Place des Arts: A Theatrical Month of May

Monologue, documentary, satire, opera, dance-theatre… In May, Place des Arts hosts a deliciously eclectic program of theatrical events. An abundance of performance forms that offer something for everyone to enjoy. Join us, come see the actors!

Solo

First up, the theatre of intimacy: the kind that takes us into the mind of the artist, alone on stage, with his questions, his gaze, his demons.

Mani Soleymanlou has been playing with numbers since 2012. After Un, Deux, Trois, Ils étaient quatre, Cinq à sept, Huit, and Neuf, he’s going back to the beginning of everything with ZÉRO (May 21 to 24 at Théâtre Jean-Duceppe). In this retrospective monologue, the Iranian-born playwright revisits his own foundations, as a man and as an artist.

Ouvert à toute diversité corporelle (until May 8) instead offers an autobiographical theatrical experience in a setting conducive to the sharing of confidences: the wings at Théâtre Jean-Duceppe. Actor Vincent Millard breaks the fourth wall and confronts the audience with the mechanisms of fatphobia, including where it is least expected, in the “good intentions” of the cultural sphere.

Duos

Sometimes, two can be twice as fun. In Science po 101 (May 13 and 14 at the Cinquième Salle), former Québec solidaire MNA Catherine Dorion and her former political attaché Vincent Massé-Gagné transform the stage into a democratic space. Can we hope to fix this world, or is it already doomed? Vote and speak out!

With Architectures de la joie (May 23 at the Cinquième Salle), novelist Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette and playwright Steve Gagnon bring their correspondence to the stage. Two voices, one quest: how to allow oneself joy in a world saturated with injustice and anger?

Collective Questioning

For those who like to see theatre raise important issues, three suggestions.

First, Un nouveau jour (April 30 to May 10 at the Cinquième Salle), a sparkling satire by Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard. In a newly sovereign Quebec, four creators lock themselves away for 24 hours to come up with a show to inaugurate this new country. Whose vision of Quebec will prevail?

Querelle de Roberval, a taut and corrosive theatrical fresco adapted from the novel by Kev Lambert and directed by Olivier Arteau, plunges us into the heart of a labour dispute as a way of examining other contemporary themes: the social violence produced by capitalism, gender norms, and what power dynamics reveal about us. From May 30 to June 2, at Théâtre Jean-Duceppe. Presented as part of the Festival TransAmériques, which is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year.

Also on the Festival TransAmériques program, Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge (in English, with French subtitles, from May 29 to 31 at the Cinquième Salle) tackles the myth of the American dream through the intense verbal sparring match that pitted writer James Baldwin against conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. in 1965. Archival theatre, in which thought becomes a power struggle.

The Drama Within…

In Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (May 13 to 23 in Salle Ludger-Duvernay at the Monument-National)—a creation by principal dancer Guillaume Côté and the renowned Robert Lepage—Shakespeare’s story is told through dance. Ghosts, deceptions, shadows: everything becomes choreography. The audience discovers that dramatic art can do without text while retaining all of its intensity.

Meanwhile, Les Grands Ballets presents a new take on a classic: Swan Lake. In a unique dramatic structure, the destinies of Odette, the White Swan, and Odile, the Black Swan, collide. The Lake, May 28 to June 7 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier.

…and Opera!

Of course, we couldn’t overlook opera as part of this journey. Let’s turn to a story that needs no introduction: Carmen, by Bizet (May 2 to 12 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier). Voices, orchestra, passions, jealousy, freedom declared: it’s all here, in a collective undertaking that gives the rare sensation of witnessing a living legend.

Ultimately, what this May’s theatrical crossroads at Place des Arts reveals is that theatre is less a genre than a territory: a vast land of must-sees, places we love to revisit, and unexpected corners where we let ourselves be led astray…