of course the Festival des Francophones in Ouagadougou. At the moment, we are developing projects with the Southern Rec Theater in New Orleans and L'Archartreuse, which is a playwriting centre located in Alignon. We are also in contact with the Royal Theater in Finland and the Stuttgart in Heidelberg, which is a festival of contemporary playwriting in Germany. The aim of the CED is to support its playwright members in their creative process and to encourage the production of their works. We also own a major resource centre that includes over 5,000 published and unpublished plays. Let me introduce the artists and scholars that are with us for the evening. First, Yves Gbenville, who is the professor of theatre studies and current director of the theatre schools of Université du Québec à Montmégal. His works focus, among other topics, on the historiography of theatre in Québec and contemporary theatre practices. There's also Sarah Berthion, who is an actress, a writer and also a director. She has written and co-authored a dozen plays, many of which have been translated into English and or German. Her first play, The Flood Day After, written when she was still studying at the theatre school, won a reward prize and has been staged in a reading during the 2007 Festival d'Aignan. Yukon Style was presented simultaneously in Brussels, Toronto, Montreal and Paris at the theatre La Colline, where Wajizimawa is the current current artistic director. David Parquet graduated from the Kerai programme of the National Theatre School of Canada in 2006. In 2010, he won the Governor General's Award for French-English Drama and the Michel Tromblin Prize for his play Porcupine, which will be staged in New York pretty soon. Next brain. Hi, Sophie Aubert. Yeah, and 2014 won prestigious presses in France, Canada, but as in Germany, where it was staged at the Deutsche Theatre. He has also been nominated for the Deutsche Yukon Theatre Prize in 2016. His play, I came by the critics of Brazil. The blaze hasn't been translated yet and is currently presented at the Centre du Théâtre de Jolietier in Montreal at the moment. And Michel Marrouchard has written more than 25 plays and have been translated to several languages and performed in the most prestigious and festival worldwide. His best known works are Villiers, The Faluette, The Orphanian News, The News of Hélène, Down Dangerous Passes Road, The Chamelepas Tangereuse and also Thomas de Farm that have been adapted for the cinema by Xavier Dolan in 2013. He is the recipient of the numerous awards, including the National Arts Centre award, Le Prix de la S.A.C.D. from Paris and the LABDA award from New York in 2014. And the Primo Candle in Italy. And more recently, he was the recipient of the Lauren McCutcheon Award and the Gaston Thomas Award. He is also an officer of the Order of Canada and a chevalier of the Lourdes Nationales du Québec. Finally, we are lucky enough to welcome tonight Brigitte Poupard, a Métis Spanish artist who is currently in residence in New York. She founded her theatre company in 1991 and has since played in more than 30 plays in Montreal in the world. In 2005, she curated in a Montrealer theatre called Espace Gau, the week of the political theatre. And in 2012, she directed a documentary Over My Dead Body, staging the choreographer de Saint Pierre. And Over My Dead Body has been screened in New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Hamburg, Munich, Tel Aviv, Fungapo, Ebenki, and Copenhagen. The corpus of plays that will be presented tonight stand up for their powerful dramaturgical structure and highlight specific themes such as violence, desires, their relation to motherness, and the way territory affects languages. This is true mostly in New Kong style, where the North at one point become a poetic character. Thank you a lot, then. Please enjoy giving. Scene one, Greyhound. Oh, I apologize. Yukon style. My Sarah Batheon. Scene one, Greyhound. A road at night. Kate is hitchhiking in her hardcore Lolita dress. White horse. Night. Winter. Minus 45 degrees Celsius. The threshold between cold and death. A girl dressed like a doll has hitchhiking along the main track. Could be mistaken for a hooker with her 17 year old legs cramped in all that lace and her stubborn resolve to find herself on the road at this time of the night. Not a hooker, though. Just a girl dressed like a doll at minus 45 degrees Celsius. She's cold, obviously. Snow crunching under her platform boots. Lace rustling on her frozen thighs. Her first name makes its way from the warmth of her belly to the edge of her lips and escapes as a fine pink dew into the sharp New Kong night. Jane. The girl's size shouldn't have gotten off. Should have stayed on the bus one more night. Climb higher still. Get lost even deeper in the improbable north. Push this insane flight even further into the mountains, the fumes, the bison herds, and the ANWs. But... White horse. The blurry image of a white stallion on streets paved with gold. So here she is. Hitchhiking at minus 45 degrees Celsius in her dolly outfit, standing on the threshold between cold and death. I don't know her yet. This girl. But it shouldn't be long. Sound of an engine. Born. Kate takes her backpack and exits. She's arriving at my place. Scene two. The hitchhiking doll. Garen is watching TV. A news report on the Robert Picton trial is starting. Yuko enters, followed by Kate. They take their boots off. Bathroom. Garen turns, looks at them. Over there. Kate, still wearing her coat, disappears into the bathroom. Who's that? A girl hitchhiking. You know her? No. Why'd you pick her up? Cubs couldn't leave her there. She pees and goes. I don't want her to leave by herself. Well, she's not sleeping here. There won't be any trouble. She'll just... Kate comes out of the bathroom with her coat over her arm. The toilet won't flush. Garen turns to face the TV. Yuko turns the volume way up. Leans towards Garen and speaks to him in the whispers. She's not sleeping here. I'm asleep with her. I'm just asking you to... No. She'll sleep on the couch. She'll kill you to let her sleep on the couch. I just don't want to. Why not? For starters, it pisses me off that you bring someone in the house. So if on top of that, she's a hooker, I... Oh, enough with the hooker thing. Look at how she's dressed. Precisely. If we let her go out like that, she'll just get assaulted by a gang of fucking... Natives. Say it. Just get assaulted by a gang of fucking natives. A gang of fucking natives? Exactly. Too bad. We'll serve her right for dressing like that. You're all hookers and we're all rapists. That's just fucking great. Too fucking bad. It's my couch. She grounds the coat from Kate's hands and hangs it up. Are you hungry? Garen gets up abruptly and exits to his room. Garen, my roommate. He never gets laid. Makes him nervous. She hands Kate a pack of beef jerky. Are you in India? I'm Japanese. What are you doing here? I was fed up with Japan. I integrated. Sure, but why here? I searched the web for the place in the world with the fewest Japanese people. It was here. So I sold everything and came over. So you've heard of Harajuku, right? No. What is it? A neighborhood in Tokyo. And why would I have heard of it? It's how you're dressed, Harajuku girl. That's what it's called, your style. I dress like this because I feel like it. Look, it's not really any of my business, but if I were you, I'd make sure I feel like I'm wearing something else when I'm hitchhiking at midnight in downtown Whitehorse. Why? First, because you'll freeze your ass off. And second, because you're asking to be grabbed by people you don't necessarily want grabbing you. I don't care. I'm already pregnant. Is there a clinic around here? What for? An abortion. I am 17. Who's the father? He's the guy from the bus. I felt like it. I have a t-shirt. I dress itches when I'm sleeping. Kate settles in on the couch. As I look for something to clothe Kate's body, cotton to put on her numb skin and inhabited belly, Garen watches her breathe through his shut door. One might imagine that he wants her, staring at her like that from behind the plywood, listening to her body invade the living room, sensing her sickly sweet breath, beef jerky unborn child, seep into the walls and the cracks of the couch. But Garen doesn't want her. No. He's focused on painstakingly hating her. The stranger, the parasite, the lace-clad hooker that I've taken under my wing and into my truck in the lower depths of the night. If he didn't love me so much, Garen would throw Kate out without a second thought. But Garen loves me, though of his love I am yet unaware. So he retreats and leaves her there, that girl. Let her sprawl her icy body into the cracks of the couch and fall asleep. Outside, a raven the size of a wolf comes and sets his black feet on the windowsill. It watches Garen go to bed, fully dressed, folding his knees into his belly like when he was two years old. Garen falls asleep and the raven smiles. Scene three, watch out for natives. Morning. Garen is standing by the couch drinking coffee. He's watching Kate. She wakes up. Hey. Where's the girl? She's working. Don't you work too? Yes. What do you do? I wash dishes. Do you like it? Do you like it? What? Washing dishes. No. So what makes you think I would like it? I don't know. I was just asking. What's the girl's name again? Yuko. Do you think she looks like an Indian? She's Japanese. I know. But I think she looks like an Indian. Like, if she had grades, you could totally think she was an Indian. Are there a lot of Indians around here? More than you think. I met this guy on the bus who said that you could always find them hand-handling in groups in front of liquor stores because they don't have justice. Apparently no one wants to hire them because Indians just can't be trusted. It's in their culture that they can't be trusted. The guy was saying that he lived on a reserve for this contract he had, some construction job or whatever. Every month when the government checks would come in, there'd be this crazy massive fear mesh all over the reserve. And I mean massive, real low-class shit. Apparently the men got so wasted that they had to lock up the women and children inside their houses. One year they realized that the government checks were on the same day as Halloween. They had this state meeting to figure out what to do so that nothing would happen to all the kids on the streets in their costumes, you know? So they decided to cancel Halloween that year. That's what they decided to cancel Halloween. Pretty crazy, huh? Darren puts his cup on the floor. You leaving? Yes. Going to work? Yes. Okay. Bye. Kate picks up Darren's coffee and takes a sip. He comes back towards her and brutally grabs the mug from her hand. Shit! That's the thing with us Indians. We just can't be trusted. He leaves, seeing four of the High Country Inn. Kitchen in the High Country Inn. You go as cooking. Darren is busy with the dishwasher. Lunch in the kitchen of the High Country Inn. The rush, heroin, merciless. The rush will bring them to their knees, the newbies, the poorly trained, the oversensitive. The rush will make them lock themselves in the bathroom, yelling that they can't take it, that they were given too many tables. That they can't finish their shift and just want to go home. In the epicenter of the chaos, in the eye of the storm of the heroin rush, there she is, the queen. In her white jacket and her houndstooth pants, towering from her six foot height in her moose-like frame, a vessel of calm in a tight, coyote frame, there she is. Magnificent. Oriental. Regal. Don't fuck with you going to the kitchen at the High Country Inn. She's in charge. She can yell. She can juggle the fried calamari in the mixed-green salad with raspberry vinaigrette. She holds the key to the hot chicken sauce, the ham sushi, and the animal nuggets on the kid's menu. She controls all. She beholds all. She triumphs always. On the other side of the kitchen, stuck between the sink and the freezer, is Gary. In his old Canucks t-shirt and his dirty apron, Gary, sweaty, silent, piling dishes into the dishwasher's building. He doesn't flinch. He's dreaming. A first name makes its way from the cold of his belly to the edge of his lips and escapes as a fine blue dew into the steam of the clean dishes. Yuko. And as though she might have heard him, Yuko lifts her glance from the cutting board and joins him in the tropical micro-climate of his oozing dishwasher. Where were you? Nowhere. The bosses were looking for you. How come? Because you're late. Again. No? Yes. No. Yuko sighs. You've got to stop doing that, Garen. Doing what? Spacing out, disappearing, flipping into Indian time when something's bothering you. I told the bosses I had sent you to buy something. Thanks. I'm sick of covering for you. Buy a goddamn watch. Was the girl still there when you got up? Yeah. I told her she could stay as long as she wants. She heads towards her station. Where? Are you? Are you? Am I what? Well, I mean, do you want to do her? The girl? Yeah. You're crazy. I don't know. You think I'm into girls? How should I know? Is this because they told you I slept with Sandy? Or... You slept with Sandy? I mean, not slept slept, but... What? Yuko sighs. After the conference, that time, we've been drinking and she wanted to show me her new boobs, and that's it. I went home with her, but the bosses can't find out because... No. No, I get it. What's wrong? Nothing. Why are you looking at me like that? Nothing. It's just... Guess what? Just nothing. Just, you know, cliché. The Japanese girl who ends up sleeping with the chick with the fake tits. Classic? Classic? Yeah. You know, like internet porn. I never should have told you. She heads towards her station. You're so beautiful. What? Nothing. Sorry. Yuko gets back to work. And Garen punches his fists and starts his dishwasher. But the ambient sound, the muckled rumble that's causing the dishes to rattle slightly on the counters, that's not the dishwasher. That's him. And... Do 14 PM by David Paquet. Translated by Chantal Bilodeau. One, Michelle, wearing a swallow mask, walks towards the radio. Michelle. I'm not a turbo. Tell the mailman, the cashiers, the neighbors. Tell the delivery boys, the parents, the pedestrians. But most of all, tell the television people. I'm not a turtle. A swallow. She switches the radio on. Charles, offstage. Good morning. Welcome to Radio Charlie. Music, crescendo. Two, musical climates. Fuck you. I started with my lasagna. Two maintenance forehands. 32,887 times. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. After my lasagna, it was my shit. That's happiness. Two maintenance forehands. I heard it. 32,887 times. Before, I was normal. Now, I open doors. Three, Katrina. I got kicked out of my old school because I hit my teacher. He said, Today, we learn. The only words I need to learn I already know. Fuck you. He insisted I hit him. At my new school, I have to see a therapist twice a week. Tell me how you feel. I said, My father hates my mother. My mother hates my father and I hate them both. Can I leave now? She suggested I write a diary. Put my anger down on paper. At my next appointment, I could read a few passages instead of answering questions. I thought it was a good idea. Four, Benjamin. Everyone has French kissed except me. I asked my mom if she thought I would have a girlfriend one day. She said, There are two types of boys. The attractive ones and the smart ones. You are first in your class. I asked my father if he thought I would have a girlfriend. One day, he said, Don't worry about that. Move along instead. For a long time, I thought girls were allergic to me. That's why we never came close. But one day, I understood they were not allergic. They were simply not interested. Five, Ethan sniffs a bio and becomes high. I open the door. I'm on top of a mountain. The hottest day of the summer. I'm soaking in honey with lots of girls and bikinis. The girls chant my name. Ethan! Ethan! Ethan! I take off my bathing suit. They cheer. We drink lemonade. I open the door. I'm in the middle of a forest. The trees don't have bark only skin. The skin is smooth, warm, alive. The forest chants my name. Ethan! Ethan! Ethan! I open the door. I'm a scalpel. I hope women become young and desirable again. I'm nominated for the Nobel Prize in big tits and luscious lips. I win. Humanity chants my name. Ethan! Ethan! Ethan! I applause everywhere. Everywhere. Chanting, cheering crowds. Everywhere. There's hospital room. All the doors disappear. Six. Jade, who has a slim figure. 32,887. That's the number of times I've been called that. I wrote it down in a notebook. In 16 notebooks, actually. That potato, that face, that smile, that ass, that twink, that skink, that lard. There's also the ones with animals. That whale, that pig. The ones with curses. That fuck. That beach hat cunt. And the ones with words that ended. Curve. That cocksup. That dick-licker. That horse fucker. That of course there are the combos like That fucking dick. That dick-licky. That lardass. That heavy jelly family. And my two special mentions. Fat blueberry slug. Bloated like a pumpkin. A balloon. And that potato face tooth fucking fat to fly. 32,887. That's only other people's insults. When I call myself that, I didn't mark it in my notebook. I would have wasted too much money on pencils. Seven. Dennis. That night, I had gone all out. Ruchetta, avocado and shrimp salad. Four cheese lasagna. Chocolate mousse. And a good bottle of red to top it all off. We sat down. I asked Mark about his day. Everyone in the office is an asshole. I want some wine. It promised to be a great evening. I took a bite of lasagna. It didn't taste right. I asked Mark if he thought the lasagna was weird. The lasagna is not weird. People at the office are weird. How about more wine? Wine. That would help. I took a sip. The wine also tasted like... I had some salad. Same thing. It's as if everything I was eating tasted like... sand. I brushed my teeth. It tasted like sand. I rinsed with mouthwash. It tasted like sand. Since then, everything tastes like sand. Eat. Katrina. I spoke in too fast. A diary wasn't a good idea. What was I going to write in the diary? Dear fucking diary, today all the adults are stupid. Bye. Come on. I decided to draw instead. Sometimes I feel it's easier to say things without words. When I looked at my drawings, I realized I don't need a diary. I need a tattoo. An hour later, I was at the tattoo parlor. I want this on my belly, now. You have an appointment? No. Your parents know? No. You're doing this on a whim? Always. Sit down. Nellie, Benjamin. I started out a couple on the street once. In the middle of the storm. They were wearing a pair of mittens between the two of them before I had the left mitt and the guy, the right one. They didn't need the mitt and on the other side, they were holding hands. I told myself that was happiness. And I decided I wanted a taste. 10. Michelle. My swallow mask fell off once. I was at the grocery store. I was waiting to pay. Nobody knew I was there. Until my mask fell off, I heard it's her, the turtle. I recognized her. Then everybody turns towards me. I could only think of two things, to pay and leave. I handed the money. The cashier said, I would rather lose my job than serve you. Someone applauded. I didn't say anything. I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I left. When I'd been in their shoes, I would have done the same. Charles, our stage. Good morning. Welcome to Radio Charity. 11. Dennis. After two weeks of sand breakfasts, sand lunches and sand dinners, I went to the doctor. What can I do for you? Everything I eat tastes like sand. How long has it been? Two weeks. On a scale of one to five, one being non-existent and five very high, how would you describe your degree of emotional satisfaction? Three. Your degree of professional satisfaction? Three. Your degree of personal satisfaction? Three. Your degree of satisfaction in general? Your body is trying to tell you something. My advice? Start taking stock of your life. Next. Taking stock of my life? I don't have a life. It won't be very hard. 12. Jade showing her slim figure. After 32,887 marks, I found a solution to my thought problem. And no, it wasn't anorexia, bulimia, speeds, coke or exercise. And it wasn't a diet either. I've tried them all. They don't work. They're only carrot juice for three weeks. The only thing I lost was three weeks. Watching TV is what made me lose weight. Ironic. While clicking through channels, I came across a documentary about parasites. They found a 25 foot long tapeworm in my stomach. That's why I was losing weight. The worm was eating everything. Bingo. All I had to do was find worms. I took out a steak and left it in the sun for three days. In July. When I came back, it was white and moving by itself. I ate it. The next day, I started losing weight. 13. Ethan. I made my grandmother's hospital room. All the doors disappear. My grandmother's sleeping, as usual. And I hear her voice. You got any vodka? I turn around on the bed next to my grandmother's. There's another grandmother. You got any vodka? Find me some vodka. I tell her I don't have the legal age to buy alcohol. She hands me a $50 bill. If you are age when you want alcohol, you find vodka. Then she winked and she told me to keep the change. So I decided to be helpful. I shouldn't have. This is the content of a bio. I live in a museum. I have three wives. 15 children. Six cats. A nice gate. Visitors in a museum chant my name. Ethan. Ethan. Ethan. They take pictures of us. My family and I are close. We are happy. Normal. I open the door. I am standing in front of a bridge. The inspiration dates of all the food. I throw out everything that's too old. The rot chanced my name. Ethan. Ethan. Ethan. I open a door in my grandmother's hospital room. With a bottle of vodka in my hands. 14. Katrina. For the first time in my life, I did everything I was told. I changed my bandages regularly. I stayed away from the sun. Two weeks later, my tattoo was perfect. From my belly button to my rib, I was ready for the great unveiling. I went to the kitchen, looked at my father, looked at my mother, and showed them my belly. No! Why did you do that? Leave her alone! At least she did something. I wasn't talking to you. Eat your toast. Her tattoo was more attractive than your stretch marks. Have you looked at yourself? You have more hair on your ass than under my head. Fuck you! No, fuck you! No, you! No, you! Morning like any other. When I got to my therapist, I said, you want to know what I think about school, the future, love, family, life? Here. This is what I think. I lift it up my sweater. The only way to survive is to be darker than what's around you. That way, no one notices you. And that's why I got a panther tattoo. Get off my desk, please. That day, I lifted my sweater so many times that I shouldn't have even put one on. I felt good, strong, and dangerous. 15, Michelle. I'm not a turtle. Turtles give birth at the edge of the water where their babies have a 50% chance of being eaten by a predator. As if what's going to happen to your children wasn't important. I'm not like that. I'm a swallow. I build nests. My nests are beautiful, strong, safe. I'm a good mother. Ask my husband. Ask my other two kids. Ask anyone who knows me. What happened at 2.14 pm is not my fault. Oh, stays. Good morning. Welcome to Radio Charlie. Losing someone suddenly is a thread that snaps. Breaking the ties to that other person, the man who's no longer there. The survival instinct takes over and the unravelled pieces of life try to piece themselves together with other unravelled pieces. It hardly matters with whom or what. Other people, a brother, a son, a lover becomes synonymous with the one who is no longer there. Following the accidental death of his lover trying to get his bearings, Tom goes to the country to meet his in-laws who are perfect strangers to him. In this austere, rural environment, the neophyte in life finds himself tangled up in a story where synonyms are merely a declension of lies. The lover, the friend, the son, the brother, the nameless dead man is left behind the fable woven of false truths which, according to his own teenage diaries, were essential to his survival because, in this same rural setting, one young man had once destroyed another young man who loved yet another. Like an ancient tragedy, years later, this drama determines the destiny of Tom. Adolescence is the period in which an individual's personality evolves from that of a child to that of an adult. This evolution begins with sexual maturity and ends with social maturity. This is the crucial point in life when the dictates of normality have the most devastating effect on those who are marginalized. We can all lend an ear to the pain of love somehow and some way every day. Homosexuals learn to lie before they learn to love. We are courageous mythomaniacs. Tableau 5 Day 3 Agatha is ironing. At any time I've called you. Man, he's not hungry. He hasn't eaten all day. He doesn't like my cooking, I can tell. Tom with the bandages on his wrist. We went to see the doctor. Where's the doctor? He hurt himself in the manure conveyor. Both wrists. He tried to pick something up, but he didn't have it. Do you want him to leave? Is that it? He can't drive. With his wrists in that state. I can drive him home if you want. No one asked you to drive him home. He's really good with the cows. I thought so. Yesterday morning when I opened the door, I saw a man in the morning when I opened the door to your bedroom. Two little boys in two little beds. I made you happy, right? He passes with his hair a lot. Always looking at himself in the mirror too. Ivan caught him looking at his bum. You look at your bum. No need. Perfect. In the bedroom, Tom takes off his work shirt, keeps on his jeans, bandages his wrists. The house should be full of people. That's how it is in movies when someone dies. People smoking, moving in slow motion, whispering. Then there's always someone who gets the giggles and says, Sorry, it's the stress. Tom, come eat. The phone never rings. No TV in the background. Just the milk tanker that comes to the barn to pick up the daily quota. The driver's name is Jeff. Hi, Jeff. Hi, Jeff. A tissue paper. Pants are made of real wool. All his clothes are carefully folded. She unpacked my suitcase. Everything fancy. Like for a wedding. She hung my clothes up on hangers. I still have some of his handkerchief. Just a book. Smells good. He's a good worker. Glad to hear it. He packs the cows. You must be glad to have some company. It needs to be on my own. If you left, the figures will never be able to afford a laser milker. We'll see. Someday we're going to have to sell. I'll always be here. You know that. Always. Can't give you a hug. I know that I should these days. But I can't. Let me just not say it. Tom joins me. Tom, tell me what you'd like to eat. No trout. I'll throw you a steak. She takes Tom's hands, turns them over, touches the cuts on his wrists, and puts them on Tom's neck. If I don't see the mark on his hands, if I don't put the finger in the wound, if I don't put my hand on his side, I will not believe. The marks put your hands on my wounds. Blessed are they who believe without seeing. Amen, Tom. You should take him into the dirt. Show him around. Go to the tavern. After which you can take him down the cypress road. My boys drove me there once. We did 160. Broken yellow lines became one streak. We were going so fast. You loved it, didn't you? Never so scared in my life. Go be dressed. You're a good girl. I'll stop right first. Tell me you look at your bum in the mirror. Francis. Baby butt. Tom attacks him without warning. Kicks him in the ribs. Francis takes the blow. Painful, pleasant. He grabs Tom, squeezes his neck and the crook of his arms. There! Carve a man! Enough of that, boys. Not in the kitchen! Got you, baby butt! Go rest it outside! Surprisingly, Tom gets the upper hand. Oh, go hand some of these when he's mad. They fight for real. I saw my belly for two kilometers. Apologize. Apologize! She bit me! She bit me, the goddamn bag! The man is speaking, that's all. He bit me. White teeth and purple flesh. You see that, mom? Agatha hands Tom a bowl of soup. I saw some barley soup. A barley soup here. With bacon. With bacon. To see that he can't hold his spoon. Never. Agatha takes the bowl of soup and feeds Tom by the spoon full. Tell me more about her. All I can see is images from ads. A woman in a black corset. A woman swinging in a bird cage. A disheveled woman on a raft. A woman with big tits posing with race car drivers. An easy woman. Anyone would have been easy with him. Did you hear that, Francis? Every word. He was a brute who could recite poetry. Who could recite poetry? To talk like Tom. I'm not sure about that. Women like men who speak well. I heard she was crazy about pasta. Ravioli, tortellini, spaghetti, lasagna. You want more? Smothered in sauce, you asshole. I'm lost now. There must be someone special in your life. You never talked about yourself. Here? Now? Me? What about me? I'm nothing. I don't know what to say about me. Me? What about me? Me? I'm nothing. Nothing. You still want me to talk like him? Take off your shirt. No, more slowly. Let your breath slide down your legs. Slowly. More slowly. Your undershirt. Show me your armpits. Raise your arms higher. What's he talking about? Your hand on your belly. Press your belly. I didn't even have my son's address. And he talked to him about internet things like that. Lie down on the bed. Lick my cock. She was nasty. Hey, Tom. Nasty! Yes, she was nasty. You were really nasty. Nasty? What nasty lady? Why don't I go outside? Why do I say hi, Jeff? Why didn't I say help, Jeff? Get me out of here, Jeff. I loved your son and your son loved me. Go for Rod in that car. Cook his steak for him. I get the exits. Francis goes over to the ironing board and continues ironing. You're good for her. I haven't seen her laugh like that for ages. Tell the doctor I'm the one that did that to you. I told him you brought me there. That's all. That's why I didn't ask him a question. You brought you to a local doctor? You should've driven to the next village over. There is a next village over. Don't you wonder why I'm still living here alone with my mother at age 30? I don't even make a woman happy. I've been farming good looks. I know you think I'm good looking. I say yes, you punches me. I say no, you punches me. My brother never told you the story of the kid at the tavern. What kid? The kid on tour apart. What the hell said? What did? In no trial, in no seventh in cash, in this island. I was 16, he was 14. He was wearing white jeans. Green t-shirt. I put both of my hands in his mouth. I put it over. Wide open. To the tour. They didn't say beaten. They didn't say injured. They said torn apart. I made my mother cry. My father, mute. People still talk about her in the village. The whole county. A new story every day. The boy is a new nose, new lips. He left town. He couldn't stand being a torn apart monster. You know, all the girls around here are scared of me. What mother would let her daughter go out if she got a pair of spaces apart? There's this one girl. Dancing class. I didn't even bother a president. Pretty little top dancer. My brother dragged me along with him and he wanted me to have a girlfriend. Ballroom dancing, line dancing, cha cha cha. Rumbus. They wanted to dance with two cute farm boys. We were the most popular. Then one night went with the kid. My brother was at the tavern on our way home from the dance class. Around New York City called the tavern one year twelve. The kid in the white jeans with the green t-shirt pulls me aside with a scary look in his eyes. I got to talk to you about your brother. It's touchy. My little brother was watching this. I made the kid repeat what he said. Your little brother. And I realized what he wanted to talk about. I knew because of the drawings and the poems under my brother's bed. But how did he know? Did that mean that everybody knew? Did that mean that everybody was laughing at us behind our backs? In a hick town like this anything that isn't normal gets multiplied by twenty. Your little brother, it's touchy. It's like being hit with a sledgehammer. My eyes roll back like a cow that's been stunned. All I can remember with my hands in his mouth and the sound coming from deep down in his throat. Bones breaking in his throat. I never went back to the dance class. My brother saw me do it but I would never tell him. He was so ashamed. He told me he was going to leave town. I threw him in the cowardage. He's authentic. Francis Hans Tom worked clothes that he'd been wearing previously. Mom altered them for you. They should fit better now. You can wear your cologne again if you want. Mom likes your cologne. Mom needs a smile. I ask people to stay. I can't find the right words. Table six. Day five. Tom is wearing the altered work clothes. He's covered in blood. He washes his hands and arms in a deep sink in the barn. Ecstasy. Pure ecstasy. We helped a cow give birth. We delivered a life. It was powerful. I felt like running into the field and yelling, I gave birth. Hey coyotes, I gave birth. I couldn't do much because of my wrists but I watched Francis do it all. I encouraged him until he told me to shut up. He put on some big rubber gloves and he stuck his arm inside the cow. Into the cow's uterus to grab the calf's legs. His front legs. He tied a rope around him and then he pulled and he pulled for at least an hour. Every time the cow had a contraction, he pulled. Every time the cow had a contraction, I encouraged him. Finally, the calf's head appeared and that's when he told me to shut up. More contractions. Then came out the whole body almost in one shot. I yelled. Francis. Francis gave me a dirty look but I yelled even louder and the calf fell on the ground. It broke the leg. A violent welcome into this world and then the cow lifted the placenta. The calf drank the colostrum. Francis said colostrum. Francis said a Latin word and then your mother followed some pies and it was... We can call a baby boy! It was so cool. I don't know what's come over me. I'm sorry. I can't help it. Tom. I'm sorry. Can you tell me what good your sperm is? What? What good is your sperm? Okay, we've changed the subject. Why are you alive if you can't give life? Just give me a second. How does she sing about that? You're gone if you're not alive. Your sperm is absolutely useless. That's one way of looking at it. You're a juice. Is he a juice? Leave synonyms to the expert. What's the point of your life? Since when is tearing faces a part of mission? Take off your undershirt. What? Raise your arm tired. Francis helps Tom take off his undershirt. He soaks his body. Show me your armpit. He has your voice. You can't spend your whole life without kids. An old man? No kids, nobody. He has your hands. He's talking to you. He has your dark eyes. I'm talking to you. Back to him. I only care about my own little self, Francis, and producing my juice gives me a lot of pleasure. Let me show you something. Francis takes a paper bag out of his hiding place and carefully removes a red blouse, a woman's blouse. This was for the girl at the dance classes. Sales girl told me it was real silk. Just looking at it, I can tell it's real silk. You don't believe it? It's beautiful. I never had a chance to give it to her. What was her name? It was real silk. I'm glad. Francis pushes a button and music fills the barn. 12 speakers, one console, a 2,500 watt app. Damn it. An 8 CD continuous deck. Everyone thinks it's samba music, but it's rumba. The cows love it. I'm sure they get more milk. You keep your arms stiff. When you dance the rumba, stand up straight. A good arm is like the pelvis loops. You move it from right to left just like this. Just the pelvis. One step forward, one step back with the same foot. Bend your knees. One after the other. No. No. Choose a cow. Francis takes them despite his protests. Stand straight. Your arms stiff. That's it. Right to left. Watch the pelvis. Forward, back. They start dancing. They're perfect dancers. And they're learning too fast. Not bad, eh? Not bad at all. My little brother must have thought of you. He promised he'd only practice with me. You're not bad either. Tom kisses Francis. At first, Francis doesn't resist. Tom withdraws. I'm sorry, Ed. I don't know what came over me. Tom goes back to Francis, who grabs him by the throat. There's something calm and pleasurable in the strangling for Francis. You tell me when to stop. You just say, I give you a signal and I'll stop. It's up to you, man. More? Tom nods his head. Francis releases and pray. For Christ's sake, breathe. Tom catches his breath. The music plays on for a while. Francis turns it off, takes Tom into his arms, and holds him like a pet dog or cat. You know I'm stuck here because of my mother. I could take off. Leave her here on her own. Someday I'll have to put her in a home. She gets carried away with the religious stuff, which hasn't lost her mind yet. Figure out about another five years. Fork is out of hand. Five more years. Milk in the cows. Ball in the coyotes. Watching the corn growl. This ain't the dog of our five years just home. Sometimes I wish for a sudden signal. Kind of where you find her one morning on the kitchen floor, holding the phone. Her mouth wide open, staring into space. I'd be sad because I love her. But at least I wouldn't have to put her in a home. I was looking for the two of you. Where were you? I was looking for you. You still haven't gotten rid of that rag? She had a beautiful cat. We baptized it. Baby butt. That's no name for a cat. You heard what I was saying just now? No. The fries are hot. Did you hear what I was saying? I heard everything. And I said, Baby butt is no name for a cat. She exits. Tom picks up the red blouse, slips it on, and stands up. You didn't get enough yet? Professor at the T.E.S. School at Andrews University. We just started expressing my thankful regards to the University of Central Pennsylvania in the South. Thanks also to the State of Idaho and to my friends and colleagues for inviting me to this event. I'm the nachoist to my delegation in Quebec and Europe for its contribution to this event. Dear friends and colleagues, I must begin by saying that since my English is not what it used to be, I spent most of my high school years in an American high school in the middle of Africa. We were way back in the 80s, so that's a long time ago. I have chosen to read my presentation. For improvisation, I invite you to my Monday seminar, Dr. Kelly. I will go through slowly the pages and look frequently at the attendance as I go along. So if any one of you has a question, I would like to know what you think and if any one of you has a question, please feel free to interrupt at any time or I will be glad to answer all questions. Emmanuel has given me the task to talk about the Théâtre québécois Quebec's theater in less than 20 minutes, my dear. I'm not sure I'm the best person in this room to accomplish that mission. My colleagues Sarah, Nishanak and David are certainly more qualified to give an informed account of what it is to write for the theater in today's Quebec society. The excerpts you just heard a moment ago from their work certainly told you more than I could ever be telling myself about the diversity of approaches of practices of the territories of imagination or by what we call today Le Théâtre québécois. In my paper I have highlighted the expression Le Théâtre québécois with quotation marks in order to remind myself how misleading or ambiguous this label could be. I feel the need to mention it because in the context of promoting Quebec's theater and this is what this event is about, isn't it? One might believe this has to be a provocation. It is not my intention. It goes without saying that an organization such as Le Théâtre québécois is clearly to promote contemporary plays and dramatists in outside Quebec that Le Théâtre québécois needs such a label for marketing purposes. Nonetheless it is advisable to take another viewpoint on this matter and put into question the notion of Quebec theater or at least try to understand its full meaning. What are we talking about here? Are we talking about a theater that is defined by a territory by the use of a language by a particular sensibility from which the dramatists and other theater artists draw their inspiration? Could we also be a cultural practice informed by a specific collective experience that creates the bond between artists and public? This set of interrogations that I could go on and on shows to me how much this concept of national theater brings us on a slippery slope. We use the term Théâtre québécois for its convenience but rarely take the time to engage with means. In the academic work I have been developing in the recent years such questioning simply cannot be avoided. The main task of theater history which is my field of research is conditioned by the fact that the identity of theater the way we assign a name to a tradition a movement a commonly shared practice is conditioned by the fact that the identity of the theater that tradition, that movement a commonly shared practice that becomes itself a problem. A problem which translates into different formulations and commands a variety of interpretations that are determined mostly by the time we live in and by the way each generation relates to the past. My presentation today will be understood within the broader framework of my historical research especially the one I have been involved with in the last couple of years with a group of eight colleagues from different Quebec universities our plan is to produce the first historical overview of Quebec theatrical practices from 1945 to the present but rest assured I am not going to give you a lecture on historiography or even try to sum up the history of Quebec theater within the time I have left I'll mention this fact in order to remind us of the idea of Tertiricois as with other concepts of national theater is a constructed concept this notion is the result of a series of connections and discourses that have established over a period of time what we call an horizon of meaning in the case of Quebec theater this horizon was opened up in the late 60s and early 70s prior to that period we talked about the theater canazien or canazien français in this light you can easily grasp the political undertones that support the notion of Tertiricois for many years I doubt that we'll refer to it today with the same intent in any case my intention here again is to show how the writing of history starts precisely by questioning such common reference by highlighting the ideological frame by which some events facts and historical actors are coordinate into a certain narrative and as you probably know this kind of undertaking starts by collecting data by gathering different types of documents by putting into perspective some elements that are characteristics of the theatrical activity in Quebec in a certain period for the purpose of this presentation I will speak to the contemporary period the one starting with the 80s and 90s in order to give an overview of the transformation of the place in the theater and that still affects us today I will put forward some statistical elements for example the financing of theater but also some facts and figures about the production of plays the number of companies and theatrical organizations that were abducted then and now this should give you a better understanding of what I and many others call it the system of Quebec theater by system I mean that all of the participants in the area of the activity in this area of activity accept to a certain extent the idea that they are governed by rules and that respect for those rules implies that they are in a way working for a common goal or a common good in Quebec it should be mentioned that the government has the responsibility to manage the so called common good it does so by providing financing and infrastructure but also by planning which is to say control the development of theater in the last couple of years many observers have said that the system had reached a breaking point I do not intend to take part or to fuel this debate my basic task with the historical overview would be at the very least to provide some elements of context that precede that discussion it is a very fair assessment to say that in Quebec the business of theater has been in the last 50 years the business of the state and the capacity the diversity and also the recognition of our theater in Quebec in a broad lies in part on a model of public financing that translates the ambition of the society to ensure survival of culture the basic sources of financing for the theater in Quebec comes from three different levels of government and their specific agencies at the provincial level you have the conseil des arts et l'être du Québec at the federal level you have the conseil des arts du Canada proportionally the financing provided by the cities except in the case of Montreal where the conseil des arts the Montréal was the first of its kind to provide aid to individual artists and organizations in 1956 still in comparison with the other two agencies the contribution of Lacan which is called the conseil des arts in Montreal is rather simple again by comparison with the rest of Canada the combined efforts of the federal and the provincial governments in terms of financing for the arts in general and the theater in particular puts Quebec in the league in its home for a population of roughly 8 million people of the same as the city of New York City public financing has been a key for building infrastructure and supporting artists so why if I may speak in economic terms the supply of production far exceeds what you see in other parts of the country it should be said that this infrastructure an intense activity is mostly located in larger cities such as Montreal and Quebec and these two major centers the culture offers not only diverse but it extends to different age groups and to populations played by economic disadvantages in the absence of the state Quebec theater up to the 50s was a very risky business because it basically relied upon the ticket revenues from the ticket counters this portion is still important in Quebec companies budget today from 40% to 60% depending on its status in touch with activity but it goes without saying that the financial contribution from the governments has established a solid base that provides a much needed stability in a sector where not long not long ago bankruptcies were very common where the theater would be closed down where a theater would be closed down less than after less than a year of activity when the artist would never dream of making a living from the theater the problems and challenges are different now by providing stability the governments have in a way set the conditions for the unlimited and undifferent expansion of the theater certain observers inside and outside the field complain that there's too many plays produced in a typical theater that the public is getting older as the year goes by and also decreasing in numbers I would not also fire myself but certainly the numbers that I will be presenting here show since the 80s and more certainly since the 90s a certain balance between the resources provided and the actual development of the theater activity has become more and more precarious the thought does not lie solely on the government the entire system it may be interesting to point out is based on the arbitrations made by the artists themselves to appear in new committees and as it is one can easily understand that the theater company has had much difficulty difficulty for many years to stem the flow of new covers in the field which by all accounts explains why this has translated into a general widespread information the numbers I have here are two facts first a quick view of the total contribution by the different levels of government that give you an idea of what is at stake when we talk about public financing the underlying of the numbers concerns the way the total amount of the budget dedicated deep to theater is derived amongst the organizations themselves mostly theater companies on the basis of their status mandate and recognition by the newly-added side there are basically four categories of financing corresponding to the amount of subsidies each company receives so bear with me with the numbers here the first category is called the company or established companies which gather organizations receiving $500,000 or more the second category the advanced intermediary is made up of companies receiving from $300,000 to $500,000 the intermediates are allocated from $100,000 to $300,000 and the others become project because they receive financing on a single production basis other ones taking $100,000 or less from 1980 the first year that was documented to 2001 public funding in the theater has increased constantly the numbers here cover all all levels of government in 1980 the total amount of the subsidies to the theater was $17.4 million it had increased to $20.1 million in 1989 and in 2001 it was $29.2 million we advise that these amounts are constant dollars which means that they have been adjusted to take into account the value of inflation but not the increase of the general cost of technological innovations and other costs generated simply by the new professional and aesthetic standards from 2001 to 2015 public funding from all sources decreased to $24.5 million which represents a short haul of 24% there are many explanations to this situation as there are perspectives from each reserve apart from the inevitable the economic downturn and budget cuts have become a recurrent theme in Quebec for many years we must point also to the fact that the contribution of the federal government was capped during the worst of the 90s which is to say that the financing didn't follow the increase in activity fortunately at the same time the concept is how the electric Quebec was established on a mandate to openly provide increased aid to the individual artists following the guidelines of the first 80 cultured Quebec in 1984 the other explanation is that to the constant decline in public funding and its resulting consequences has to be found in the increasing numbers of companies asking for subsidies in 1980 there was 83 organizations that would qualify for funding and jumped to 188 in 1998 in 1980 into 116 companies in 2000 with the drop of 24% of funding in the last 15 years one could have thought that the theater community would have adjusted to a certain extent by capping the number of players in the field there was 115 active companies in 2015 one less than in 2001 it should be added that those include organizations that are possible for the production of plays but also professional organizations such as the Céro-Ati who benefit from certain government support perhaps to fight hard to keep their share of the path since they do not for the standpoint of many advisors to communities that provide the funds supply an essential service other developments are useful to the economic and systemic situation of Quebec theater in a span of 30 years the number of established companies which monopolize the large amount of funds distributed have gone from 7 to 15 in 75 prior to the period covered by the stats the established ones collected roughly 73% of all funding to date this portion has gone to 55% which is still considerably considered by many to give too much what does this mean to the rest of the the rest of the bunch waiting to get funding or a small increase just to make a company viable until the middle of the 90s the system was designed to work with certain mobility and give to the lower level companies a fair chance to get more funding and as a consequence to include sustainable support since then the situation has changed dramatically most intermediary and even advanced intermediary companies are stuck at the same level for a period that can be as long as 15 years in order to give access to increased subsidies in better production and creative conditions a typical intermediary company must wait for another another one to be downgraded to unify financing you can easily understand all this context through the extensions and even conflicts amongst the members of the theatrical community and now when time comes to apply for government press everyone is praying to be able to at least keep a spot to unplug the system governments have developed over the years many incentives designed to bring the theater organization more money from destroyed sources to find that in Quebec an increase in ticket prices has the opposite result it scares the public away during the 90s certain major companies were given resources to gain access to foreign markets mainly in Europe where they developed co-production agreements with institutional partners such as the Sanctuada Maxi Festival in France or many international festivals around the world budget cuts in the early years of 2000 and finally in that sector from the data I've gathered and there is no news to my estimate colleagues who have taken part in this long lasting discussion in Quebec over financing and the development of the theater we can fairly say that times are tough for those newcomers coming into the field it has become hard for them to make their place in the market to be visible in many ways as a matter of fact there is a growing number of them that have access to no subsidies at all if by chance they get to finance a project the amount is generally a small fraction of what it is offered to service the activity of the inter-independent companies I'll skip on the last paragraph and get to the conclusion again the stakes are high and from the point of view of the younger artists the growing feeling is that their future is compromised from a sociological perspective this situation is food without and the basis for some very interesting research I believe that in Quebec what is working in that direction in reduction of cases what makes this context interesting is that young artists have also worked in many ways in the last couple of years to get around the system to provide a new environment for themselves that are grounded in a much more collaborative and collective way of thinking in opposition to the logic the corporates logic that prolong fuel most of the theater company as I end my presentation on this sweet and sour note I should add that even though the prospect of making a living in the theater game in 2016 may not be very exciting there are still hundreds of movie actresses and actresses sonographers and light designers flocking every year toward the five main theater schools in Quebec including where I teach to change their dream and what is even more interesting but I guess it is just simply normal is that those aspiring artists come from different backgrounds regions and more recently different ethnicities as the noble guy says talent they are a changing and by this only force of history we can gather hope that the troubles that we are going to will eventually be resolved or washed away by new ones So I have a discussion with the directors and let's hear from them about the place Knud and Ed and Tina First of all thank you for participating I know it is almost like asking if it is possible to choose an actor who will be presented with two others but I think it will give us a view into the Quebec theater scene about the mind of the playwright and again I would like to encourage you or whatever interest you might be here if you are available contact us we can help you to get to the full place and I think the presentations were a testimony to the lightness of the scene maybe you just go down here and say what was your impression about the taxes at something you said that could come from North America or Europe or did you feel there is something keeping quiet in there what were your reactions I worked on Tom at the farm today I was the last of the three presentations and I found the most challenging thing about the play is that it has a ruthless psychological logic to it which is something I am comfortable with within the American rework system but it also has an elaborately non-naturalistic series of devices the most prominent of which is an inner one log for Tom that is not designed to be addressed directly to an audience member but functions as a container essentially for psychological action and that's how I that's the layer of the play that I found most challenging to think about and also was fortunate enough that two of my cast are Ryan James who is still here and Alison Frazier are both carrying actors and I thought that rural Ontario Canada will have a sound and they quickly told me that it doesn't really especially in the English language and that I was fascinated by because I essentially came into the afternoon counting on being between the class difference between Tom who comes from an urban existence and makes money in a specific way and these two people who essentially are utterly isolated and stuck in their existence in a farm in a town that would be very hard to put it in any other way and I found that a really wonderful challenge because the play's English translation of the preface still suggests that it should be taking place in Canada whereas of course I grew up in the UK and it was a lot easier to think about the play in terms of what would happen if this fellow from London entered up in the Northern Village somewhere very remote would be the same conflict but it would be an hour difference in terms of how one set of people sounded versus another so I found that a really interesting challenge in terms of what we do with that in America especially involving a class issue so in a way a universal theme that you could detect that transcends the American assets also European but since we how did you what did you think about the attacks how they did well it was lovely I worked on the second piece and even from the excerpt you got a taste of the variety of characters and voices in the play featured in the Reptile of the Play as a list of all the characters played by at minimum six actors that describes but there's perhaps over 30 different people and cartoons and students and it's a really sort of beautiful chamber piece of voices as I heard it so we opted to do it on microphone to hopefully provide some of that podcast like intimacy and yeah, unless we could really create a group of actors but you know, new plays with adventures structural components and it just totally akin to my new work here thank you Tina, you just were here at the Play with Festival and you next to your work is already also our apartment waiting place structure of finding duties how holy do we act I think that perhaps being a writer of myself plays, I went at the play at the level of the word and almost passillable and what it would sound like for that to come out of their mouths with almost nothing else put on it because as it was it was very direct and poetic and even wrought in its writing and topics so I wanted to really be paired back from that and then in your initial question of how may it felt different or from like at the level of word like the title Yukon Style to like the cryptic like white horse, I don't know Robert Pinkton is a real person yeah so there was like things that felt to me like other and then the treatment of the native, like I didn't do much larger research of it but they wanted to just take it exactly what I had been handed as a document to then perhaps that allowed by other humans but there were like little cute, those little clues tucked in it that felt of another place to me and even though it was a short piece of text, it felt very evocative of something that I didn't quite know so just wanted to really straightforwardly in this amount of time, which isn't a lot to work on it hear it as sculpturally and as simply as possible and see it that way so it was a message from the book we don't know enough about it but in its strangeness it had some familiarity but also it dealt with things perhaps the North American writer would you know in the U.S. might have wrote differently just another follow-up question could you see maybe each for you or maybe the other one you saw could that work, could that work would that be a festival of Kibbe Kraw please if you could come and see that you're over the New York audience what do you all feel yes yeah I think definitely I think given it's like any piece of writing or art is going to be interesting to someone I think if you gave a context around it another place and to me it was really interesting to think of these plays coming from a city I visited that still feels it's fascinating I'm going to be hard from anywhere let's give them codified specifically is usually very interesting to people at least now well yes absolutely in particular with Tom at the Farm it had actually been turned into a film a couple of years ago which was mentioned earlier by the filmmaker Xavier Dunn and it's quite a different piece the ending is different the big one you heard from Francis was given to Bartender interesting conflict with the plays I think it has a gorgeous story that could fit anywhere and within the current English language translation again of the perhaps the instructions which may not have come from Mr Pichard at all the instruction is that the play is still in the English language set in Canada and I wonder if that becomes an impediment versus opening it up into a larger scope rural America that's an easy thing and we're dealing with certainly the passion of those cultures within today's economy so that's an interesting question thank you all so much I have a question here that you translated episode how close to mistake original language should shine through the original one of the Mabu Mines production they were very close they worked six years and they wanted something of the otherness it is supposed to be a great thing to kind of you also have been to Canada you're all there so there we go thank you for coming so let's hold a little dialogue we go on and I would like to ask Brigitte to come before we come to the playwrights who are alone gourmet meals or a seven piece menu at the end maybe Brigitte a little bit talk about your work and I would like to thank you so just it's just what we've been told you should also know about it as you have seen perhaps in the bios she's an actor, she's a director and that's her one and she is here for six months to work in the city of New York to explore her work she's a very generous grant and also she has a new idea of adapting contemporary technology I think it was once there artists have to anticipate the future actually artists are a step ahead of imagining a future and creating a sensible environment where we can experience what's about to come so she's one of her next to your work one of the things she does she works in 360 video projections and those that's something really new is all playwriting for me so tell us a little bit about your work before we then your colleagues will join us what has that fitted them to give a quiet theater scene well we like to do I write things with theater and because my background is mostly theater and I did I'm a filmmaker as well and I bring those two passion all together and the challenge is to have a narrative content and something like that so my challenge is to bring a new storytelling a new way of telling stories in that particular atmosphere so it's actually a film a real film shooting in 360 it's straight a little bit 360 and I'm not asking if it's a writer it's kind of a dome transition times are very small tell us a little bit a dome like a planet of your own for example so you have a dome everybody sits inside that so the film is actually all around you so the challenge again is to tell the story because you have to focus at one point to follow the action and then the action can go on the other side right from the other side so because it's all around the sound system the sound design how you write the sound design how you write a narrative content how you play in that how you shoot that how you edit that so that's the challenge of the thing so we'll project that in a dome and I will add to that an actor so it will be a dome you can go from one city to another and show a dome we have a sat in Montreal which is a big dome who offered different kinds of of experimentations we have planetarium and actually there's I think 300 planetarium or dome around the world so maybe more than that I think it's the new way of maybe telling stories we're going back to ancient times like page study times where you had tavern and pictures all around so now we actually brought a concept of rectangle or square images in order to sell those things because it was easier to sell those small format and now we're going back to a big format where young people will get used to that very easily and we have a taboo for that because we're used in small pictures how interesting to combine it with Plato's Cale where you interpret the shadows at the wall but it's all around you say we do that actually again and that's what we say great inventions often are combining a classical tradition with a new industrial invention and that is actually what changed here I don't know did you previously have something that's right? Yeah I'm editing right now so it's not and you have to You're comparing the certain solutions It's done, it's not my tour It's not my tour Amazing So this is an excerpt of it so imagine how this image put all around you and on top of you so it's like being on the world right now and the body that we'll see will go all over you Oh that sounds good I see that's what's important to confess it back to me I can't be here I can't be here I can't decide the best thing I can't be here I can't be here I can't be here I can't be here I can't be here I can't be here I can't be here I've been on that for 3 years now Amazing I think you're showing something in a Jersey observatory at the shore maybe you say the date 3rd of November a preview of that word in the town is Towns River Ocean County Towns River most probably the car an hour and a half would be my guess so if you want to see a little piece of the future of a theater you can ask Sarah and Michael and David to join us up here and again a big applause for them and for their work so as we heard from in Manuel's introduction I think your place around the world they were shown in many places but is this the first reading in the New York City of the world? Yes If you have a chair tell us how did it hear your work here and how was it for the first time for you maybe how different was it from others? You know theater is theater so that means when you have actors who are involved with the text that we are we are in Montreal we are in Paris with the story I don't make an issue of the fact that the reading here is just an encounter of the audience and I hope it's interesting because I hear so many versions of come at the farm but it's always the same place when they start to read I hope they reach the audience and I hope the audience reach the actors so that's not I don't know if I have to rule but that's not really different from me I'm always in the same place where this resonates with the other readings and it's just a human interaction It was a really good reading I think all the readings were really good so thanks to the viewers it was easy to take a part of a piece to build the entire story to grab something out and make that happen so again thank you we do a lot of readings It's a fatality It's almost a drama and that's just an extract because we have so many information they are already in the Tablo 1 Tablo 2 Tablo and now they drop the information and the audience don't necessarily understand what they're talking about so that's the game Yeah Well it was very interesting for me I think from one place to another the plays resonates differently according to in Canada this play is really about politics about like the first station issues and all that stuff What politics are? Well it's about the status of the first station and the problems they are facing with well the issues of racism and they went to residential school and they've been oppressed and they have many many problems now because of that and so in Canada this plays it's been produced in Toronto for example and in my point of view as you said the politics of the play takes most of the plays because I wrote it from my Kuwait point of view which is really far from Yukon but when it's station in Toronto for example it's really really political like the first station issues and when I arrived here and I saw your work I like the fact that it's really removed from these political issues and it becomes at this first state of poetic material so yeah so it depends and the play has been produced to Europe as well in Germany and in Austria and in Belgium yeah and so the first nation issues of racism is really different in Germany of course they're not they know they don't have nothing to do with it well they're not in life so yeah it's really for me that play and that play is so it's about Yukon it's about it's really geography it's the play Europe which is the more geographically precise I mean it depends on Yukon and why of course but it's very interesting that according to the plays that the plays produced it's sometimes that geographical thing is completely removed from it and it becomes just the idea of a place of somewhere else or in a city sorry the more I didn't go into the more writing it was a generation you know that has an extreme frustration there's a status quo and tries to find ways to deal with it in better or not so good ways let's go on to Michael if I say it right now David David no problem I can't completely coordinate yes yes and I apologize so David since you are here the first time it must be the first reading and you have seen a movie so how does it feel to hear that your work laughs or not it feels great to hear the work and it feels great to be here but I really appreciate about this experience here it's also my first time working with this new translator which is here thank you and it's always fun because we've been emailing and everything but a certain rhythm of it in English is I can't really predict myself so just to be here and hear it the musicality of it as opposed to the French one which is the challenge of making it the same knowing that it will never be the same so to be able to hear it I think is very interesting what I could also make you say is that although I have it's a spoiler alert people because when we hear the next track you never get the scale of it and voluntarily the beginning of 214 is a very confusing very multi character at the same time and the more the play goes the more you realize what happens and the story is in fact that you realize that all these students have been shocked by the son of the woman who says I'm not a turtle I am not a bird I feel next and so it's a very shocking ending actually because you only really realize at the end that's what happens and I've been traveling a lot with the play and what I find very strange is that people often say that oh this is a play that takes place in America and I'm like well actually no there's nothing in the play that will politically or socially specify to a certain culture but people really identify school shootings and then violence as being exclusively American which for me was very important when I was writing it to emphasize that it's a world phenomenon it's a world problem and it's not only in the US it's not only in Canada of course it's much different in the US because of the potential but still and so when I hear it it was a not premiering ending in Paris tonight and it's going to be in Budapest in a couple of months and so when I read in the résumé it's an American problem it's not it's a much bigger problem actually yeah so all three plays I think I think they're poetic which is part of the translation but also they do have universal themes as you point out after all we all humans we have brains but still I think it also has a likeness to a depth and it doesn't reveal right away what we expect to go to eat and we have to take off and then see what's inside so I think there are some small dramaturgical tricks in there which I admire just out of the crowd what messages from the New York theatre see come over to Quebec who do you follow? who do you hear? who do you know? what do you hear? what do you know? who do you follow? that they work my answer will be very sad I'm sorry it's very hard to not hear only about the big stuff only about the musicals it's kind of if you really want to go decide further than that you have to make it your own mission and plus of course we have to address the language situation let's not call it a problem the situation but we are like one percent of all of North America that we work and live in French which is a very also at least a type of isolation and on one isolation but I studied at National Theatre School of Canada which is a bilingual school and you feel it even there like at the cafeteria there's a French and English side it's terrible so but we know contemporary playwrights is there something come to your mind? who do you think Tony Crosby? Tony Crosby no that's it I'm really ashamed to say that no I don't so we don't know about you you're sorry, yeah I'm it but you know it's a cliche we don't know what's happening in the theatre now because as then it says I must say it's a political question too because as you know now we have not new material on stage maybe 50% of the material it's a new material on stage on every level of stage so that's me you know we are in a process of still working in our own identity and theatre was maybe the first weapon of that and that's what you know is still there in a way and we don't necessarily like it's amazing to say that tonight but in that time era we closed to play in translation I must say we don't have a lot of translation maybe the theatre then become more UK and Ireland then New York and then American it's like you know we are the cinema we are already you know in a big American swimming pool talking to cultural so we're not familiar with your new material and we actually all the ways fight for the French language and for you know to battle against assimilation cultural assimilation and as you said in the introduction a lot of the theatre work exports a lot of plays a lot of authors but most of it goes to zero which is kind of strange but well it makes sense for Ponson, Belgium and then Switzerland a lot of them a lot of them yeah so there isn't some kind of but perhaps as you say Quebec is also looking as theatre for identity to find itself and it's not as much open perhaps in the North American audiences also are always a little bit scared or something that could be subtitled and then even though is it a translation or not there should be openness it should be like well music we all should listen to each other's stories and especially since we are so close and maybe as a last question we are just a half hour or 40 minutes and we try to have 90 minutes because as like a soccer game or like a movie this is the attention span it's already a lot we should never go over but it is a special evening but for you do you feel that your work is then directed to a Quebec wow can any audiences or do you write basically with a megaphone that goes out is that part of your thinking or what happens with your audience I think the first gesture is talking to our own people first of all we are talking to ourselves it's really selfish work experience spending the day talking with someone who is not there so but first of all I think we are where we came from and what we experience I remember I think a writer who had these pretensions to working with her working with friends doesn't work like that first of all we are working for our own people first of all we are asking the three of us writing our own kind of French our own accent is understood differently from another in France we have a friendship understood differently in Quebec my work seems really realistic like my demos but when it comes to friends it seems like a theatrical and really formal and really poetic language and they are like oh you are putting English in your French and I'm like yeah everyone speaks like that but it seems like I think it's understood differently yeah I think I I write first for people from where I'm from because I write my own language but then I don't think my topics are directed to people from Quebec especially please don't hate me but I am working fortunately I think it depends on the personal the personal writing of every writer I know that I never politically or geographically situate my plays and I'm also a very surrealistic author that what we heard tonight doesn't really give it away but the tattoo that the girl had will change, will be transformed as a flower, I have another play where a woman gives birth to a duck and so being in this surrealism in surrealism it's kind of off it doesn't really happen on earth so it opens up I think my writing to another not dimension but it's not as maybe Quebecois as most of some of your work can be and a lot of my plays premiere outside of Quebec before being premiered in Quebec because there's also there's a mighty situation as playing with which there are a lot of different cultures and I think Germany or France have a way of reducing theater much more graphically than sometimes we do at home so I had a play right now in Montreal that they produced in 2016 it was produced in 2012 in Belgium and it's don't ask me why I love your work what do you see your work you said all over the world has to be out of bounds international for me it's different because I respect a lot the work of my colleagues because they really dedicate their lives to writing my writing is totally different because I think I write for I write and I direct at the same time so I think the writing is different it may be closer to a script for cinema maybe I don't know and it's true that all the writings are different even though it's the same language our way of writing is totally different and I think we witnessing the world we're living in so that's the first a profession for me after that I think it's really personal and the more personal we go I think the more universal we can be and after that for me I see the writing as a space a volume with people in it so it's more like a tableau it's more like imaginary it's more maybe but still there's dialogue and I think we're a merge of it's funny because we're a merge of American way of writing and French way of writing because you were talking about that and I think we're close to because we're close to a situation writing for a situation objective and that's the way we direct actors as well in Montreal and it's really close to the way you are here in America so I think we have that in common but in the same way being brought up and reading French poetry French plays and so so we're something really in between two two continents I think it's a remarkable landscape of theater so close as we've heard so many many groups perhaps quite general support actually it's remarkable I think the idea that the church is the way that comes from Canada the researches of performing on the streets and circus companies the high volume of writers and plays that come out of there it's quite remarkable and we really shouldn't know more about it we had Robert LaPage come in November who was also guiding a new art center in Quebec city and it also hopefully will help perhaps companies will tour from New York City over Latina will go from there things from there will come here it's a very big one I think it's a 50 million dollar project it's led by an artist I think it would be fascinating to hear how he invisions this how he thinks it can change the city and what contribution culture has done I think your idea that either really helps the identity of a national identity as Quebec within Canada just shows what a unique complex mysterious but also beautiful art form this is, normally we'd know what would go to questions it would be 20 to 30 minutes but I think we should all go and we have treat tickets for everybody when you add something to it we should all go to the archive bar around the corner again it's on 36 it's between this avenue and Madison on the south side it's this archive bar for guest reference and so I hope to see you all there I would really like to thank you we need good but also really good audience for you all to come and stay here and be part of it for the end because they're really, really thank you from the city center and the dedication of the people I wish to be able to sorry we had to back up but we had three in one evening because we didn't add so many in the last decades but really also I would like to ask for a big applause and thank you for the writers to come over here