April 14 to 18, 2025
9:30 am to 12:30 pm (Mon-Fri)
Full week: $95 (taxes included)
Drop-in: $28 (available one month prior)
Language of instruction: French
Questions can be asked in French and English
CATEGORY
OBJECTIF
This workshop covers several concrete examples of documentary theater, chosen for their subject and their deliberately very different forms.
Participants will explore their ideas and sketch out a project through practical exercises. We’ll look at the stages involved in getting a project off the ground, multidisciplinary work, working with different communities of people and the ethics involved in this discipline.
CONTENT
Following a lecture-style format with practical and stimulating examples, the workshop will move into a practical mode with research-creation exercises, guided explorations, interviews between participants and collective and personal writing.
Several points will be addressed:
How to choose a subject? What angle to take? How to conduct field research? How to prepare and frame interview questions? What forms should be used for what subjects? Working with actors or non-professionals? How to transpose documentary material for the stage? What ethical questions should be asked during the process?
| Workshop Pace | Workshop Features |
| Adaptable to the group needs | Visual support (i.e., documentation, texts…) Exercises are adaptable Subgroups exercises |
BIOGRAPHY
Mathilde Benignus writes, directs and performs works for film, theater, podcast, and performance art. After training in lyrical singing, she completed a double master’s degree in theater and then documentary film in Belgium, before joining the Rimini Protokoll collective in Berlin. She moved to Montreal in 2018, where Porte Parole documentary theater company welcomed her, and then became an associate dramaturgy advisor at CEAD. She has staged three documentary and musical plays: “Soeurs d’armes”, “Histoires de journalistes” and “Filles de: l’opéra-rock documentaire sur nos mères”.
Her projects address the place of women and minorities, as well as territories and bodies that have been marginalized. The inexhaustible subject of the family often resurfaces. Her theatrical practice bridges the real and the sensitive, and she develops a resolutely poetic and accessible documentary style that touches us beyond words.