Showing posts with label studio porte bleue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label studio porte bleue. Show all posts

Monday, January 27, 2014

The Question... Colin Lalonde on Studio Porte Bleue


In Search of a Deeper Connection
I hear far too often that people 'don’t get' theatre.
by Estelle Rosen

Colin Lalonde trained as an actor at John Abbott College. After completing his training he began a theatre company, Vanguard Productions, where he directed multiple performances including Dylan Thomas’ Under Milkwood. He went on to complete his BA in Honours Theatre at the University of Ottawa. While studying in Ottawa he became a part of the performance and research group Les Ateliers du Corps, a group led by Professor Daniel Mroz that offers its participants sustained training in embodied practices including Taijiquan, Qigong and contemporary voice work. This training is then used to devise new performances that are aesthetically similar to the work of Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret. Mr. Lalonde went on to pursue his Masters in International Performance Research at the University of Warwick (UK) and the University of Arts Belgrade (Serbia). While travelling and researching he worked with the performance group Dah in Belgrade, attended workshops with Richard Schechner, and with his colleagues he helped begin a yearly performance series examining ignored and unused urban spaces entitled UNLISTED (performed in Belgrade in 2012 and Pittsburgh in 2013). He is now the Artistic Director of Studio Porte Bleue. 

CHARPO: It takes a lot of guts to start a new theatre company these days. What are the goals of Studio Porte Bleue and why was this piece selected as the first presentation?

LALONDE: After returning to Montreal after six years away, I decided to create a space in my native city that was dedicated to artistic development and experimentation. While away, I had the pleasure of working with a variety of different practitioners and academics from a wide array of performance and artistic backgrounds. This opened my mind to many different possibilities in performance. Studio Porte Bleue was born out of the motivation to dedicate myself to finding an outlet to explore and expand upon all of my experiences outside of the city.