Bouche Theatre Collective

Speak Beyond Language

Rural Arts: Ignite the Arts Festival (Interior BC)

Rural Arts: Ignite the Arts Festival (Interior BC)

by | | 1.Landing Page, 3.Development, Nathalie Boisvert, News

New Translation Development – Rural Arts

Summerland’s Ryga Arts Festival & Bouche Theatre Collective
present

A New Translation Workshop Reading

Facelift

By Nathalie Boisvert
Translated by Johanna Nutter
Translated from FACELIFT (Quebec, Canada)
Featuring Kate Twa

Ignite the Arts Festival (www.ignitethearts.ca)

Sunday, March 29, 2026
2:00 p.m

Tempest Theatre
125 Eckhardt Ave E, Penticton BC V2A 1Z5

First the foundation, then the eyes and finally the mouth…

Synopsis

While leading a YouTube make up tutorial, a woman is visited by Nelly Arcan and Simone de Beauvoir, transforming the innocent routine of daily make up into a touching look at women’s lives, examining aging, seduction, and freedom. A powerful, funny, elegant, and essential new work from award winning playwright Nathalie Boisvert.

CREATIVE & PRODUCTION TEAM

Featuring Kate Twa | Playwright: Nathalie Boisvert | Translator: Johanna Nutter | Creative Producer: Jack Paterson | General Manager: Trista Bassett (Summerland’s Ryga Arts Festival) | Technical Director: Ronan Reinart (Tempest Theatre)

Gallery

Facelift featuring Kate Twa at Tempest Theatre
(Ignite the Arts Festival, Penticton BC, 2026)

Meet The Artists

Nathalie Boisvert

Playwright

Nathalie Boisvert holds an M.A. in Dramatic Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal, and is the author of both poetry and theatre. Her fifteen plays include L’histoire sordide de Conrad B. (produced in Belgium and France) and L’été des Martiens (produced in Quebec, Toronto, France and Belgium, as well as in two different German translations in Dusseldorf and Berlin).  Her work has received several major awards: the Prix Journées de Lyon des auteurs du théâtre for her play Vie et mort d’un village in 2006, and the Prix Gratien-Gélinas for Buffet chinois, produced at Espace Go in Montreal in 2010. Her latest work, Antigone au printemps (Antigone in the Spring), won the Prix Émilie Augier from the Académie Française and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Theatre in French.

Johanna Nutter

Translator

Johanna Nutter (she, they) is a Montreal-based performance maker and facilitator devoted to authentic storytelling. Her award-winning work has toured bilingually across Canada and Internationally. In 2016, she formed creature/creature, consolidating her passion for negotiating the delicate spaces between people, subjectivities, and artistic practices. Nutter is also devoted to advancing creative, active pedagogy, producing interactive educational programming in various African countries.

Kate Twa

Reader

Kate began her professional acting career at 17 with the role Estella in The Citadel Theatre’s production of Great Expectations. Shortly after, she travelled overseas to study in London with the British Theatre Association. Training in the classics by day left her evenings open to explore some of London’s newest playwrights and explosive productions. By 18, she was developing a taste for the raw, insightful, and provocative work she is known for today.

Selected stage performances include Birdbath by Leonard Melfi, No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre, Miss Julie by August Strindberg, and The Sweetest Swing in Baseball by Diana Son. Kate has acted extensively in film and television (The X-Files, The Outer Limits, Killer App, Da Vinci’s Inquest, and The Dead Zone).

Kate has taught thousands of actors in the craft of acting, is a co-founder of Railtown Actors’ Studio in Vancouver, and is currently Artistic Director of Tempest Theatre and Film Society in Penticton.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of:

Our Success is Measured in the Success of Others

Our Success is Measured in the Success of Others

by | | Nathalie Boisvert, News

Canadian New Works Abroad

Our Success is Measured in the Success of Others

Over the last five years, Bouche Theatre Collective and Creative Producer Jack Paterson have worked hard to introduce new Canadian works to artists and organisations across Canada and abroad.

We do this by sharing texts for potential translation, introducing and connecting artists and organisations, providing insights on translation, and supporting English language applications and documentation.

The 8th new Canadian work to reach presentation in a new language directly as a result of this volunteer outreach, BTC is thrilled to share Nathalie Boisvert’s Facelift, translated to Italian by Carolina Migli.

ChezActors & Piacenza Kultur Dom present

LIFTING

By Nathalie Boisvert
Translated to Italian by Carolina Migli
Translated from Facelift

Saturday November 18, 2023
Teatro Trieste Trentaquattro
Via Trieste 34 – 29121 (Piacenza, Italy)

First the foundation…then the eyes…and finally the mouth. The activity of a daily make-up routine turns into a examination a woman’s life, questioning the femal ideal, the relationship between women and beauty, seduction, and ageing.

Audience Response
“It was very poignant to understand the world of today. The dichotomy there is between what we are and what we think we show the world or better. What we Are and what we would like to be.”

“Who is to judge what I show of myself to the world? This piece is absolutely effective for today.“

“This play is like an onion . It has multiple layeres . If you cut into it , it makes you cry.”

Gallery

Photographer Mauro del Papá

International New Translation: Antigone in the Spring

International New Translation: Antigone in the Spring

by | | 3.Development, Antigone in the spring, Hugh Hazelton, International Projects, Nathalie Boisvert, News, QQ

PRESENCE THEATRE
IN ASSOCIATION WITH BOUCHEWHACKED! THEATRE COLLECTIVE PRESENTS

International Works in New Translation

This live digital reading is part of an ongoing occasional series of Presence ‘virtual’ readings exploring and celebrating new international theatre texts in translation, a main feature of which is the extraordinary work now emerging from the very vibrant Quebecois theatre community.  Readings are followed with followed by a discussion/Q&A with the writer and translator.

FREE EVENT

DATE

Monday, Jan. 31 2022

TIME

PT (Vancouver): 11 AM
ET (Montreal): 2 PM
GMT (London UK): 7 PM

RUNNING TIME

2 hrs including Intermission and conversation with the playwright

ANTIGONE IN THE SPRING

By Nathalie Boisvert | Translated by Hugh Hazelton
Translated from Antiogone au printemps (Quebec, Canada)

“The Antigone of Nathalie Boisvert’s beautiful text is so close to us…It’s impossible not to feel the contemporary resonance.” – Sorstu.ca

In this contemporary reimagining of Antigone, in a Montreal of now and myth, birds fall from the sky in the thousands and rot under the sun of an early spring. Antigone and her two brothers, Étéocle and Polynice, are swept up in the popular revolution rumbling through the city. Each must chooses a side. During a riot, the two brothers clash and kill each other. Polynice’s body becomes evidence to incriminate the protesters. How can Antigone, despite all the obstacles, escape the fury of power? In times of unrest, how do you stay whole, and true?

Antigone au printemps was first produced in 2017 (Théâtre Fred-Barry) in Montreal by Le Dôme créations théâtrales, directed by Frédéric Sasseville-Painchaud. It received the Prix Émilie Augier from the Académie Française; and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for French Language Drama. In May 2019, it received a dramatic reading at the Teamtheatre Global Quebec event in Munich, Germany.

The professional performers/readers for ANTIGONE IN THE SPRING are: Lewis Bruniges; Rebecca Lee and Joseph Reed.

Last year, Presence Theatre presented from Quebec, MIDNIGHT by Marie-Hélène Larose-Truchon and (A DAY AT THE) MALL by Emmanuelle Jimenez.

Meet our Playwright & Translator

About the playwright

Nathalie Boisvert

NATHALIE BOISVERT (she, her, hers) holds a bachelor’s degree in acting and a master’s degree in drama from the University of Quebec in Montreal (1993). In 1997, her first play, L’histoire sordide de Conrad B., was performed at the Festival de Spa (Belgium), remounted in Brussels and translated into English by Bobby Theodore. In 1999, her work, L’été des Martiens (Lansman) premiered simultaneously in Quebec (Théâtre Niveau Parking) and France (La Comédie de la Mandoune) and again produced simultaneously in 2006 in Dusseldorf (Landstheatre) and Berlin (Grips) in German translation by Frank Heibert. Translated into English by Bobby Theodore, it was also produced in 2002 by Theatre Direct (Toronto). In 2006, her play Vie et Mort d’un village, received lauréate des Journées de Lyon (Éditions Comp’Act) and she received le Prix Gratien-Gélinas in 2007 for Buffet chinois. Her Antigone au printemps was shortlisted for the 2018 Governor General’s Award French Language Drama and received the Prix Émile-Augier. Antigone is currently being translated to English by Hugh Hazelton.

About the translator

Hugh Hazelton

Hugh Hazelton (he, him) is a Montreal writer and translator who specializes in Quebec and Latin American literature. He has written four books of poetry, including Antimatter (Broken Jaw Press, 2nd edition, with CD, 2010), as well as Latinocanadá: A Critical Study of Ten Latin American Writers of Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), which received the Best Book of the Year award from the Canadian Association of Hispanists. He has translated twenty works of poetry, theatre and fiction from French, Spanish and Portuguese into English. His latest translations are Volume I of the complete works of the Argentine avant-garde poet Oliverio Girondo (Wolsak & Wynn, 2018), and The Doorman of Windsor Station, a play by Julie Vincent (Playwrights Canada Press, 2017). His translation of Vétiver, a book of poems by Joël Des Rosiers, won the Governor General’s award for French-English translation in 2006. He is a professor emeritus of Spanish at Concordia University in Montreal and former co-director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. In 2016 he received the Linda Garboriau Award from the Banff Centre for his work on behalf of literary translation in Canada, and in 2018 he was awarded the Prix de poésie Lèvres urbaines by Les Écrits des Forges for his dedication to the advancement of poetry. He is an honorary member of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada.

International New Translation Workshop: Facelift

International New Translation Workshop: Facelift

by | | 3.Development, Facelift, International Projects, Johanna Nutter, Nathalie Boisvert, News, QQ

PRESENCE THEATRE
IN ASSOCIATION WITH BOUCHEWHACKED! THEATRE COLLECTIVE PRESENTS

International Works in New Translation

This live digital reading is part of an ongoing occasional series of Presence ‘virtual’ readings exploring and celebrating new international theatre texts in translation, a main feature of which is the extraordinary work now emerging from the very vibrant Quebecois theatre community.  Readings are followed with followed by a discussion/Q&A with the writer and translator.

FREE EVENT

DATE

Monday, Jan. 17th 2022

TIME

PT (Vancouver): 11 AM
ET (Montreal): 2 PM
GMT (London UK): 7 PM

RUNNING TIME

2 hrs including Intermission and conversation with the playwright

FACELIFT

By Nathalie Boisvert | Translated by Johanna Nutter
Translated from FACELIFT (Quebec, Canada)

…a woman in her fifties leads an online makeup tutorial: first the foundation, then the eyes and finally the mouth… As she constructs the perfect face, she shares with us the secrets of successful make-up, her thoughts on the necessity of this camouflage, the dangers of age, loneliness and failure. As she drifts away from the female ideal, she enters into a dialogue with Nelly Arcan and Simone de Beauvoir. The activity of daily make-up turns into an examination of a woman’s life, questioning the relationship between women and beauty, seduction, aging and the subject of women’s freedom in the face of social diktats. A brand new work…

A live reading of a new work FACELIFT by Quebecois playwright Nathalie Boisvert, Monday Jan. 17th at 7pm via Zoom, followed by a discussion/Q&A with the writer and also the translator Johanna Nutter.

This is part of an ongoing occasional series of Presence ‘virtual’ readings exploring and celebrating new international theatre texts in translation, a main feature of which is the extraordinary work now emerging from the very vibrant Quebecois theatre community in association with BoucheWHACKED! Theatre Collective.

The professional performers/readers for FACELIFT are: Rachel Bavidge, Mufrida Hayes and Fiz Marcus

Last year, Presence Theatre presented from Quebec, MIDNIGHT by Marie-Hélène Larose-Truchon and (A DAY AT THE) MALL by Emmanuelle Jimenez.

Meet our Playwright & Translator

About the playwright

Nathalie Boisvert

NATHALIE BOISVERT (she, her, hers) holds a bachelor’s degree in acting and a master’s degree in drama from the University of Quebec in Montreal (1993). In 1997, her first play, L’histoire sordide de Conrad B., was performed at the Festival de Spa (Belgium), remounted in Brussels and translated into English by Bobby Theodore. In 1999, her work, L’été des Martiens (Lansman) premiered simultaneously in Quebec (Théâtre Niveau Parking) and France (La Comédie de la Mandoune) and again produced simultaneously in 2006 in Dusseldorf (Landstheatre) and Berlin (Grips) in German translation by Frank Heibert. Translated into English by Bobby Theodore, it was also produced in 2002 by Theatre Direct (Toronto). In 2006, her play Vie et Mort d’un village, received lauréate des Journées de Lyon (Éditions Comp’Act) and she received le Prix Gratien-Gélinas in 2007 for Buffet chinois. Her Antigone au printemps was shortlisted for the 2018 Governor General’s Award French Language Drama and received the Prix Émile-Augier. Antigone is currently being translated to English by Hugh Hazelton.

About the translator

Johanna Nutter

JOHANNA NUTTER (she, euro-settler, multidisciplinary artist) developed her passion for translation through acting: being one of few perfectly bilingual theatre artists, she played leading roles at Centaur (Good People, You Will Remember Me) and La Licorne (Les Événements). The attention of both circles came thanks to the success of her solo my pregnant brother/mon frère est enceinte, which she translated during a residency in Tadoussac, accompanied by Linda Gaboriau. The show toured across Canada and Quebec in both languages, and to the UK and Belgium. Subsequently, she translated the works of Annick Lefebvre (Barbed Wire), Guillaume Corbeil (You’ll Go Looking for Her), and Florence Longpré & Nicolas Michon’s ballet-theatre hybrid CHLORINE, which she also produced and directed at Centaur, with her company creature/creature.

Land Acknowledgement

Bouche’s activities take place on and are launched from the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish People: the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. We recognize and honour the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation commission and acknowledge the importance of Indigenous sovereignty on this unceded territory.

*A territorial or land acknowledgement is an act of reconciliation that involves making a statement recognizing the traditional territory of the Indigenous people who called the land home before the arrival of settlers, and in many cases still do call it home.
For more information on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada click here.

A Glimpse into New Translation: Facelift

A Glimpse into New Translation: Facelift

by | | 3.Development, A Glimpse into New Translation, Facelift, Johanna Nutter, Nathalie Boisvert, News

Facelift

By Nathalie Boisvert | Translated by Johanna Nutter

A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE IS A DIFFERENT VISION OF LIFE

A glimpse into
new translation

Join us online for our English language new translation development workshop series.

Discover the leading new works of francophone Canadian theatre, meet the playwrights and their translators, and play a part in the new translation process.

FREE EVENT

DATE

Sunday July 18, 2021

TIME

PT (Vancouver): 12PM
MT (Calgary): 1PM
CT (Regina): 2PM
ET (Montreal): 3PM
AT (Halifax): 4PM
GMT (London UK): 20:00 hrs
CET (Berlin EU): 21:00 hrs

RUNNING TIME

2 hrs including Intermission and conversation with the playwright

In Association with The Canadian Play Thing, PHT Creative Hub Co-operative,  Ruby Slippers Theatre & Théâtre la Seizième

FACELIFT

By Nathalie Boisvert | Translated by Johanna Nutter
Translated from FACELIFT (Quebec, Canada)

Featuring Nimet Kanji, Lisa C. Ravensbergen and Gwynyth Walsh
Q&A moderated by Catherine Ballachey

A woman in her fifties leads us in a makeup tutorial: first the foundation, then the eyes and finally the mouth… As she constructs the perfect face, she shares with us the secrets of successful make-up, her thoughts on the necessity of this camouflage, the dangers of age, loneliness and failure. As she drifts away from the female ideal, she enters into a dialogue with Nelly Arcan and Simone de Beauvoir. The activity of daily make-up turns into a examination a woman’s life, questioning the relationship between women and beauty, seduction, ageing and the subject of women’s freedom in the face of social diktats.

A brand new work, Facelift was featured at TEAMTHEATER TANKSTELLE e.V (Munich) and TeamTheatreGlobal:Quebec 2019

This translation and workshop is made possible by a grant from Canada Council for the Arts.  This project is produced with the co-operation of the UBCP/ACTRA.

Meet our Playwright & Translator

About the playwright

Nathalie Boisvert

Nathalie Boisvert (she, her, hers) holds a bachelor’s degree in acting and a master’s degree in drama from the University of Quebec in Montreal (1993). In 1997, her first play, The Sordid Story of Conrad B., was performed at the Festival ide Spa (Belgium), remounted in Brussels and translated into English by Bobby Theodore. In 1999, her work, L’été des Martiens (Lansman) premiered simultaneously in Quebec (Théâtre Niveau Parking) and France (La Comédie de la Mandoune) and again produced simultaneously in 2006 in Dusseldorf (Landstheatre) and Berlin (Grips) in German translation by Frank Heibert. Translated into English by Bobby Theodore, it was also produced in 2002 by Theatre Direct (Toronto). In 2006, her play Vie et Mort d’un village, received lauréate des Journées de Lyon (Éditions Comp’Act) and she received le Prix Gratien-Gélinas in 2007 for Buffet chinois. Her Antigone au printemps was a finalist for the 2018 Governor General’s Award French Language Drama and received the Prix Émile-Augier.

About the translator

Johanna Nutter

Johanna Nutter (she, euro-settler, multidisciplinary artist) developed her passion for translation through acting: being one of few perfectly bilingual theatre artists, she played leading roles at Centaur (Good People, You Will Remember Me) and La Licorne (Les Événements). The attention of both circles came thanks to the success of her solo my pregnant brother/mon frère est enceinte, which she translated during a residency in Tadoussac, accompanied by Linda Gaboriau. The show toured across Canada and Quebec in both languages, and to the UK and Belgium. Subsequently, she translated the works of Annick Lefebvre (Barbed Wire), Guillaume Corbeil (You’ll Go Looking for Her), and Florence Longpré & Nicolas Michon’s ballet-theatre hybrid CHLORINE, which she also produced and directed at Centaur, with her company creature/creature.

Meet the workshop team

Nimet Kanji (She, her, hers)

Nimet is an award winning Theatre and TV/Film actor and has had the pleasure of working with Edward James Olmos (Battlestar Galactica), Kevin Sorbo (Paradox) and John Cusack (Martian Child) amongst other notable names. Her theatre credits include ‘Sultans of the Street’ (Carousel Theatre), ‘9 Parts of Desire’ (The Maggie Tree) and ‘Victim Impact’ (Theatre Conspiracy).

Lisa C. Ravensbergen (She, Her, Hers)

A tawny mix of Ojibwe/Swampy Cree and English/Irish, Lisa is an award-winning, multi-hyphenate theatre artist and emerging scholar. Her work is rooted in Indigenous protocol, ontologies, and decolonial methodologies and is recognized nationally and internationally for its rigour and artistic excellence. Lisa resides on unceded Coast Salish territory. lisacr.com

Gwynyth Walsh (She, Her, Hers)

Well versed on stage and screen, Gwynyth is happy to be working with Jack Paterson again. Screen credits include Virgin River, Man in the High Castle and Black Summer. Stage credits include The Tempest ( with Jack! ), Mary Stuart, King Charles III, and Barefoot in the Park.

Guest Dramaturg: Diane Brown (She, Her, Hers)

Diane is a multi award-winning director, actor, and Artistic Director of Ruby Slippers Theatre (RST). In 2017, she received the prestigious Bra D’Or Award from Playwrights Guild of Canada and was a 2018 Nominee for the Women of Distinction Awards, in recognition of her years of empowering the voices of diverse female-identifying artists. She and RST earned the reputation as Vancouver’s finest producers of crucial Quebec works in English, translations commissioned by RST. Diane has a BFA from SFU and an MFA in Directing from UBC.

Creative Producer: Jack Paterson (He, Him, his)

Jack is an award winning theatre maker whose work and practice has taken him across Canada, UK, EU and around the world. Work has ranged from devising creation, multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural and multi-ligual projects to new works & texts, contemporary approaches to classical theatre. www.jackpatersontheatre.com
Learn more about gender affirming language here

About our Partners

About The Canadian Play Thing

The Canadian Play Thing is a playwright-centred virtual theatre that shares live readings of new and under-produced Canadian plays online. The goal is to support and celebrate the work of playwrights, and to connect our theatre family across the country. Artists and audiences around the world are welcome. www.plaything.ca

About The PHT Creative Hub
Co-operative

The PHT Creative Hub Co-operative has transformed how we collaborate and share performing arts with our communities. Co-op artist members from across performance disciplines fill our spaces, work on their own creative projects, and share their skills and expertise with each other. The PHT Creative Hub Co-operative

 

About Ruby Slippers Theatre

Ruby Slippers Theatre imagines a world where diversity is celebrated through a deeper understanding of each other. www.rubyslippers.ca

Francophone Canadian Theatre Resources

About Centre des auteurs dramatique

An association of authors serving authors, CEAD is a centre for the support, promotion and dissemination of French-language dramaturgy here. It occupies a unique place both in terms of the number of authors it brings together and the objectives of quality and innovation it pursues. www.cead.qc.ca

About Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal

Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal is a new creation development centre. PWM gives artists the opportunity to create and experiment, dream and take risks, fail and try again. Our dynamic collaborative process draws on our team’s unique expertise and is tailored to the artist’s individual needs. At PWM, playwrights, dramaturgs, translators, directors, performance artists, and theatre companies across the country find a creative accomplice willing to invest deeply in the development of meaningful work. www.playwrights.ca

About Théâtre la Seizième

Founded in 1974, Théâtre la Seizième is the main French language, professional theatre company in British Columbia. Since its creation, la Seizième contributes to the richness and diversity of the performing arts through its activities in new play development, production, presentation, and touring in French. Through powerful experiences that reflect the very best of francophone performing arts, from here and elsewhere, our company aims to inspire, enrich, and bring together diverse audiences. www.seizieme.ca

Special

Thank You

Land Acknowledgement

Bouche’s activities take place on and are launched from the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish People: the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. We recognize and honour the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation commission and acknowledge the importance of Indigenous sovereignty on this unceded territory.

*A territorial or land acknowledgement is an act of reconciliation that involves making a statement recognizing the traditional territory of the Indigenous people who called the land home before the arrival of settlers, and in many cases still do call it home.
For more information on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada click here.

CRFO Arts Rational Interview with Nathalie Boisvert

CRFO Arts Rational Interview with Nathalie Boisvert

by | | A Glimpse into New Translation, Facelift, Nathalie Boisvert, News

CRFO Arts Rational Interview with Nathalie Boisvert

Listen to award winning francophone playwright Nathalie Boisvert and John Jack Paterson on Vancouver Co-op Radio CFRO’s Arts Rational to discussing francophone theatre and her play Facelift.

Available on all following platforms:

http://www.coopradio.org/content/arts-rational-874

ABOUT NATHALIE BOISVERT (ELLE, SHE, HER, HERS) | PLAYWRIGHT: FACELIFT

Nathalie Boisvert holds a BA in acting and a MA in drama from the University of Quebec. In 1997, her first play, L’histoire sordide de Conrad B., was performed at the Festival de Spa (Belgium), remounted in Brussels and translated into English by Bobby Theodore. In 1999, her work, L’été des Martiens (Lansman) premiered simultaneously in Quebec (Théâtre Niveau Parking) and France (La Comédie de la Mandoune) and again produced simultaneously in 2006 in Dusseldorf (Landstheatre) and Berlin (Grips). In 2006, her play Vie et Mort d’un village, received lauréate des Journées de Lyon (Éditions Comp’Act) and she received le Prix Gratien-Gélinas in 2007 for Buffet chinois. Her Antigone au printemps was shortlisted for the 2018 Governor General’s Award French Language Drama and received the Prix Émile-Augier. Antigone is currently being translated to English by Hugh Hazelton.