Dear Porte Parole community,
Over the past 3 years we have been talking a lot at Porte Parole about our Documentary Hub. But it occurred to me recently that, because the Doc Hub does not occupy a physical space, it remains a bit of an amorphous concept.
In this month’s newsletter, all our stories feature activities connected to the Doc Hub. The Hub’s marquee annual event – the Porte Parole Pitch night – reflects its cornerstone value. The Hub exists to open Porte Parole’s doors to new voices and new documentary story ideas by giving members of our community the opportunity to pitch ideas for future documentary plays. For our 3rd edition of the event in 2025, we received 73 project ideas (from across Quebec and Canada, and from as far away as France) from which we chose 4 finalists to present a 10-minute pitch on May 20th in front of a live audience and Jury. I hope you will join us that night for a very entertaining cabaret-style event, during which you can vote for the coveted Public Prize, and celebrate the incredible potential of these 4 projects.
Manuelle Légaré won the first edition of the Pitch event in 2023, and her play Club sandwich mayonnaise continues to receive dramaturgical mentorship from Mathieu Gosselin through the Doc Hub as it makes it way toward final production in 2026 at Usine C. The Hub is our vehicle to steward new documentary plays through development by matching new stage artists like Manuelle with mentors like Mathieu who have worked with Porte Parole on past projects like J’aime Hydro. As such, the Hub creates an ecosystem of support for the sustainable development of future plays – an ecosystem that reaches far beyond the parameters of Porte Parole to encompass anyone who wants to participate in their own way to encourage the practice of documentary theatre.
Our donors, small and big, are also an important part of the Hub’s ecosystem. Today we offer an accessible way for our whole community to support Club sandwich mayonnaise through a crowd-funding campaign. In so doing, we are expressing to you candidly that we can’t continue to steward the next generation of documentary playwrights without your financial support.
Finally, the Hub exists to offer training to anyone who is interested in understanding how documentary plays are created. This spring co-founder Alex Ivanovici and I will be teaching the first edition of The ABCs of Documentary Theatre. As such, we hope to expand the Hub’s capacity to become a place of learning and experiential networking. We know that theatre, a highly collaborative art form, thrives when artists have access to shared spaces where they can innovate together and learn from each other.
One day the Hub will be anchored in one physical place. Today we invite you to step into it through the various activities on offer, and in so doing, to imagine with us what the Hub can continue to become.
— Annabel Soutar
Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Porte Parole
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