Annabel Soutar is a Montreal-based playwright and theatre producer. In 2000 she co-founded the theatre company Porte Parole Productions with actor Alex Ivanovici and she has acted as Artistic Director of the Company since its inception.
Annabel studied English and Theatre at Princeton University in New Jersey where she completed her degree in 1994. While at Princeton, under the tutelage of renowned American playwright Emily Mann, Annabel learned about the documentary approach to theatre and since 1998 she has been applying it to plays she produces in Montreal. Her original plays, Novembre, 2000 Questions, Santé, Import/Export, Seeds/Grains, Sexy béton, The Watershed/Le partage des eaux, Fredy, The Assembly and L’Assemblée have been mounted in Montreal at the Monument-National, Place des Arts, Espace Go, La Licorne, and at the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts.
In 2013 Seeds was published in both English (Talon Books) and French (Les Editions ecosociété) and presented across Canada in Montreal (Centaur Theatre), Calgary (Theatre Junction), Vancouver (PUSH Festival for the Performing Arts) and in Ottawa (National Arts Centre of Canada) in a production directed by Chris Abraham.
In 2012 Annabel was commissioned with Chris Abraham of Crow’s Theatre in Toronto to write a new documentary play about fresh water for the 2015 Toronto Pan American/Para Pan American Games cultural program – PANAMANIA – (Creative Director, Don Shipley). That work, The Watershed, earned Soutar recognition on The Globe & Mail’s Artists of the Year list for 2015 and affirmed that Soutar’s work is considered part of the vanguard of Canadian performing arts. The Watershed has since been performed in five theatres across Canada (2016-17) and been seen by over 15,000 spectators.
The Montreal Gazette named Porte Parole ‘Theatre Company of the Year’ in 2003; Seeds was named the best English production of the year by Montreal’s Association of French theatre critics and was nominated for Best New Text and Best English Production by the Académie québécoise du théâtre in 2006; and Annabel’s play Sexy béton was a finalist for the prestigious Quebec playwriting award Le prix Michel-Tremblay.
In 2014, Soutar invited Quebec actress Christine Beaulieu to write a new documentary play for Porte Parole about Hydro Quebec. Working closely together for over three years, Annabel acted as Christine’s mentor and the play’s dramaturg. J’aime Hydro has since been seen by over 20,000 spectators and been performed in over a dozen theatres around Quebec. In 2017, J’aime Hydro won the Prix Michel-Tremblay and the « Meilleur spectacle de l’année – Montréal, “1 2016-2017 » par l’Association québécoise des critiques de théâtre, and was a finalist for the Conseil des arts de Montréal’s Grand Prix.
Since 2016, Annabel has been working with actors Alex Ivanovici and Brett Watson to create the concept for The Assembly/L’Assemblée, an episodic documentary theatre project on political polarization.
In late 2017, Annabel started working with François Grisé to develop a documentary play about assisted-living homes for the elderly. They are currently in the midst of transforming his research, experiences and recordings into a script.
Annabel is currently collaborating with François Grisé to develop the script for his first documentary play Tout inclus. Set to premiere in the fall 2019, Tout inclus looks at how we face old age in Quebec, how our economy is dealing with an ageing population, and how we talk about death.
