From Montreal to London via translator Johanna Nutter’s skype
This March, Bouche was kindly invited by the British Equity WSW London Office to lead some new play development activities. Taking advantage of this opportunity to introduce British artists to francophone Canadian works, we workshopped two translations. Barbed Wire translator, Johanna Nutter, joined us from Montreal via skype.
BARBED WIRE By Annick Lefebvre | Translated by Johanna Nutter
A strand of barbed wire has started to grow inside you. You’ve got about an hour before your lips are sewn shut. What will you say while you still have the time? What will be your last word? This play is written with gender fluidity in mind.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT: ANNICK LEFEBVRE Before completing her degree in criticism and dramaturgy, Annick Lefebvre had placed her buttocks in Wajdi Mouawad’s Rehearsal Hall for Incendie (Scorched). In 2012, Annick founded Le Crachoir, a company that examines the role of the author in the process of creating, producing and presenting theatre. She is the author of Ce samedi il pleuvait (Marc Beaupré, Le Crachoir, Aux Écuries, 2013), La machine à révolte (Jean Boillot, Le Préau / NEST-Théâtre, 2015), Barbelés (Alexia Bürger, Théâtre de Quat’sous et Théâtre La Colline, 2017) and ColoniséEs (René Richard Cyr, CTD’A, 2019). Her play J’accuse (Sylvain Bélanger, CTD’A, 2015) received the BMO Dramatic Writing Award, was a finalist for the AQCT Critics’ Award, the Prix Michel Tremblay and the Governor General of Canada Literary Award in 2015. Annick is currently adapting J’accuse for France (Sébastien Bournac, compagnie Tabula Rasa). Her work is published by Dramaturges Éditeurs.
Special thank you to actors to Stevie Skinner and JD Hunt.
WORKSHOP: FUSION OF WESTERN DEVISING & BALINES TRANDITIONAL PERFORMING ARTS PRACTICES
BALINESE FOLK TALES
Devised with the Wayang Graduate Class Directed by Jack Paterson Indonesian Institute for the Arts (Denpasar, Indonesia)
ABOUT
In fusion of Western Devised Creation and Traditional Balinese Performing Arts, this workshop featured the combining of western devised creation practices such as physical theatre (Lecoq & Viewpoints), Verbatim Text, New Media, and Found Object with Wayang (shadow puppetry), Kecat (Chant/ Dance), Topeng (dance), Arja (Sung Drama) and Gamelan Orchestra.
The Traditional Balinese Preforming Arts Practices are truly unique. Due to a historical tragedy and a tremendous act of bravery by Balinese leadership in colonial times, the Balinese society was protected from the cultural repression commonly associated with European colonization. As a result, the performing arts practices such as Wayang Kulit reach back thousands of years.
This workshop the practical exchange of practice in a 3 week cross cultural exchange hosted by noted Dalang, Prof. I. Nyoman Sedana. Jack would meet and speak with artists and artistic leaders from across the Bali, participate in Balines practice, attend performances at multiple ceremonial events and festivals.
A Global Hive Labs. Project Fusion Theatre (UK) in association BoucheWHACKED! Theatre Collective (Canada) & Chez Actors (Italy)
Medusa
Devised by the International Ensemble Directed by Katie Merritt
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “And as we find ourselves inside Medusa’s own mind, the multinational cast supplement the English narration with simultaneous translation, in languages from French and Italian to Korean. It helps underscore how Medusa’s story – finding herself and her life weaponised as a result of somebody else’s actions.” – The Reviews Hub
⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘A truly accessible production and an empowering contemporary perspective on the classic Greek myth.’ – Theatre T
Medusa. For generations, she has been depicted as a god, a mortal, an erotic power capable of unravelling men, a fearsome image to ward off evil, and a dangerous monster to be destroyed. With feminist ideals at the forefront of our culture, she is again a power player, arresting us in her gaze.
Medusa celebrates the intersectional feminist revitalisation of western mythology, the integration of accessibility design into the generative process, and the way social location affects participation in and interpretation of artistic experiences. Medusa is a multidisciplinary performance devised by an international ensemble of artists over one year, in four countries.
The show features live music, dance, spoken word, multimedia and visual art, audiences will encounter Medusa’s journey, physical transformation, and isolation through all 5 senses.
Gallery
About
Global Hive Labs & Active Access Design
GHL is an international collective and network of companies and artists working together in shared practice. Home countries of participating organizations and artists include Italy, France, Spain, United Kingdom, the U.S.A., Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and China.
Practices include International Devised Collaboration, Multi-Lingual, Multi Disciplinary and Physical Theatre approaches, Long Distance Technologies (use of communication Technologies in creation and presentation) and Active Access Design (integrating Access Design such as audio description, etc. as core creative elements).
BoucheWHACKED! Theatre Collective is back in action. 2020 began with a series of translation commissions. During this current period of uncertainty, it is with a special gratitude to Canada Council for the Arts allowing us to support freelance and independent artists.
Francophone Canadian playwrighting is on forefront of international playwriting – their work is translated and presented all over the world. It is particularly hard to describe the unique “Langue D’Auteur” created by Francophone Canadian artists as there is nothing quite like it in Western English Language theatre. Imagine Shakespeare, Moliere, Sarah Kane and Martin Crimp smashed together on the page. The poetic or expressionistic are side by side with gritty realism and the mundane often becomes the fantastical. Ancient words, made up words, verse, prose, Joual (everyday Quebecois), other francophone dialects, all literary devices, often the live next to each other on the page.
CENTRE D’ACHATS By Emmanuelle Jimenez | Translated by Johanna Nutter
Searching, finding, buying, again and again: the t-shirt, the earrings, the dog, the rabbit, the snake, the flying carpet… In search of comfort, seven women of divers background and ages dive desperately into a whirlwind of outrageous consumption. Seven prisoners of the shopping mall, each of them encounters her destiny.
Emmanuelle Jimenez examines shopping malls as both symbols of our collective alienation but also of our need for community. The need to share, to communicate, to feel surrounded, then confronts the need to consume more and more of the same things, at the risk of finding our souls bruised and our dreams shattered.
“This is one of the best texts of the new season… A hard-hitting play by Emmanuelle Jimenez.” – Mario Cloutier, La Presse +
Meet the playwright
Emmanuelle Jimenez
Emmanuelle Jimenez trained in performance at the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Montréal. While continuing working as an actor, she devoted herself to writing. Among her plays include Oui, madame la ministre! (Productions À Tour de Rôle), Du vent entre les dents (Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui), Un gorille à Broadway (Productions À Tour de Rôle), Rêvez, montagnes! (Nouveau Théâtre Expérimental) and Le dénominateur commun co-written with François Archambault (Théâtre Debout). She has led numerous cultural projects, including with La Maison Bleu in Côte-des-Neiges and the Montreal North Cultural and Community House. She was a member of the Board of Directors of the Festival du jamais Lu from 2003 to 2010 and has been a member of the AQAD Board of Directors since 2014.
Meet the translator
Johanna Nutter
Johanna Nutter is artistic director of creature/creature, a polymorphic company born of Nutter’s passion for blurring lines between established divisions. Her work has toured extensively throughout her home province of Quebec, across Canada and internationally, in both English and French, to such venues as Soho Theatre (London), The Pleasance (Edinburgh), Les Halles (Brussels), and La Licorne (Montreal). Known for her intimate and personal collaborations, recent works include Tree Hug, OSCAR, and the multi-award winning my pregnant brother/my playwright sister (2009 – 2018). She won the PWM/Cole Emerging Translator award and brought CHLORINE (Longpré & Michon), which produced and directed at The Centaur (Brave New Looks 2016). She is currently working on texts by Annick Lefèbvre, Guillaume Corbeil, and Étienne Lepage.
This translation was made possible by a grant from Canada Council for the Arts.
BoucheWHACKED! Theatre Collective and British Equity London Branch
WESTERN GOLD: THE BALLAD OF GEORGES BOIVIN
By Marting Bellemare | Translated by Jack Paterson Translated from Le Chant de Georges Boivin (Quebec)
Workshoped with Micheal Grinter and Charles Roe | Produced by Lola May and Jack Paterson
At 77, Georges Boivin decides “gives the dice a roll”. Georges just lost his wife, you see, the “centre of his universe”. He’s terrified “he no longer exists for anyone”. But there is life after your 70s and it must continue even after great loss. With his three friends, all the same age as he, he sets out on road trip from Québec to Vancouver, in search of his first love who he hasn’t seen in 50 years. Recipient of Le Prix Gratien-Gélinas 2009
This translation made possible by a commission from Western Gold Theatre (Vancouver) and a grant from Canada Council for the Arts.
CENTRE D’ACHATS
Emmanuelle Jimenez
