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Canada’s Digital Stage
August 24, 2020#CanadaPerforms was initially launched on March 19 by the National Arts Centre and its founding partner, Facebook Canada. The short-term relief fund helped ease the financial strain for 700 professional Canadian artists and published authors impacted by the closure of performance venues and…
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Meet the Next Artistic Director of NAC French Theatre: Mani Soleymanlou
August 18, 2020Theatre director, playwright and actor Mani Soleymanlou will be the next Artistic Director of NAC French Theatre, effective September 1, 2021. Mani will take over from Brigitte Haentjens at the conclusion of her nine-year term. NAC audiences will have already seen some of…
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NAC Superfan: Anne Hamels
July 17, 2020University of Ottawa theatre student Anne Hamels is a long-time NAC regular. Five years ago, when Anne was 13 years-old, she met artist Marie-Ève Fortier, who visited Anne’s classroom to present De plain-pied, a French Theatre project. “She was the one who got me interested in the project,…
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What keeps us alive
July 8, 2020As you know, the performing arts sector will probably be the last to reopen. We don’t yet know under what conditions. This is of particular concern to us because we cannot yet count on an exact timeline. We’re told that nothing will ever be the same again. But for now, the future is hazy,…
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National Indigenous History Month with Samanqani Cocahq (Natalie Sappier)
June 23, 2020Samanqani Cocahq (Natalie Sappier) of Tobique First Nation is a leading voice in New Brunswick’s thriving Indigenous art scene. Her first play, Finding Wolastoq Voice, appeared as part of Mòshkamo: Indigenous Arts Rising, the two-and-a-half week festival that opened Indigenous Theatre’s…
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Celebrating National Indigenous Peoples Day and National Indigenous History Month at the...
June 4, 2020This National Indigenous Peoples Day and National Indigenous History Month, we honour the distinct perspectives and cultures of Indigenous artists through storytelling and performance. September brought the Mòshkamo Indigenous Arts Festival, a resoundingly successful start to the…
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A continent to explore
May 21, 2020Trees are vertical, overhanging and solid, somewhat like adults. But a child is not only small in the forest: he can also see himself as a giant, discovering the microscopic abundance all around. - Ariane Voineau and Josué Beaucage GREAT EXPLORERS Activities based on the show Sous…
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The show must go on, even for an audience of six
May 13, 2020Jillian Keiley, Artistic Director of NAC English Theatre, and the cast and crew of Copenhagen were in their final days and nights of tech week. It’s an intense period when a production shifts from the rehearsal hall to the theatre. Sixteen hour days are the norm. So is adrenaline,…
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From “Je n’y suis plus” to “Dans le bleu”: a correspondence between...
May 6, 2020We must learn how to lend ourselves to dreaming when dreams lend themselves to us. —Albert Camus Guy Warin (GW): From the original production in September 2013 of Marie‑Claude Verdier’s monologue Je n’y suis plus to the stage premiere of your very first play, the road you have…
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A celebration of words
May 5, 2020If you feel inspired, why not try to play with words like the characters of Elle (Her) and Lui (Him)? Here are some suggestions for activities to have some fun with words and poetry. > Word Games Activity #1 – Exquisite Corpse Collaborative writing game | Materials: Paper and…
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NAC Indigenous Theatre: Unikkaaqtuat brings Inuit stories to a wider world
January 6, 2020Guillaume Ittukssarjuat Saladin has a suggestion for audiences attending the upcoming world premiere of Unikkaaqtuat (meaning to tell stories), an all-ages show which opens the second half of NAC Indigenous Theatre’s inaugural season. The cross-cultural production fuses circus, theatre,…
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Inuit Myths Come Out of the Shadows
November 7, 2019Inuit founding myths are the inspiration for Unikkaaqtuat, a cross-cultural blending of circus arts, theatre, music, and video. The actors, musicians, and acrobats of Unikkaaqtuat perform in a world of shadows and video projections, transporting us to an ancient realm where life did not…
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Q&A: Mani Soleymanlou, director, playwright and actor
November 7, 2019Q. You’ve written a cycle of plays, titled from 1 to 9, which deal with identity. Your latest work is titled Zéro. What prompted this choice? A. Another word for zero in Persian and Arabic is “sefr”, which means “void”. I explored this idea in my first creations: Un, Deux and Trois. With…
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Mòshkamo: The beginning of a new era
October 4, 2019On Saturday September 14 hundreds of people gathered by the Rideau Canal just outside of the National Arts Centre to witness a great, long awaited moment. On this beautiful day, the audiences, artists and Indigenous peoples across Canada and around the world officially welcomed Indigenous…
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Where the Blood Mixes: A Journey to the Heart
October 4, 2019The first-ever performance of Kevin Loring’s debut play Where the Blood Mixes was in his hometown of Lytton, British Columbia in 2008. It was a staged reading of an earlier draft of the script—part of a British Columbian workshop tour by the play’s producers, the Playhouse Theatre Company…
