THE DESERT
By Olivier Sylvestre | Translated by Leanna Brodie
Pan Canadian Remote Remote New Translation Workshop 2020
Supported by
THE DESERT
By Olivier Sylvestre | Translated by Leanna Brodie
With 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.
This translation made possible by a grant from Canada Council for the Arts.
Le Désert (2018). Une production du Dôme at Théâtre Prospero.
Photo: Francis Sercia
About the playwright
Olivier Sylvestre
Olivier Sylvestre (He, him, his) is a Canadian writer from Quebec. He is most noted for his first theatrical play La beauté du monde, which won the Prix Gratien-Gélinas and was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General’s Award for French-language drama at the 2015 Governor General’s Awards, and his short story collection Noms fictifs, which was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction at the 2018 Governor General’s Awards.
About the translator
Leanna Brodie
Leanna Brodie (She, her, hers) 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. www.leannabrodie.com