Biography(ies)

André Gélineau is an established artist in the Eastern Townships. He collaborates as a playwright and director with several cultural organizations, including the Petit Théâtre de Sherbrooke (Manuel d’instructions pour cesser de grandir, Nos petits doigts), the Centre culturel de l’Université de Sherbrooke (Cab-Lab, Un discours! Un discours!), the Centre des Arts de la Scène Jean-Besré (Petit Fun Palace – in co-production with La Serre arts vivants and OFFTA), and Productions Traces et Souvenances (Reinventing the Beast, Ventre-Ville). He co-founded and directed the now-defunct theater Turcs Gobeurs d’Opium (Caribou, Ce qu’on enterre, Raconter le feu aux forêts), and was also artistic director of Théâtre du Double signe from 2018 to 2021 (Stallone, Nos coeurs remplis d’uréthane). Some of his productions have been presented at the Festival du Jamais Lu, Zones Théâtrale and Dramaturgies en dialogue. Committed to the next generation, he has taught theater at the Collège du Mont Notre-Dame and at the Séminaire de Sherbrooke college. He teaches at the Faculty of Education of the Université de Sherbrooke as a lecturer. His new play entitled S’effondrent les vidéoclubs will be performed in the spring of 2022 by La Seizième theater in Vancouver. In residence at Sporobole, the artist proposes new explorations around the Sainte-Johanne-des-Calvettes project in the company of about fifteen creators and actors from the Eastern Townships.

ANDRÉ GÉLINEAU – CREATION LABORATORY

ANDRÉ GÉLINEAU

30.05 — 19.08 / 2022

**CREATION LABORATORY – Sainte-Johanne-des-Calvettes by André Gélineau**

Sainte-Johanne-des-Calvettes is a creative laboratory where the voices and bodies of a small community sometimes clash, sometimes unite. The characters, engulfed in their habits, are uprooted from their daily life to be confronted with a danger or a threat. They are therefore left with their survival instinct. With a caustic humour and a raw and oniric language, the work questions the place of the individual in distress within an isolated community.

This lab transports theater into a space designed for exhibitions at Sporobole. An entire section of the research will examine the stage space as an installation experience. What happens to this space between representations? How can we conceive it so that it carries a complementary meaning when a spectator experiences it in the gallery?

The Sainte-Johanne-des-Calvettes project is inspired by the traditional carnivalesque celebrations of Mi-Carême in which noisy pleasures, perpetrated by masked partygoers, disrupt a period of penitence, abstinence and fasting. During these celebrations, still practiced in some French-speaking communities, the “mi-carêmes” parade through the village, from house to house, dancing and doing all sorts of tricks, while the guests try to discover who is hiding behind the masks.

Collaborators: Cyril Assathiany, Guylaine Carrier, Victor Choinière-Champigny, Ann-Catherine Choquette, Ariane Coddens-Bergeron, Philippe Descôteaux-Barrette, Éric Desmarais, Laurent Fecteau-Nadeau, David-Emmanuel Jauniaux, Rose-Anne Girard, Emmanuelle Laroche, François-Louis Laurin, Guillaume Lévesque, Marianne Roy, Simon Vincent.

Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia