In 1998, actor Alex Ivanovici and playwright Annabel Soutar borrowed 5000 dollars, bought a digital tape recorder, rented an economy car and set out on a 3-week journey across Quebec to interview people about the state of the province’s democracy.  It was the rainy month of November and Quebec was in the throws of a provincial election campaign.

Their goal: to create a documentary play based on the verbatim testimony of Quebeckers cut from a wide swath across the province:  from the fishing villages of the Gaspé peninsula to the casse-croutes of the Eastern Townships, from the mansions of Westmount to the factories of the Côte Nord.

Lacking an official title for their ‘research project’, Alex and Annabel came up with the name ‘Porte Parole’.  By recording peoples’ words and bringing them back to be performed on a stage in Montreal, they were acting as ‘porte paroles’ – carriers of language and harbingers of a new spirit of creative civic engagement in Quebec.

10 years and 7 productions later, Alex and Annabel have carved out a precious niche in the Montreal landscape with the hundreds of other actors, directors, writers, designers and theatre technicians who have graced their plays – a niche where bilingual audiences from every angle of Montreal’s political spectrum gather to be entertained and to debate the big issues in Quebec.  Health care, immigrant integration, outsourcing, infrastructure – no topic is too dry for Porte Parole’s stage.  On the contrary, we relish any opportunity to turn complex social conflicts into deeply human stories.

In 2010-11 we will be celebrating our 10^th anniversary season with the remount of our most recent production Sexy béton at the Théâtre Denise Pelletier in February 2011.

Please join us in the theatre or on one of our online forums to help us continue building cutting-edge public dialogue in Quebec!