Location: Room 1140 – Pavilion André Aidenstadt – 2920 chemin de la tour – Université de Montréal
(Building 19 on the UdM Map)
In-Person Session
Artists’ Roundtable, Arts Leadership and Social Justice in Montreal Theatre is a dialogue among leading Montreal-based artists, creatives and leaders on the intersection of leadership and social justice within the Montreal theatre landscape. Each discussant brings a unique perspective to the conversation based on their experiences, journeys, identities, and the peculiarity of their theatre company and the historical, socio-cultural and political realities in Montreal.
Panelists
Dian Marie Bridge’s career in the theatre is characterized by a commitment to justice in both the work she produces and her approach as a director and educator. Her contribution to the plenary discussion will develop her own working definition of justice, which, to her, is righting a breach of the social contract or rewriting the social contract. She will reflect on how leading with justice in the creative process privileges time for empathetic solutions–even if that risks the final product (though often it does not). As the current artistic director of Canada’s longest-running professional Black theatre company, Black Theatre Workshop, Bridge will also offer insights from this work on how the company’s mission to “create greater cross-cultural understanding by challenging its audience and the status quo” is situated within broader conversations about social justice in Montreal and its theatre scene.
Ginette Noiseux: As the longstanding artistic director of Canada’s oldest French-language feminist theatre (and one of the oldest feminist theatre companies in the country), Ginette Noiseux has dedicated her career to supporting women’s work and advocating for gender equity within the theatre industry. In her contribution to the roundtable, she will reflect on how she has prioritized social justice values within the company as it has grown, over time, from an experimental feminist collective existing on the margins of the theatre community to an internationally reputed company firmly established within the Montreal theatre scene. Noiseux will also share insights on Espace GO’s ongoing partnership with Femmes pour l’Équité en Théâtre (F.E.T.), an organization committed to advocating for gender equity within Quebec theatre, where women continue to be under-represented in key artistic roles.
Rahul Varma co-founded Montreal’s Teesri Duniya Theatre in 1981 as an intercultural company dedicated to diversity, representation and political theatre. As the company’s long-standing artistic director, he will reflect on Teesri Duniya’s historic commitment to “building cross-cultural bridges between Quebecers of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Latinx, mixed-race, First Nations, and European origin” and on how this work has responded to evolving understandings of multiculturalism within Quebec. Throughout his career, Varma has been active in speaking out against institutional racism within the arts in Quebec and Canada. He will discuss this advocacy work as well as how his commitment to social justice has defined his approach to leadership. Varma is also an established playwright whose work engages with social justice themes; his contribution to the roundtable will reflect on his creative work and its intersection with activism (copied from the website).