Joséphine is a little girl who is a life coach for children. She offers tips and tricks for learning to live with grown-ups. During Joséphine’s ten coaching lessons, we learn about the ups and downs of her family life – a life of difficulties, big and small, for parents and kids. Luckily, an intriguing old lady attends each of the lessons; the two become friends and help each other out.
Creations
Two spirited, uninhibited characters are your hosts at a secret party that’s a bit mischievous, a bit exuberant – a party where a bit of gentle misbehaviour is easily forgiven. In fact, no grown-ups are allowed! So, well … maybe a few get the special privilege of attending, but only a few. Because here, in this Cabaret de la dissidence, it’s the children who decide.
Children 5 to 8 years old
What about fate? Do we choose the life we’ll live? Why do we become one person rather than another? What is the turning point? The breaking point? The moment of truth?
10 years old and +
This is the story of Antigone and Creon, the story of Oedipus, his parents and his children, the story of Ismene and Haemon. These people come from a distant country and time: Greece, more than two thousand years ago. But their names have endured through the ages, travelled around the world, and now they are before you, full of love and hate, life and death.
10 years old and +
For her community service, Zakia Ibgui – call her Zouzou – runs stencilling workshops in high schools. When the course begins, she arrives accompanied by her parole officer, Mathieu. . .
14 years old and +
A man remembers a little girl with a knapsack, with whom he crossed paths long enough to take a photograph of her at the foot of the separation wall running through the occupied Palestinian territories. What had become of her? Had she managed to climb over that concrete wall, which is eight metres high and 740 kilometres long? From the other side, she answers him. Her bag is heavy, but she’s still walking, despite the darkness she carries.
A theatrical and photographic journey | 9 years old and +
Plume is lively, chatty, cheerful. Taciturne, on the other hand, talks little, but she watches and listens. Her passion is music.
They live next door to each other, but that, it seems, is all they have in common. Only in the night, with its spooky sounds and looming shadows, do they learn how to find out about each other, smooth over their differences, and become friends.
Children 3 to 6 years old
In a world in which things often go in twos, SHE is missing a hand, and HE is missing a foot. Both quickly and magically, they correct the situation: he has two feet and she has two hands! Are they playing? Are they imagining? Whatever it is, no sooner said than done: they invent a factory for feet and hands.
6 years old +
Why us? Why now? What did we do? What we forget to do, neglect to do? There is no answer that will change things. Alice, the middle child of three sisters, will not be going to school when it opens in the fall – she who had dreamed about that day ever since her older sister got her first schoolbag.
8 to 12 years old
A single woman tells us – she tells us about Juarez, a town on the border between Mexico and the United States, a town of maquiladoras, factories for women who are exploited at will. They come from all over the country to work there, and the cardboard shacks have multiplied to the edge of the desert. In 1993, the body of a young woman was fund half-buried in the sand. Dead, raped, strangled. Almost four hundred were found in ten years . . .
Adults and older teenagers
When Hansel arrives, it upsets the balance of Gretel’s life completely. Her little brother has turned everything upside down. When their parents abandon them in the forest and they end up at the witch’s house, she is very tempted to push him into the oven with their jailer and get rid of him forever…
6 to 10 years old
Plume is lively, chatty, cheerful. Taciturne, on the other hand, talks little, but he watches and listens. His passion is music. They live next door to each other, but that, it seems, is all they have in common…
3 to 5 years old
A little girl and her dog, on a stormy night. Questions spring up in her mind. Thoughts are born, take flight, come back to sting, bounce off the invisible walls of consciousness. In the deep of night, the child wonders about the meaning of life…
6 years old +
Elikia is a child, among so many others, who has seen her life overturned from one day to the next in a chaotic, lawless civil war. The girl, kidnapped from her family, becomes a child soldier. She is a victim, but she is also an executioner in an untenable situation that blurs the most elementary laws of ethics…
10 years old and +
Élise and Léo live in a vacuum, prisoners of the fear of the unknown and of regimented time measured in grains of sand.
One morning, thanks to an exquisite dream, out of the desire to do something good, out of the excitation of shoes held too long on the leash, time breaks down, the door opens . . . the sky and the earth tip . . .
3 to 7 years old
Timothée and Sammy, two young boys, meet secretly in an alley behind a theatre. Because they think that kisses and hugs are counted, they prepare to flee in search of a country where knees are like “public places” … While Sammy waits outside, Timothée enters the theatre for a last trip to the bathroom before they make their departure.
7 to 11 years old
Pierre Avezard, nicknamed Petit Pierre (1909-92), was born prematurely, “unfinished”, as he would say. Half-blind, almost deaf and mute, he couldn’t learn to read and write. He was taken out of school when he was seven and provided with the trade of innocents: cowherd. In the fields, Petit Pierre observed nature, animals, and men at work. He saw that machines invaded daily life, and that the world was constantly changing.
9 years old and +
[Translation to come]
Éprise de liberté et de frénésie urbaine, M’man ne supporte plus le silence de P’pa et la vie dans le rang Croche de Sainte-Léonie-des-Eaux-Claires. Une nuit d’été, elle fait sa valise, saute dans son pick-up et, dans un crissement de pneus, quitte mari, fille et maison pour la ville. C’est à cet instant précis que le cri de désespoir de Mouche déchire la nuit, que l’incompréhension de P’pa sature l’univers et… que L’AUTOROUTE commence.
8 years old and +
In The Ogreling, the son of an ogre decides to escape his destiny. But first, he must overcome three ordeals, challenges to his instincts and his troubling desires. From his father he inherited an appetite for flesh; but from his mother he received a hunger to live at peace with the world.
8 years old and +
[Translation to come]
PETIT NAVIRE: lorsque deux enfants décident, contre vents et marées, de vaincre le mensonge et de répondre à leur façon à l’appel de la vie.
In remembering his past, Salvador renews his relationship with the soul, culture, and values of his people.
8 years old and +
Tales of Real Children – these are children and adults, face to face, back to back, in situations that swing back and forth between the playful and the tragic, the unusual and the everyday, dream and reality, poetry and theatre . . .
8 years old and +
A tale that begins with “Once upon a time”… a moon … a sun … a city … a rat, Alfredo, and a giant, Troller, turn the pages of time. The images parade by …
4 to 8 years old
[Translation to come]
Qui croira ce qui s’est passé ce jour-là? La terre s’est arrêté de tourner, le soleil de briller et les hommes de courir après la fortune. Tout ça pour soigner un petit rat malade. Pas un rat de laboratoire… un rat d’égout, le rattus rattus le plus banal.
9 ans et +
[Translation to come]
Cat, 15 ans, vit à l’envers. La nuit, elle rôde dans les rues du Red Light et se prostitue. Le jour, elle dort dans une maison de chambre où elle séquestre un chat. Une nuit, celui-ci est étranglé. Qui, parmi les chambreurs, l’a tué ? Bac, Sundae ou Radio-Shack ? Et qui est 242 M 106 ? Suspense teinté d’humour dans lequel s’inscrit la détresse d’une génération que la société laisse pour compte.
[Translation to come]
Un petit garçon de huit ans, Gilbert Rembrand, a été placé en institution psychiatrique pour avoir transgressé les règles de la société. Dans cette solitude immense qui lui tient lieu de quotidien, Gilbert fait basculer le récit du passé au présent et du présent au passé dans un ultime effort pour comprendre comment son amour pour Jessica a pu l’amener à la Résidence d’enfants.
[Translation to come]
Chassé-croisé entre l’histoire d’une grand-mère qui garde son petit-fils fiévreux et les souvenirs que cet enfant gardera de sa journée.
4 ans et +
[Translation to come]
Avec réalisme et espièglerie, la pièce observe quatre enfants de neuf à douze ans à divers moments de leur journée (réveil, école, ménage, commissions, souper, punitions, coucher), et scrute leur relation avec leur parents. Cette négociation constante, mêlée de tendresse, pour des « petits pouvoirs », entre parents et enfants, est une occasion pour tous de prendre conscience de leurs rôles.
[Translation to come]
Dès qu’il comprend qu’il a un voisin, un ami en puissance se dit-il, Plume cherche à lier connaissance. Mais Taciturne n’aime pas parler. Arrive la nuit avec son lot de petits bruits inconnus, ses peurs et une seule lune entre les deux maisons. Peu à peu, au rythme de l’enfance, Plume et Taciturne vont s’apprivoiser et découvrir l’amitié.
3 à 6 ans
[Translation to come]
Pet-Bretelles a de grandes ambitions. La ville qu’il veut construire, à l’image de celles qu’il connaît, sera immense, pleine d’usines et de magasins; on y travaillera à un rythme effréné et la circulation y sera dense. Framboisine, Vertelette et Gros-Bidon se rendent compte de l’absurdité du projet; ils ont d’autres aspirations, qui finiront par se manifester et se concrétiser.
5 à 10 ans
[Translation to come]
En complicité avec les enfants, amenés à participer durant le spectacle, des comédiens rejouent avec humour l’histoire du brave Ti-Jean, qui triomphera d’une bête-à-sept-têtes tirée de la tradition orale québécoise, dont la pièce retrouve le langage coloré.
5 à 8 ans
[Translation to come]
Rose et Alexis s’embarquent sur un train avec une troupe d’enfants, à la recherche d’une chanson jamais entendue. Jos, l’homme-à-tout-faire, et Max, le marchand de brocante enjôleur, les guident dans une visite de la ville de Québec, depuis les bureaux d’une grosse compagnie de pâtes et papiers jusqu’au cœur de la vieille ville. Ils n’auront pas à aller plus avant, ou à porter leur regard plus loin, pour trouver la chanson que la vie sans cesse improvise.
[Translation to come]
Un petit jardin potager vit tranquille sous l’œil vigilant de l’épouvantail Greluche. Pourquoi ses deux fermiers Follavoine et Sarrazin ne peuvent-ils pas s’entendre? Sarrazin levé avec le soleil, tout au long du jour, prend grand soin de ses amis, les planta de fruits et de légumes. Il les aime avec ses bras forts qu’aucun travail ne rebute. Follavoine paresse et se languit. Les fruits et les légumes l’ennuient. Il n’a qu’une seule passion : les gâteaux de Cannelle. Ses gâteaux, de toutes les formes, de toutes les couleurs, de toutes les essences… Sarrazin, Cannelle, Greluche et les plants de fruits et légumes sauront-ils trouver un moyen pour intéresser Follavoine au choix du jardin?
[Translation to come]
Une fête de village, à Laprairie, au Québec, au début du siècle, met en effervescence ses habitants.