To experience Canadian culture, explore Ontario’s thriving scene of Francophone theatre

This article is produced in collaboration with La Mosaic, a bilingual magazine at the University of Toronto. You can read this work in the French language in La Mosaic at lamosaic.ca/language-and-culture/langues-et-cultures/explorez-la-scene-florissante-du-theatre-de-langue-francaise-en-ontario.

Dillon Orr, Acting Artistic Director of Le théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario, leans back with folded arms, expressing his views on the differences in perspective of English and Francophone theatre in Ontario.

“Francophone theatre was not created like the theatre of Shakespeare, like the theatre of the English, or like the theatre of the Americans,” he says. He leans in with arms unfolded and says that the stories in Francophone theatrical performances often aim to explore questions that communities are facing collectively, as opposed to questions faced by the individual.

In interviews with artistic directors at Le théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario and Le théâtre français de Toronto—the former serving Sudbury and the latter in downtown Toronto—The Strand, in collaboration with La Mosaic, spoke about their experience performing Francophone theatre for people in Ontario.

Why are people passionate about Francophone theatre?

Orr drew from his personal history to picture a distinction between Francophone and Anglophone theatre. “When I was in theatre school at the National Theatre School in Montréal, it was a bilingual school,” he said. “You see both sides of the subject.”

“The cliché is that English speakers do theatre from the inside-out—they start with all their emotions,” he said. He explained that the objective of English theatre is often for audiences to experience catharsis—the buildup of negative emotions during a tragedy, followed by their release—or mimesis, which is a realistic portrayal that acts as a mirror of society.

“But in French, it’s the opposite,” he said. The starting point of Francophone theatre, according to Orr, is with observations of society, continues with the development of social questions about society, and then explores the consequences of dealing with these societal questions on our emotions. To conduct these explorations, Orr notes that Francophone theatre often prefers stories told through fables, rather than directly through realistic portrayals.

Orr is passionate about the importance of experiencing theatre as a part of the human experience. “[Theatre] is an entertainment of our brains, it makes us think differently—it makes us question our relationship to this world, [and] it makes us question our relationship to art, to the other,” he said. “We are constantly considering these questions.”

In addition to creating a distinctive theatrical experience from Anglophone theatre, Karine Richard—Artistic Director of Le théâtre français de Toronto—also emphasised the value that audience members can find by exploring theatrical works. 

To Richard, Francophone theatre is important to perform as it serves a vital role for the Francophone community. “It’s important to relate to the GTA and Toronto, to the different communities that are surrounding us,” she said, which can better help people locally understand the questions and problems faced by other communities. In this way, theatre performance can help create a mutual understanding between different cultures.

For Le théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario, an upcoming theatrical work Orr and his team will present will be called Nickel City Fifs, which is a co-production with Alex Tétreault that will run in June. The performance will explore the double minoritization of being both Francophone and queer, especially in a smaller community like in Sudbury, said Orr. “We’re presenting it right in the gay bar here in Sudbury, which is called Zig’s”—one of the first gay bars established in greater Sudbury.

From March 8 to March 26, Le théâtre français de Toronto is also running an immersive theatrical performance in the after-hours of a school called Le concierge, translated as The Janitor. In this production, said Richard, an audience limited to 15 people are set to follow an actor in the corridor of a high school building in Toronto.  “I don’t think that there was a lot of that kind of experience or that type of experience in Toronto, where… participants also can get dressed as janitors as well, and follow him through his story,” said Richard. She reflected that the experience aims to draw attention to invisible workers in society.

How to get involved in Francophone culture in Ontario

For community members at UofT interested in becoming better-versed Francophone theatre, Orr encourages involvement in local community theatre production. “The community theatre that I find is a great way to get involved, theatrically speaking, in [the] community and for amateurs.”

Elahe Marjovi, Theatre & Large Institutions Program Manager at the Toronto Arts Council (TAC), also mentioned opportunities for members of the University of Toronto community to become involved in Francophone theatre, in written correspondence with The Strand and La Mosaic.

To become involved in existing programs, Marjovi shared a list of operating Francophone artistic organisations based in Toronto and funded by the TAC grants, which are open to applications in French or English for people interested in starting their own initiatives. In addition to Le théâtre français de Toronto, community members can look into Le Laboratoire d’Art for visual and media arts, the Salon du Livre de Toronto for literary arts, and BoucharDanse for dance, to explore Francophone cultural expression in Toronto.

Richard strongly encouraged community members to consider becoming more involved in live artistic expression. “I find that our generation is stuck on Netflix and television… where you are passive in front of the screen,” she said. “Coming to the theatre and live arts, any kind of live arts is a way to be immersed in the art and to also be part of the conversation instead of just being passive and receiving something.”

Richard reflected that in-person artistic expression—“whether it’s a museum, whether it’s painting, whether it’s music”—is a way to become involved in one’s community, and reflect on the modern issues that people are facing as communities.