One September day, a woman goes to pick up her daughter, who has a stomach ache, from school. Parked across from the schoolyard, she watches the children at play, and her imagination conjures up all kinds of possible scenarios, from the hilarious to the terrifying. In a stunning one-woman show, playwright Evelyne de la Chenelière embodies her visionary character.

It’s September 12, and a woman is at work. September 12, and she’s interrupted by a phone call from the school: her daughter has a stomach ache and needs to be picked up. September 12, and despite the heat wave scorching the city, the woman drives to the school, parks in front of the building, then pauses to observe the students in the schoolyard. As she watches them at their childish games, she falls into an ambivalent reverie. In her mind’s eye, the scene is gradually overlaid with a multitude of possible scenarios, from mildly amusing to distressingly morbid: most alarmingly, she pictures a killer who turns the day into a bloodbath. Why on earth would she imagine such a thing? Is she oblivious, or is she prescient?

Daniel Brière, co-artistic director of Nouveau Théâtre Expérimental, brings a sure hand to untangling the intricate combination of playwright, actress and mother in one. With Septembre, he reunites with actress Evelyne de la Chenelière, who also wrote the play. As in their previous projects (including Henri & Margaux and Bashir Lazhar, both staged at the NAC), they enlist, analyze and examine codes of representation in order to capture the elusive constructs of imagination, memory and fantasy.