Language and philosophy of design

Mélanie Noël (photo credit: Jessica Garneau)

Mélanie is involved in many projects that have writing in common. A journalist at La Tribune from 2005 to 2022, she won the Judith-Jasmin award in 2015. As a lyricist, Mélanie collaborates with many Quebec artists including Fred Pellerin, Richard Séguin, Edgar Bori and Patrice Michaud. Her lyrics are on three albums that won a Félix at the ADISQ Gala. In 2022, she published Inséparables distances, her first book of poetry with Écrits des Forges. That same year, her name was among the finalists for the CALQ Prize in the category of Artist of the Year in the Eastern Townships. In May 2023, his first novel, Debout dans vos absences, was published by Hamac.

Frédéric Kantorowski

Trained at the Option-Théâtre du Collège Lionel-Groulx, then in philosophy at UQAM and the Université de Montréal, Frédéric Kantorowski teaches philosophy at the Cégep du Vieux Montréal and at the Université de Montréal. His interests regularly lead him back to the theater. He has taught aesthetics, semiology and dramaturgy at the École supérieure de théâtre de l’UQAM and at the National Theatre School. He is also the author of the book En scène! 1865-1979, an archival photo album on the performing arts in Quebec, as well as a contributor to the exhibition Place au cirque at the Pointe-à-Callière Museum. He has held several union positions and is currently a member of the University Council of the Université de Montréal.

Christian Lapointe (photo credit: David Irvine)

Author, director, actor and teacher, Christian Lapointe is the artistic director of Carte Blanche in Quebec City. He is the author of a cycle of plays grouped under the name Théâtre de la disparition, of which CHS – for Combustion humain spontanée – was at the In Avignon in 2009. Since 2007, his creations have regularly been part of the programming of the Festival TransAmériques in Montreal, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and the Carrefour international de théâtre in Quebec City. He has directed several works by British author Martin Crimp, presented at Place des arts, the Grand Théâtre de Québec, Espace GO and recently at the Royal Court Theatre in London. He also collaborated with the TNM in 2016 for Pelléas et Mélisande. His creations are often unique objects, including Tout Artaud? an experimental work in which Lapointe undertook to read Artaud’s entire work non-stop at the 2015 FTA, and Constituons! his latest creation at the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui in 2019, a theatrical and political piece that led to the creation of a constitution for Quebec written entirely by citizens and officially tabled in the Quebec National Assembly. Not one of these people, in which he directs the author Martin Crimp in a deepfake technological device that Lapointe himself conceived, as a performer of his own play. Since 2008 he has regularly taught at the National Theatre School and the École Supérieure de Théâtre. As a writer for the stage, he has signed in a little over twenty years some thirty productions of an exploratory art theater always demanding, with particularly diversified forms and contents.

Odile Gamache (photo credit: Sandy Hogue)

Odile Gamache works on Montreal stages as a set designer. After graduating from the National Theatre School in 2013, she joined forces with director Félix-Antoine Boutin and founded with him and lighting designer Julie Basse their performing arts company Création dans la Chambre. In parallel to the activities of her company, she has designed the sets for some fifty shows, including five under the direction of Philippe Cyr, with whom she has worked closely since 2016, notably on Christine Beaulieu’s documentary play J’aime Hydro, which is still touring throughout Quebec, and on the most recent creation of the Bluff theater, Le poids des Fourmis, for which she won the Françoise Graton award in 2020.