By Marie-Claude Verdier | Translated by Alexis Diamond
Pan Canadian Remote Remote New Translation Workshop 2020
Supported by
ANDY’S GONE
By Marie-Claude Verdier | Translated by Alexis Diamond Translated from ANDY’S GONE (Quebec, Canada)
With Alexis Diamond (Montreal), Jenna Thorne (London, UK), Sabrina Vellani and Jack Paterson (Vancouver)
In a modern reimagining, a young teen follows the footsteps of Antigone the Rebel defying a contemporary Creon. The City is in a state of emergency and Alison believes there is something else going on… Andy’s Gone was produced by Acessor E sempre (France) and presented in Avignon.
This workshop is made possible by a grant from Canada Council for the Arts.
Andy’s Gone | Compagnie Adesso e sempre in coproduction with Sortie Ouest domaine départemental d’art et de culture de Bayssan. Photo: Marc Ginot
About the playwright
Marie-Claude Verdier
Marie-Claude Verdier (She, her, hers) was a dramaturge at CEAD from 2010 to 2013. Her first play, Je n’y suis plus, was produced with le Théâtre Français du Centre National des Arts in 2013. Her play Nous autres antipodes was nominated for the Prix Gratien-Gélinas. Andy’s Gone, a loose adaptation of Antigone for teens, was produced by the French Acessor E sempre and presented in Avignon.
About the translator
Alexis Diamond
Alexis Diamond (She, her, hers) is a Montreal-based theatre artist and translator. Her award-winning plays, operas and translations for all ages have been presented across Canada and internationally. The 2018-19 season has seen the premiere of the family-oriented piece for orchestra and narrator Making Light, penned with Abigail Richardson (Calgary Philharmonic), and two other translations, for Talisman Theatre and Le Petit Théâtre de Sherbrooke. With composer Stephanie Moore, Alexis is currently creating Zoom-Boum-Boum, an electroacoustic piece for very young audiences (Jeunesses Musicales Canada).
THE DESERT By Olivier Sylvestre | Translated by Leanna Brodie
Olivier Sylvestre (Montreal), Leanna Brodie, Brian Postilian & Jack Paterson (Vancouver)
A winter night. A man speaks to you, from the other side of the bed. He speaks of a dream he has every night. He speaks to you from the pit in his stomach, the void that fills him. He tells you why he cannot stay. Why he will leave, soon, maybe, tomorrow. Playwright Olivier Sylvestre leads takes the audience into the depths of night. In a free form of musical performance, theatre and spoken word, he invites the audience into an intimate and dizzying dive in the heart of a toxic relationship where you becomes the illusory remedy for a wrong impossible to name.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT Olivier Sylvestre
Olivier Sylvestre is a Montreal based playwright and author most noted for La beauté du monde, which won the Prix Gratien-Gélinas and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for French-language drama (2015) and his short story collection Noms fictifs, which was a shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction (2018).
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR Leanna Brodie
Leanna Brodie is an actor, playwright, and translator whose passions include lifting up the stories and voices of women, and championing a new generation of French-Canadian playwrights by transmitting their extraordinary theatrical visions into the English language. Her original plays The Vic, For Home and Country, The Book of Esther, and Schoolhouse (Talon Books) have been performed across Canada. Her translations include Christian Bégin’s After Me and Why Are You Crying?; Louise Bombardier’s My Mother Dog; Annie Brocoli’s Stardust; Rébecca Déraspe’s You Are Happy, I Am William, and Gametes; Amélie Dumoulin’s Violette; Sébastien Harrisson’s From Alaska and Two-Part Inventions; Catherine Léger’s Opium_37 and I Lost My Husband!; David Paquet’s Wildfire and The Shoe; Olivier Sylvestre’s The Paradise Arms; Philippe Soldevila’s Tales of the Moon; Larry Tremblay’s Panda Panda; and multiple plays by Hélène Ducharme of Théâtre Motus, whose acclaimed, Dora Award-winning Baobab continues to tour China and the Americas after more than 600 performances.
HAVEN By Mishka Lavigne | Translated by Neil Blackadder Translated from Havre (Francophone Canada)
The workshop included Mishka Lavigne (Ottawa), Neil Blackadder (Chicago), Johanna Nutter (Montreal), Art Kitching & Jack Paterson (Vancouver)
Elsie has just lost her mother, and Matt, is searching for his past. They’re brought together by the hole that opened up in the asphalt and the contents of the car that fell to the bottom. Haven is a play about loss, about absence, about emptiness. But it’s also a play about overflow, about too many memories and too many regrets. Haven speaks of friendships of necessity. Of the people we meet when we need them the most; those we meet when everything around us crumbles. Haven in the storm.
Recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Drama French Language (2019).
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT Mishka Lavigne
Mishka Lavigne is a playwright and literary translator based in Ottawa/Gatineau. Her translation work for theatre has been seen in Ottawa, Montreal, and France. Héritage, her translation of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun opened the 2019-2020 season at Duceppe in Montreal. She is currently working on a French translation of Karen Hines’ All The Little Animals I Have Eaten. Her translations of poetry were published in Ontario and Québec, included the recently published Cette blessure est un territoire, a French translation of Billy-Ray Belcourt’s Griffin Poetry Prize winning collection This Wound is a World. Her own works include Cinéma (Théâtre la Catapulte and Théâtre Belvédère.), Vigile (Théâtre Rouge Écarlate). Her play Havre recently won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama (French) and was shortlisted for the Prix Michel-Tremblay.
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.
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.
This September and October, 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 and international works, we workshopped three translations.
Horses from Heaven fall in a rain of ash (Iran) By Naghmeh Samini | Translated by Jack Paterson
Prince Siyâvash, the symbol of innocence in Persian literature, is ordered by his father to ride into a burning pyre for a crime he did not commit. In the flames, he encounters those who confront his future actions and his current beliefs. Inspired and drawn from the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), and South Asian, Chinese and Western mythologies.
About the playwright: Naghmeh Samini Naghmem Samini (Ph.D), playwright, scriptwriter and lecturer in Dramatic Arts, was born in Iran and received her BA in Drama and MA in Cinema from the University of Tehran. She did her PhD in Art Studies at the University of Tarbiat Modarres (Tehran) with a thesis focused on Drama and Mythology. Her plays have been staged in Iran, France, India, Canada, the United States and other countries. Her plays are experimental in structure and handle a variety of topical subjects at personal and sociopolitical levels. Her play The King and the Mathematician: A Legend(2012) was selected by UNESCO as one of the cultural achievements of the year.
Special thank you to the wonderful artists Rosie Akerman, Eleanor Bennett, Joan Blackham, Viny Lad, Kavé Niku, Caroline Partridge Jay Ramji, Saria Steeland and James Watterson; Vancouver translator Leanna Brodie joining us a 6AM Vancouver time by Skype, and Lola May for organizing it!
