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
This professional workshop is supported by the Conseil de la formation continue Arts et Culture de Montréal (CFC), with the financial participation of the Government of Quebec through the Intervention-Compétences program.
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, theatre, podcast and performance art. After training in opera singing, she went on to do a double MA in theatre and journalism, before continuing her training in documentary film in Belgium. She became a scriptwriter for ARTE and joined the Rimini Protokoll collective in Berlin. She moved to Montreal in 2018 where she was welcomed by the documentary theatre company Porte Parole and then became associate dramaturg at CEAD. She has staged three documentary and musical plays: ‘Sœurs d’armes’, ‘Paroles de journalistes’ and ‘Parlez-moi d’amour’.
She is currently working on her fourth creation, ‘Filles de’, a documentary rock opera about our mothers.
Her projects address the place of women and minorities, as well as territories and bodies that have been sidelined. The inexhaustible subject of the family often comes up. Her theatre work bridges the gap between sensitive statements and poetic forms of reality, and she has developed a resolutely accessible documentary style that moves us beyond words.
