© Julie Charland
Performance options Start time Language Availability
Thursday, April 2, 2020 10:00 am French sold out

“Life at full sail”

A young woman, the sea, and the turbulent and sparkling story of an intercontinental sailing voyage. With Dans le bleu, Magali Lemèle offers an autobiographical travelogue with the feel of a philosophical fable. The adventure is beautiful, captivating, touching, and full of stars.

Magali boards a sailboat with a captain, his young wife, and a girl from Marseille to cross the Atlantic, from the Bahamas to Île-aux-Moines. Their intimate adventure is punctuated by magical episodes—punk jellyfish, phosphorescent plankton, dolphins in the moonlight, swimming in the endless expanse—but also by physical, romantic and interpersonal challenges. There are moments of doubt, ecstasy, agitation; encounters that are exhausting, others that are invigorating; and most of all, the turquoise and ever-changing immensity of the ocean.

Previously presented in preliminary form as part of a “Carte Blanche” creative residency at Espace René-Provost and as a staged reading at the Zones Théâtrales theatre biennial, Magali Lemèle’s debut play is written in four movements, like a piece of music. The performer whom NAC French Theatre audiences applauded in Marie-Claude Verdier’s Je n’y suis plus in fall 2013 is also a gifted storyteller. She is accompanied on her theatrical voyage by director Gabriel Plante.

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Learning and engagement at Canada’s National Arts Centre is made possible through the support of many generous individuals and organizations from across the country. Arts Alive is generously supported by the Azrieli Foundation, the Government of Nunavut, Canadian North, Calm Air, The River Philip Foundation, The Turnbull Family Community Building Foundation, and The Thomas Sill Foundation. Thank you also to Grant and Alice Burton, Canada Life, A Donor-Advised Fund at the Community Foundation of Ottawa, Friends of the NAC Orchestra, Donors to the NAC Foundation's Future Fund, The Janice and Earle O’Born Fund for Artistic Excellence, and the donors and sponsors of the NAC’s National Youth and Education Trust, the primary resource for youth and education funding at the National Arts Centre.