Claude Poissant

Director, playwright and actor Claude Poissant has been Théâtre Denise-Pelletier’s artistic director since spring 2014. Before that, Poissant was hired in 2006 to serve as artistic co-director alongside Patrice Dubois at Théâtre PÀP, which Poissant had co-founded around 25 years earlier. Poissant has brought to the stage a plethora of Quebec oeuvres from playwrights such as Geneviève Billette, Louise Bombardier, Jasmine Dubé, Hélène Pedneault, Jonathan Harnois, Louis-Dominique Lavigne, François Létourneau and David Paquet. Most notably, he has helmed productions of Rachel Graton’s La nuit du 4 au 5, Guillaume Corbeil’s Cinq visages pour Camille Brunelle, Michel Marc Bouchard’s Tom at the Farm (Tom à la ferme) and Michel Rivard’s L’origine de mes espèces, as well as five Larry Tremblay vehicles (including The Ventriloquist (Le ventriloque) and L’orangeraie), three plays by Fanny Britt (including Bienveillance and Hurlevents) and two by Étienne Lepage (Rouge Gueule and Le ravissement). He has also delved into several contemporary works, such as Martin Crimp’s The Treatment and Anja Hilling’s Tristesse animal noir. Poissant also likes to revisit the classics, reviving iconic plays from revered French masters, such as Victor Hugo, Marivaux, Musset and Molière, and from the likes of Brecht, Calderon de La Barca, Knut Hamsun, Pirandello, Michel Tremblay, Tennessee Williams and Frank Wedekind. He also writes and directs his own material, including Passer la nuit, Si tu meurs je te tue, Les enfants d’Irène and the Kafka-inspired La metamorphose, to name but a few.