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In charge since September 2022, Angela Konrad assumes the double role of artistic and general director of Usine C. The Montrealer by adoption now masters the systems involved in the dense multidisciplinary programming of the Lalonde Street venue.
Angela Konrad dirige l’Usine C depuis le 1er septembre 2022. Photo: Angelo Barsetti
Angela Konrad is determined to host ambitious, technically challenging projects, and is working closely with European institutions to establish a new coherence in programming. “Networking is important at the Quebec, Canadian and international levels to join forces, because I want to work in continuity with important artists that I want to show more than once,” she says.
Great texts
In September, she returned to Tableau final de l’amour (FTA-2023), the breathtaking adaptation of Larry Tremblay’s novel freely inspired by the life of painter Francis Bacon. “The radicality of the staging was built up in record time with the performers, but it’s in line with what I perceive of the ambient political context.” Konrad will soon be returning to Shakespeare (“where poetry meets politics”) but for the time being, she’s busy rehearsing the various sections of Virginie Despentes’s rock-hard Vernon Subutex: “Without a great text, you can’t do anything,” she says.
Having also studied literature and visual arts, Konrad places great importance on the choice of texts. “As a dramaturg, I become the author of a scenic language, and I try to be faithful to the texts I adapt, in order to capture their impulse, their beauty.” When you fall in love with a play, you want it to be realized quickly, and in today’s financial climate the machinery of theatrical production forces you to make difficult concessions—it can be hard to give form to your creative desire.
Chaos
“I work on texts of opposition and contrast, which sometimes also lead to collisions and conflicting moods,” says Konrad, “but the chaos, when it intervenes abruptly, is never gratuitous. I read it in the texts and it translates into another geometry, like a phenomenon to be observed, giving it a new perspective.”
Angela Konrad is interested in blind spots, in the dark side of the human being. While there are plenty of misfits in Vernon Subutex, there’s also plenty of tenderness in Virginie Despentes’s colourful depictions of offbeat Parisian counterculture. “Vernon Subutex resonates with what I perceive in the contemporary and with something of my own intimate, sensitive world,” says Konrad.
Angela Konrad remounts Vernon Subutex 1 (Prix de la Critique 2021-22) and presents the world première of the first complete three-volume run of Virginie Despentes’ best-selling novel. Usine C, April 30-May 18. www.usine-c.com
This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
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