Presented by
Porte Parole
in collaboration with McGill University’s
Department of English
and the Centaur Theatre
October 6 2025
5:30 PM to 7PM
at the Centaur Theatre
453 Saint-François-Xavier Street
Tickets: 25$
Thank you to our hotel partner
To officially kick off its 25th anniversary celebrations, Porte Parole, in partnership with McGill University’s Department of English and the Centaur Theatre, is hosting a special public conversation bringing together three leading voices in contemporary theatre. Annabel Soutar, Porte Parole’s Co-Founder and Artistic Director, will be joined by Emily Mann, a trailblazer of documentary theatre in the United States, in a conversation moderated by the celebrated Canadian playwright, director, and actor Robert Lepage.
This rare encounter will explore the evolution and impact of documentary theatre on both sides of the border over the past 25 years. Soutar will revisit her discovery of the genre as a student of Mann’s at Princeton in the early 1990s — a turning point that led to the founding of Porte Parole. Since then, the form has grown in Quebec from virtually unknown to one of Rthe most popular theatrical genres. Mann will share insights from her career as a playwright and director in the U.S., where she brought pressing social issues to the stage in landmark works such as Execution of Justice, Greensboro (A Requiem) and Having Our Say.
In this deeply polarized moment in North American politics, they will also discuss how artists navigate complexity, bridge divides, and foster important conversations. At a time when divisions strain civic life, what role can theatre play in creating agoras for debate and reflection across our borders?
Read Emily Mann‘s latest play
Five decades after Gloria Steinem began raising her voice for equality and championing the voices of others, she remains a leader of the American feminist movement. Emily Mann’s new play traces the progress of Steinem’s extraordinary life, from her undercover Playboy Bunny exposé in the 1960s, through her founding of Ms. Magazine in the 1970s, to her activism in today’s women’s movement.
Emily Mann
Emily Mann is a Tony nominated director and playwright and a Tony winning Artistic Director. In her 30 years as Artistic Director and Resident Playwright at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey, she wrote 15 new plays and adaptations, directed over 50 productions, produced 180 plays and musicals, and supported and directed the work of emerging and legendary playwrights including Ntozake Shange, Athol Fugard, Edward Albee, Christopher Durang, Nilo Cruz, Joyce Carol Oates, Tarell Alvin McCraney and Danai Gurira and is known for her productions of Williams, Lorca, Chekhov, and Shakespeare.
On Broadway, she directed her own plays Execution of Justice and Having Our Say, Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics and A Streetcar Named Desire. Her other plays include: Still Life; Annulla, An Autobiography; Greensboro (A Requiem); Meshugah; Mrs. Packard; Gloria: A Life which aired on PBS’ Great Performances. and The Pianist, a play with music. Her adaptations include: Baby Doll, Scenes from a Marriage, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, A Seagull in the Hamptons, The House of Bernarda Alba, and Antigone. She recently premiered On Cedar Street, a new musical for which she wrote the book, music by Lucy Simon and Carmel Dean and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead.
Awards include: Peabody, Guggenheim, Hull Warriner, NAACP, 6 Obies; Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, WGA nominations; Princeton University Honorary Doctorate of Arts; Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwrights’ Award; Margo Jones Award; TCG Visionary Leadership Award; The Lilly Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater, The Gordon Davidson Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing, and The Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in Playwriting. She has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Theater Hall of Fame. Future projects include her new play due to premiere next season titled Code Red and directing Athol Fugard’s Master Harold and the Boys at The Geffen Theater in Los Angeles this spring.
Photo
Vivian Doan
Annabel Soutar
Annabel Soutar is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Porte Parole Productions, a documentary theatre company based in Montreal whose plays create a dynamic civic agora for exchange between diverse people about the thorniest issues of our times.
Annabel studied theatre at Princeton University where she learned about the documentary approach to playwrighting. Since 2000, her plays and dramaturgical collaborations, including the acclaimed Seeds, The Watershed, Sexy béton, Fredy, J’aime Hydro, The Assembly, and Rose et la Machine have been performed in theatres across Canada and around the world.
Annabel believes that artists’ ability to listen, to hold space for conflict, and to tolerate difference makes them uniquely skilled to contribute creatively to public policy discourse. Over the last 25 years her plays have attracted prime ministers, heads of industry, academics and community leaders along with tens of thousands of audience members to engage in tough conversations about complex social issues like immigration, GMOs, polarization, health care, capitalism, climate change and energy policy.
In 2015 Annabel was named one of Canada’s Artists of the Year by The Globe and Mail, and in 2022 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from McGill University for her exceptional contribution to both her field, and to society.
Photo
Tony Hauser
Robert Lepage
The multidisciplinary artist Robert Lepage is all at once an actor, a director, a playwright and a stage director. Hailed by international critics, his original, contemporary and unusual works, inspired by recent history, transcend borders and challenge the standards of scenic writing, particularly through the use of new technologies.
From a very early age, Robert Lepage takes a keen interest in geography, but his growing passion for theatre dictates his choice of career: he enrolls at the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Québec in 1975. After an internship with Alain Knapp in Paris in 1978, he returns to his hometown, where he develops the great artistic versatility for which he is known.
The year 1994 marks an important step in his career: he founds Ex Machina, a multidisciplinary creation company of which he is the artistic director. Also under his leadership, the multidisciplinary production center, La Caserne, is created in June 1997, in Quebec City. This last creative space sees the birth of almost all of Ex Machina’s productions until 2019.
Robert Lepage’s visionary side and will to create led him to promote and implement the construction of Le Diamant theatre in the heart of Quebec City. Inaugurated in August 2019, this unique cultural venue is intended to be an anchor point for the public, emerging artists and creators from all horizons.
His most significant works include the plays The Seven Streams of the River Ota and The Dragons’ Trilogy; his solos, The Far Side of the Moon and 887; the operas, The Damnation of Faust and Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle; his multimedia works, The Image Mill and The Library at Night; Peter Gabriel’s shows, The Secret World Tour and The Growing Up Tour; and with Cirque du Soleil, KÀ and TOTEM.
His recent projects include: Courville, inspired by giant table top puppetry – SLAM!, a theatrical circus show set in the wrestling world – a wordless, danced version of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark – Glaube, Geld, Krieg und Liebe (Faith, Money, War and Love) a work created with the Berlin Schaubühne Ensemble – Macbeth, created for the Stratford Festival in collaboration with Ex Machina – and artistic direction and content theme design for the Canada Pavilion at the Osaka World Expo 2025.
Lepage’s most important awards are, the Légion d’honneur, Stanislavski Award, Prix Europa, Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Glenn Gould Prize and he was made Compagnon des Arts et des lettres du Québec.
