Alternative and Inclusive Dramaturgies

For the past 10 years, Laurie-Anne Langis has worked with many emerging and established artists. She performs in Quebec and internationally. Laurie-Anne studies healing techniques, meditation, martial arts, voice work and yoga. It is through her ancestral knowledge that she anchors herself in an energetic practice and is interested in cyclical processes: life, death, and transformation. Interested in inclusive projects, Laurie-Anne questions the limits of dance that is seen/looked at and develops a transdisciplinary and multisensory approach. In fact, she creates alongside Audrey-Anne Bouchard, trains in audio description and guides dance workshops for people with visual disabilities. In search of truth and sensitive connections, Laurie-Anne tries to leave room for the full expressiveness of each person and to go beyond the form to meet the other. Committed, she works on different projects depicting violence against women, questioning gender binarity and valuing the reappropriation of one’s own body and speech.

Photo credit: Anne-Flore de Rochambeau

Peter Farbridge is a Montreal-based theatre actor and designer. As a founding member and co-artistic director of Modern Times Stage Company from 1989 to 2022, Peter has appeared in numerous productions, including the title roles in Macbeth and Hamlet. He has won several Dora Mavor Moore Awards for his work with the company. Among these works, Peter has co-translated and adapted the plays of several Iranian artists with Soheil Parsa and has served as co-writer or co-designer for several new theatre productions, including Hallaj (2009) and Forgiveness (2014). In 2017, Peter was nominated for a Meta Award for his performance in Progress! for Infinitheatre. He recently completed an MFA in Anthropology and Theatre and is currently an artist-in-residence at Concordia University’s Theatre Department, where he is directing an adaptation of Ōta Shōgo Mizu no Eki. He is currently collaborating with the project Postmarginal: Inclusive Theatre Practice, a project he initiated at Modern Times, which seeks to encourage the intersection of the creative practices of marginalized and non-marginalized artists.

Art Babayants | Արտ բաբայանց, an Armenian-Canadian actor, playwright, director, and researcher, has an artistic background related to ideas of diversity in theatre. Before becoming Artistic Director of Toronto Laboratory Theatre (2012-2020), Art worked in Britain, the United States, Malta, Latvia, and Russia. Throughout his artistic career, he has directed multilingual shows including musicals, contemporary plays, mock theatre, and multidisciplinary projects. Since 1997, he has also developed projects that use acting techniques for second language learning. Since August 2021, he has been living in Sherbrooke and teaching at Bishop’s University in the departments of theatre and music.