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Round Table:

Research on Quebec Theatre at the Time of COVID

Thursday, July 8, 2021 | 9:00 - 10:30

VÉRONIQUE HÉBERT, CHARLOTTE MOFFET & EVE-CATHERINE CHAMPOUX

Live discussion on Zoom; spoken in French. No LSQ interpretation or translation will be available for this event.

Join Now in Room E

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our personal and professional lives, but also the theatre and academic research communities. As we adapt to new realities, our environments are changing. The new watchwords, survival and adaptation, have characterized the way we work since March 2020. One year after the beginning of the pandemic, we wish to engage in a discussion led by Karolann St-Amand on the impacts on current research in Quebec theatre. We invite Ève-Catherine Champoux, Charlotte Moffet, and Véronique Hébert to discuss collectively the following questions (non-exhaustive list): redefinition of the corpus, adaptation of the subject of study, accessibility to documentation, archives, research centres, transformation of workplaces, support from peers, teaching institutions, scholarly associations, sharing of solutions, and other initiatives of solidarity.

Bios:

Véronique Hébert is an Atikamekw theatre artist from the community of Wemotaci. She is a doctoral student in Arts Studies and Practices at UQAM, in theatre research and creation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in theatre from the University of Ottawa as well as a master’s degree on shamanism in the works of Jovette Marchessault.

My current work focuses on research-creation in theatre applied to the territory, more precisely to Nitaskinan, the Atikamekw ancestral territory. One of the objectives is the creation of a theatrical piece that combines documentary and creation. I explore the perspectives of natural and social sciences and compare them to the current and past experience of the Atikamekw on their territory. I collaborate with the Atikamekw Tapiskwan Sipi artisans’ cooperative and an Atikamekw set designer to create the sets and props. Research workshops in the territory with my collaborators were planned but were postponed because of COVID-19.

Charlotte Moffet is a master’s candidate in literature at the Université de Montréal. She is a research assistant and coordinator of the Théâtrothèque at CRILCQ, and coordinator of the project “Recensement des initiatives culturelles mises en œuvre au temps de la COVID-19.”

Over the past year, at the Théâtrothèque of the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture québécoises (CRILCQ), it seems to me that I have been at the forefront of the transformation of the workplaces for research on Quebec theatre imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. I propose to share my observations of the impact of the closure of physical spaces on the accessibility of documentation, archives and research centers, which has consequences not only for individual projects, but also for outreach and dissemination activities.

After completing a bachelor’s degree in scenography at Concordia University, Eve-Catherine Champoux chose to branch out into museology and to devote herself to the preservation of live performance. She is currently conducting doctoral research on the dissemination of this heritage through exhibition.

The new practice of audiovisual recording is a doorway to the proper preservation and perpetuation of stage performances. This new effort to fix the ephemeral and make it perennial by means of technological devices represents an unhoped-for advancement for the preservation of theatrical heritage. Through the analysis of different examples of video capture and dissemination, I propose to observe how the theatrical milieu has become familiar with the presence of cameras and video capture that effectively transmit not only the stage performance, but also the spectatorial experience, thus opening the door to the preservation of the theatrical act.