Let’s go see the world together

Aurélie, Lahja, Mathieu, Maura, Oumi, and Romain,

You’re 16, 17, 18, 19, and even almost 20 years old. You hold youth – and the passion that comes with it – in your hands. Your childhood has been behind you for a little while, although your cheeks are still a gentle pink and your eyes still fill with surprise most beautifully. You’re no longer afraid of the wolf, you no longer believe in the tooth fairy, and you know that Santa Claus isn’t real.

We’ve just spent three weeks together. It’s been three weeks of exhilarating intensity – three weeks filled with joy, doubt, work. Since August 23, I’ve been thinking of you every day. I miss you. I miss your questions, your sharp awareness, your capacity to not conform, to not pretend, to not act as if. Every day, I think of you and your ability to live in the moment.

Even though in these times we’re told that we’re not so much citizens as statistics, as globalization weakens the diversity of cultures all over the world, as the thermometer puts us in a cold sweat, you let me believe that everything is still possible.

With you I feel old; with you I feel young.

Together, with Zoë and all the members of the Beating Choir team, for almost a year we’ve been making a show with you as the heroes.

Aurélie, Lahja, Mathieu, Maura, Oumi, and Romain, you’ve thrown yourselves body and soul into the creative space offered to you by Le Carrousel and BRONKS. Suddenly, thanks to you, the stage becomes the world and the world becomes better.

Your beauty
Your doubts
Your sincerity
Your commitment
Your lightheartedness
Your freedom
Your clarity
Your openness
Your thirst for justice
Your determination
Your fears
Your individuality
Your solidarity

All this
embodies the hope
that we need to continue
to live, as a community.

***

The relationship between Le Carrousel’s artists and its spectators is forged in a space of exchange that engages children and teenagers in really thinking by and for themselves, with clarity, imagination, and a spirit of collaboration. The company’s shows – and all the time we spend meeting with our audiences – are invitations to share. For 50 years, we’ve been seeking the meaning of things, we’ve been seeking to provide food for thought, feeling, and action.

Freedom is the theme that links the shows in this season:
The freedom to question in Antigone sous le soleil de midi
The freedom to shift borders in L’ombre portée
The freedom to seek rather than find in La question du devoir
The freedom to learn rather than succeed in Une lune entre deux maisons
The freedom to dream of a future that looks like us in Chœur battant / Beating Choir

Each of these shows is a world unto itself, a system imagined out of whole cloth that recounts, evokes, suggests: a zone of freedom that audiences will be able to fill with their own questions and perceptions.

This season, Le Carrousel updates its visual identity with a new logo designed by Laurent Pinabel and a completely overhauled website, enhanced with works by visual artist Stéphanie Robert. The company is initiating artistic partnerships, hosting and supporting artists who share Le Carrousel’s heritage, values, and its free way of thinking about theatre in relation to young audiences, for one-, two-, or three-year cycles. It thus hopes to maintain, in the privacy of its creative space, a constant and fertile dialogue around dramaturgical and aesthetic issues key to the relationship with young spectators. The association of Martin Bellemare, Patrice Charbonneau-Brunelle, Mamby Patricia Gomis, Dominique Leclerc, Marie-Christine Lê-Huu, Stéphanie Robert, Karin Serres, and Kristina Troske with Le Carrousel’s journey is the first stage in its opening to various ways of conceiving and creating theatre for young audiences.

May joy rain down on our 49th season!

With friendship,

Marie-Eve Huot
Artistic Director

Photo : David Ospina