June 11, 2024 – OTTAWA (Canada) – The National Arts Centre is proud to announce that Nuits claires, a major pan-Canadian project initiated by Mani Soleymanlou, artistic director of NAC French Theatre, and Cory Haas, artistic and managing director of Vancouver’s Théâtre la Seizième, will kick off in a few weeks. The year-long collective venture will be launched in British Columbia in July 2024 and will gradually move across the country, finishing up in New Brunswick in spring 2025. Each month, the 12 participating theatre companies will assign a playwright to create a 10-minute script moving beyond traditional dramaturgy, inspired by the innovative and playful guidelines developed by Danielle Le Saux-Farmer and Gabriel Plante. The duo will also coordinate the final presentation of the project, a compilation of all the scripts, to be staged in the nation’s capital in September 2025 as part of the next edition of Zones Théâtrales.

WRITING THE NIGHT

Writing the night: about and during the night, to see what this space may open up by moving away from conventional issues of identity and language. This ambitious venture, a journey from west to east spanning five time zones, will unite the participants in a creative exploration of the night and its mysteries, as if to reflect Paul Lefebvre’s recent statement on receiving the Sentinelle Prize from the Conseil québécois du théâtre: “Theatre is to the community what nocturnal dreams are to the individual: a way of finding symbolic representations of and even solutions to vital questions that neither logic nor will can grasp or resolve.”

The writers will be chosen to reflect the diversity of today’s world, and will be closely supported by the two dramaturges in writing and editing the material produced. Combining performance, nocturnal exploration and transnational teamwork, the project promises to reveal new voices and visions from the Francophonie on the critical issues of our time.

PROPOSED SCHEDULE AND PARTICIPATING COMPANIES

July 2024         Théâtre la Seizième (Vancouver, BC)

August             Open Pit Theatre (Whitehorse, YT)

September       L’UniThéâtre (Edmonton, AB)

October            La Troupe du Jour (Saskatoon, SK)

November        Théâtre Cercle Molière (Winnipeg, MB)

December        Théâtre français de Toronto (Toronto, ON)

January 2025   Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario (Sudbury, ON)

February          La Nouvelle Scène Gilles Desjardins (Ottawa, ON)

March              Théâtre de Quat’Sous (Montréal, QC)

April                 La Bordée (Québec, QC)

May                 Théâtre l’Escaouette (Moncton, NB)

June                Théâtre populaire d’Acadie (Caraquet, NB)

The order of the stops may change along the way. The writers’ names will be announced at the beginning of each month. Project details will be meticulously documented and posted on a dedicated website: https://nac-cna.ca/en/theatrefrancais/nuits-claires

The NAC French Theatre will be the producer of this national project, in addition to being the co-creator with the Théâtre la Seizième. Each participating theatre will act as a collaborator.

 

DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT

Danielle Le Saux-Farmer is an actor, director, playwright and translator. A graduate of the University of Ottawa (theatre) and the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Québec (acting), she was the artistic and general director of Théâtre Catapulte (Ottawa) from 2017 to 2023. She has performed at the Théâtre du Trident, La Bordée, Premier Acte, Le Périscope, Théâtre La Licorne, Théâtre Denise-Pelletier, and on tour across the country, notably in Mani Soleymanlou’s Un. Deux. Trois. In April 2025, she will direct the stage adaptation of Marie-Ève Thuot’s novel La trajectoire des confettis at the Théâtre du Trident.

Gabriel Plante completed his playwriting training at the National Theatre School of Canada in 2015. Since 2012, he has written and produced over ten shows, including Histoire populaire et sensationnelle, Sur l’apparition des os dans le corps and Cette colline n’est jamais vraiment silencieuse; in 2016, he received the Gratien-Gélinas Prize for the text of the former. Gabriel is a past president of the Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD) and is currently co-artistic director of Création Dans la Chambre (Montréal). His artistic practice focuses on removing stories from their original context and presenting them from unexpected angles, and discovering dramatic possibilities in social practices that would seem to contain little in the way of drama.

 

THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS

The National Arts Centre Foundation would like to thank Supporting Partner Québecor, and Official Hotel Partner Ottawa Embassy Hotel & Suites.

 

ABOUT THE NAC  

The National Arts Centre is Canada’s bilingual, multi-disciplinary home for the performing arts. The NAC presents, creates, produces, and co-produces performing arts programming in various streams — the NAC Orchestra, Dance, English Theatre, French Theatre, Indigenous Theatre, and Popular Music and Variety — and nurtures the next generation of audiences and artists from across Canada. The NAC is located in the National Capital Region on the unceded territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin Nation.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Sylvain Lavoie

Communications Strategist, French Theatre

National Arts Centre

343-588-0743

sylvain.lavoie@nac-cna.ca