Archives des interdisciplinary — MAI | Montréal, arts interculturels

fragments : celle qui m'habitait déjà

In this immersive experience that involves all of the senses except sight, audience members are guided by the performers at the heart of an installation where smells, textures and sounds evoke an old house. This house becomes the site of an intangible encounter: a young woman who moves in to escape a predetermined life discovers, along with the audience, a piano, books, and the story of a writer who lived there in 1950. The poetic tableaux of the work gradually reveal the emotions and contradictions shared by these two women despite the decades between them: for both, living alone in this house is a way of accessing freedom and breaking free from social obligations. But is being alone truly the same as being free?

A limited number of tickets are reserved for blind and partially sighted audience members.

If the performance you wish to attend is sold out, please don’t hesitate to contact the box office. A ticket may still be available for you. To reserve by phone, call the box office at 514-982-3386.

The café-bar will be open to welcome you before the performance, but no food or drink service will be offered at that time.

The performance team will also be on hand to provide support and accompany you throughout the experience.

Fragments: celle qui m’habitait déjà is an immersive creation designed for a blind audience. Sighted individuals are invited to experience the piece with eyeshades. The small audience of nine spectators per performance allows for a tangible and intimate experience: the performers interact with the audience through touch.

Childcare for sighted children and children with visual impairments
→ Saturday, October 25 at 3 p.m.
Free — Open to children ages 3 to 10, both sighted and visually impaired, whose parents have tickets
Reservation required here.

as i must live it

As I Must Live It is a humorous and heartfelt performance from award-winning spoken word artist Luke Reece. Through poetic storytelling touching on everything from antagonistic squirrels to Chris Pratt’s abs, it traces one man’s experience growing up in a mixed-race family with a mentally ill father. Get ready for deft wordplay as Reece brings the page to the stage for an intimate, pun-filled event. With sharp wit and tender reflection, this show navigates memory, masculinity, and the everyday absurdities that shape us.

The February 27th performance will be followed by a talkback with the artist hosted by Adjani Poirier.

All performances of As I Must Live It are presented in a relaxed environment. To download the Show Guide, click here.

Co-produced by Theatre Passe Muraille and Modern Times Stage Company

Produced by permission of the playwright and Marquis Literary (Colin Rivers) www.MQlit.ca
Luke Reece is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada

The show was translated in French thanks to the generous contribution of the Cole Foundation.
Translation to French by: Sunny Doyle

fish spit feast

Fish Spit Feast is a corporeal song of imagined creatures, where hybrid identities give rise to fiction. Undulating in and out of kaleidoscopic symmetry, impulses ripple from one body to the next, birthing a morphing creature both tender and electric. The performers inhabit the shadows of a diasporic playground, moving through veils of darkness, light, and sound. They dance a guttural trance, unveiling an urge for transformation through mixed media and the visceral body. More than a weary search for belonging, the work conjures chimeric figures to explore anonymity, (in)visibility, and kinship.

Talkback with the artist following the April 24th performance
Hosted by Hanako Hoshimi-Caines

carbon movements

In Carbon Movements, everything shakes: the stage, the air, your preconceptions. This groundbreaking performance blurs the distinctions between theatre, dance, poetry, and vibrotactile technology. But with its unique tactile and visual score, it is as much an interactive experience as a multidisciplinary work. The audience is immersed in a visceral wash of feeling, which questions whether it is possible to exist in an environment without disturbing it. Wrapped in a cascade of sensations, perhaps we will find ourselves in a world that is just a little more tender and harmonious than before. One that challenges us to reflect on control, connection, and the quiet knowledge that waits just beneath the surface.

Talkback with the artists following the May 15th, 2026 performance

Produced by: The Invisible Practice

je ne vais pas inonder la mer

Je ne vais pas inonder la mer is a danced elegy that explores the role our relationship with mothers and our heritage play in the construction of femininity. This solo piece by Mexican choreographer and performer Sonia Bustos, draws from her personal history and search for identity, tinged with the pain of grieving her mother and grandmother. At the crossroads of questions on feminine condition, lineage, and memory, the artist explores the phenomena of reminiscence through theatrical dance, awakening all five senses. Food, music, and an evocation of social norms, beliefs and rituals inspire and inform this visceral creation.

Childcare is available for the May 18th performance at 2pm, for children aged 3 to 8. Registration required.

Artist Sergio Barrenechea will offer a music workshop to children aged 3 to 8 registered for childcare during the performance on Saturday, May 18th. A percussionist by trade, Sergio offers children a participatory workshop in which he introduces them to rhythms, countries and new instruments that resonate with Sonia Bustos’s performance.

→ Offered free or charge to ticket holders for the May 18th performance at 2 p.m.

Vibrotactile Pillows
Vibrotactile pillows will be available for audience members to access the sound production as direct vibrations. Each pillow is outfitted with a transducer that produces both the sound and the accompanying vibration. A transducer is an electronic device that converts energy from one form to another thus these pillows convert the energy of the sound into an enhanced vibrational experience. The pillows are flexible to hold in your arms, on your back, under your feet or wherever they feel most comfortable to the individual. The vibrotactile pillows are provided through a collaboration with VibraFusionLab.

* Pillows are available in limited quantities, with priority given to the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community. Please select the vibrotactile ticket option (20$) in the box office checkout.

Hearing people can reserve vibrotactile pillows the hour before the performance by adding their names to a list on a first-come, first-served basis.

ASL + LSQ mediation — Wednesday May 15th + Friday May 17th
Pre- and post-show cultural mediation with Deaf cultural worker Dominique Ireland. Discussion about the artists, themes and soundscape of the show.
→ ASL discussion with LSQ interpreters

Talkback with the artists — Friday May 17th
Hosted by Yohayna Hernández
Post-show discussion translated in LSQ and ASL.
LSQ and ASL interpreters will also be present before and after the show.

credits

Choreographer and Performer: Sonia Bustos
Musicians: Eloisa Reséndiz, Valeria De Marre, Charles Cantin and Víctor Zamudio
Artistic Advisor: Angélique Willkie
Rehearsal Director: Neil Sochasky
Dramaturg: Ilya Krouglikov
Sound Design: Aurélien Tomasi
Composers: Maxime Ethier and Aurélien Tomasi
Olfactory Consultant: Dana El Marsi
Lighting Design and Technical Direction: Catherine FP
Project Coordination: Constance Aubry
Video: Ronan Goualc’h

Since the early stages of creation, this project has received support from Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Conseil des arts de Montréal and MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels). It also benefited from residencies at: Centre de Création O Vertigo, Studio 303, Circuit-Est/Nyata-Nyata, Département de Danse de l’UQÀM, and Maisons de la culture Plateau-Mont-Royal, Notre-Dame-des-Grâces and Janine Sutto.

bijuriya's drag cabaret

In 2020, drag artistry has gone digital! Without the Village cabarets and Montreal’s queer parties, our drag kings, queens, monsters and in-betweens have adapted their subversive art form for our screens. Bijuriya, our drag queen in residence, has produced an array of fascinating virtual numbers over the last few months. This Drag Cabaret will feature her favourite numbers, which engage with calypso, Bollywood (vintage, glamorous and/or psychedelic), baroque opera and… the odd vocalizations of imaginary creatures! Other surprise numbers will capture the effervescence and diversity of the local drag scene.

Très bilingual LIVE hosting by Bijuriya: Party in the comments section!

Gabriel Dharmoo is a recipient of MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)’s Alliance program.

whip

whip is a 60 minute duet performed entirely in leather hoods, leaving performers blind for the duration of the performance. Inspired by the virtuosic head-whip motion found in a multitude of dance forms, the duality of the leather being both soft/hard are revealed through the work. Bodies explore images of consent through a range of physical touch, with the support of interactive new media light and originally composed sound design

A coproduction by FakeKnot and MAI (Montreal, arts interculturels), part of Queer Camp Performance.

sheuetamᵁ (suspended indefinitly)

[highlight background=”#e2011e” color=”#ffffff”]— Montreal is in red zone since October 01, 2020. This performance is suspended until further notice. See MAI’s latest updates related to COVID-19. — [/highlight]

Created by Innu interdisciplinary artist Soleil Launière, Sheuetamᵘ is a performative and auditive installation that unfolds continuously over 5 days. The piece convenes the presence of a two-spirit being, caught in conversation with its surrounding territory and technology.

The performer-forest summons a bodily state of porosity, and in-so-doing merges with the plant beings surrounding her. Thanks to the use of experimental technology that relies on bio-data sensors, her relationship to the territory is expressed through vocal chants, sounds, and images.

Interweaving the past, the present and the future, this powerful ritual-performance amplifies Indigenous presence and disrupts the narrative of capitalist and colonialist modernity. Audiences can immerse themselves in the piece at any time of the day, and come and go as they please.

zom-fam (suspended indefinitely)

[highlight background=”#e2011e” color=”#ffffff”]— Montreal is in red zone since October 01, 2020. The activities of MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) are suspended until further notice. This performance is suspended indefinitely. See MAI’s latest updates related to COVID-19. —[/highlight]

ZOM-FAM is a solo performance by Kama La Mackerel that combines poetry, storytelling and dance. At once personal and political, ZOM-FAM (meaning “man-woman” in Mauritian Creole) narrates the story of a gender-creative child growing up in the 80s and 90s on the plantation is land of Mauritius. Multiply-voiced and imbued with complex storytelling, ZOM-FAM interweaves narratives that bring together ancestral voices, femme tongues, broken colonial languages and a tender queer subjectivity, all of which are grappling with the legacy of plantation servitude. Kama La Mackerel is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, educator and cultural mediator from Mauritius who lives and loves in Tio’tia:ke (Montréal), Canada.

Kama La Mackerel is a recipient of MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)’s Alliance program.

Produced with the support from the Government of Québec and the City of Montréal
as part of l’Entente sur le développement culturel de Montréal, and from the Canada
Council for the Arts

sonic & syllable series (cancelled-covid19)

Sound is all around us, even when seemingly silent.
The rotation of earth around its axis.
The rotation of earth around sun.
The sound of earthquakes.

Chewing.

The sound of art.
3 works that begin with listening.