A STREET THEATRE FESTIVAL LIKE NO OTHER
We’re Acting Out! will feature hundreds of performances by mor than 50 troupes
Buckle up, Montreal, because for the next few weeks our streets are going to be known for so much more than potholes, construction signs and hair-tearing parking regulations.
As part of Montreal’s 375th celebrations, more than 50 outdoor performance troupes will transform the city’s public spaces into a riot of colours, eccentric spectacle and family-friendly mayhem with a month-long festival called We’re Acting Out! (or À nous la rue! in French). The organizers promise it will be the biggest-ever gathering of street performance artists in North America.
Soon, thousands of Montrealers will be gazing at airborne angels and musicians, at vast inflatable, illuminated sculptures, at a pyrotechnic-haloed ship, and perhaps saying in amazed tones, “What, another festival?”
We’re Acting Out! spokesperson and Just for Laughs co-founder Andy Nulman puts it this way. “Have we got enough festivals? Sure. Until the next great one.”
Nulman describes We’re Acting Out! as an amalgamation — and then some — of the best of the outdoor components of JFL, FrancoFolies, the jazz festival, and so on.
“All these events have their outdoor elements, but here
they’re being taken to a new level,” Nulman explains during a telephone call. “I guess the reference point for this is what happened with the giants (the towering marionettes that recently strode so spectacularly around Montreal). In February or March, if you’d said ‘the giants,’ nobody would have known what you were talking about nor would they care. But when the giants came to the city, there was an amazing outpouring of love for them, with everybody eager to get photos and videos of them. That’s why for We’re Acting Out!, I always say make sure your phone has a lot of battery power, because you’re going to want to take a lot of videos and send this around.”
So what can we expect from this mother of all street-theatre festivals featuring some 800 performances? Nulman immediately enthuses over several contenders for the most spectacular shows on offer, beginning with Place des Anges (July 29 and 30) from the company Gratte Ciel, which will see acrobatic angels hovering over the Quartier des spectacles and letting loose a snowstorm of more than a million feathers.
Another is The Colour of Time from ARTONIK, which begins with communal choreography inspired by Hindu ritual and ends with the crowds being immersed in joyous bursts of (completely safe) coloured flour.
“You come out of there completely rainbowed,” Nulman says.
Lâcher des violins will see musicians suspended 150 feet from a crane — “like a child’s mobile hanging over the city,” as Nulman says.
And then there’s Veles e Vents (Wind and Sails) from Xarxa Theatre, set aboard a massive ship and creating the effects of a sea that goes from serene calm to raging apocalypse.
Three of the aforementioned shows are from France, but the festival includes companies from all over the world (Xarxa, for instance, are from Spain). Eighteen of them are from Quebec.
Nulman’s Just for Laughs colleague, artistic director Catherine Girard-Lantagne, has been travelling the world looking for acts for the festival.
“The criterion has been that it had to make people say ‘Wow!’ ” Nulman explains. “It had to have some semblance of uniqueness — the wildest, the fastest, the slowest. We didn’t want to bring a sameness to town. Once you start bringing in these troupes, what it does is it raises the bar for what people are going to expect next year. These troupes are really like the Rolling Stones of their ilk. These are not somebody you look up in the Yellow Pages and find under the clown listings. These are people who travel the world.”
Although many of the shows will be “macro,” as Nulman puts it, there are many modest-sized shows, too: Caisse 606 is a show put on in a converted food truck; Rats! is one of the many walkabout shows and features a Pied Piper trying to control four giant rodents; Les Vitrines consists of zany living tableaux taking place in five shop windows along St-Denis St.
This last brings up one aspect of We’re Acting Out! that is particularly dear to Nulman’s heart, namely the beneficial long-term effects it might have on the city, as measured either by a booming economy or boarded-up storefronts.
Of the latter, Nulman passionately says: “If I were mayor, I would run on that. It’s a blight, it’s a scar on the city. But here’s what this festival does. It’s the catalyst for you to get out of your house. Get your affairs in order for June, get your bills sorted out, and give yourself some free time in July to get out. Because you look at what’s on offer and you say here is a free show, I do not have to pay, I’m gonna walk down that kilometre of art on Sherbrooke, and, oh, look, downtown they’re having a 50-percent off sale at Simons or Doc Marten or wherever. So just by bringing you out of your house, it spawns an economic activity.”
And once you’re on the streets, to return to our starting point about potholes and construction signs and the like, Nulman refers me to a classic CBC television show.
“Do you remember The Friendly Giant’s slogan? ‘Look up, look wa-a-ay up.’ When you’re looking up in the sky, you won’t notice the orange cones on the ground.”
We’re Acting Out! runs from July 7 to 30. For full program, visit 375mtl.com