Porte Parole is proud and deeply honoured to announce that Annabel Soutar, its Co-Founder and Artistic Director for the past 22 years, was awarded an honorary doctorate on May 25 for her exceptional contribution to both her field, and to society.
This tremendous recognition from McGill University underscores Annabel’s unwavering commitment to promote documentary theatre as a safe space for democratic debate and a as driver of social change. It is a tribute to her exceptional work, her rigorous approach, her integrity, and above all her tireless willingness to open up conversations about complex and sensitive issues. Twenty-two years of documentary creation dedicated to a healthier democracy!
In her speech, Annabel said: “over the past 22 years, hundreds of thousands of people have left the comfort of their own homes in Canada, the US, France, Lithuania, Germany to engage with the work I do with my fellow theatre artists in documentary theatre.”
“And what does this tell me? Well, for one thing it makes me truly optimistic about people’s appetite for real engagement today. People don’t really love sitting at home scrolling and clicking or binge-watching Netflix for too long. They are not very proud of the emojis they emit. People like being challenged, people like being uncomfortable and then getting over their discomfort, people like having disagreements with other people but staying at the table to finish their conversation. People like finding themselves in places where they are not all the same. People really want to be engaged today because they are not happy being engagement data points for companies that don’t care about whether they are truly engaged.”
(…) “I believe the type of engagement I am talking about is the foundation (…) of open and respectful dialogue with a community that is curious about, and not afraid of, its plurality.”
