The Rideau Project

Piercing the two solitudes

Magnetic North Theatre Festival

Part of the mandate of the Magnetic North theatre festival is to engage the community where it happens to find itself. This year that plan has taken the shape of The Rideau Project, an aggregation of six different scenes written by six separate playwrights of both official languages and directed by different directors – all of whom reside in Ottawa, according to Joël Beddows, the artistic director of this particular project and of Théâtre la Catapulte. “Ottawa’s a very good city for bringing in theatre, it’s not always the best city for creating its own theatre. Because of the nature of the piece I wanted everyone to be an artist working and living in Ottawa.”

The nature he refers to is a very immediate and important one for us. “Ottawa is so much defined by tourist brochures, and the news. But that Ottawa is an actual city with people who live there… I want us to tell the stories of our city.”

A co-commission by Magnetic North Theatre Festival, Théâtre la Catapulte and Festival Zones Théâtrales, the six scenes that comprise The Rideau Project take place at different locations all through downtown, with the audience walking from each to each over the course of the approximately three-hour experience. Each has a “separate style,” and “there are no two pieces that resemble each other” says Beddows proudly. And though written for particular sites in Ottawa, Beddows emphatically tells me “we didn’t want any Heritage moments.”

The project is more than just an ordinary theatrical work though – it’s also an attempt to crossbreed the two tribes of English and French theatre. “This is about … two families of aesthetics, two families of artists getting together to work together and we’re using as a starting point what they share – the city of Ottawa.”

As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – May 28, 2009
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/stage/stage.aspx?iIDArticle=17434