Ottawa residents are lucky to live in a city where they have access to two very different theatre scenes – anglophone and francophone – says the artistic director of English programming at the National Arts Centre.
Audiences here have the choice to view performances in both official languages, whether at the NAC or one of the city’s professional community theatres, such as the Irving Greenberg Theatre, home to the Great Canadian Theatre Company, or La Nouvelle Scène, home to four francophone theatre troupes.
“The French culture has a very different relationship to theatre than the English culture does, and it’s always been so,” Peter Hinton says. “You could be general, more categorical, and say there’s more of an interest in the avant-garde en francais, in art for art’s sake.”
Compare the traditional productions of A Christmas Carol and Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone featured in the NAC’s 2009-2010 English program to the more complex content of Woyzeck and Une fête pour Boris, which relied heavily on puppetry and projections, in the French program.
Tiber Egervari, an emeritus professor of theatre at the University of Ottawa, says different roots account for the modern divergences of French and English theatre. English audiences expect to see classics from the Anglophone cannon, such as the works of Shakespeare.
“In the French-Canadian tradition there is not such a long tradition of French classics,” he says. “So if you don’t see a French classic for a long time at the NAC no one would be furious about it. From the ’80s on it was a much more experimental, formal ways of trying to renew theatre. More visual effects, more experimental ways of doing things.”
According to Phil Genest, who has worked as a theatre technician for both French and English productions for six years, the differences between French and English performances have to do with different creative processes at Ottawa theatres like the GCTC and Nouvelle Scène.
Professional francophone actors tend to work on more than one show at a time, for longer periods of time, whereas English actors are paid by the week and often perform after only a few weeks of rehearsal, he says.
“On the French side there’s more time to try things out, to experiment. Whereas in some of the shows I’ve worked on the English side, the show is pretty much designed and directed before even the first rehearsal.”
Language is the most obvious difference between French and English culture.
According to Mario Belisle, who oversees French theatre workshops for the City of Ottawa and Théâtre Action, a youth francophone theatre festival, French-speaking people are the minority in Ontario.
Therefore francophone theatre here lacks the resources it has in Quebec, often forcing French theatres in Ontario to innovate with the resources they do have.
He says theatre has become an important way for francophones to tackle important issues and to experience their culture and language.
“Too often we’ll settle for English because there’s not much available in French," Belisle says. "But I think it’s important we have theatre in French ‘cause it gives the chance for the people to get together and not feel as lonely.”
According to Joël Beddows, former artistic director of Théâtre Catapulte, which operates out of La Nouvelle Scène, it’s hard to make generalizations about francophone and anglophone theatre in Canada.
To define francophone theatre with words like “edgy” and “experimental” is to look at it through the lens of English theatre tradition, he says.
What makes Ottawa distinct is the theatre community here is very focused on the creation of original pieces.
And given the city’s bilingual nature, Beddows says, it’s quite common for theatrical talent to work on both sides of the language barrier, making for a “vibrant” theatrical scene.