La Chapelle Presents Repeat Performances of A USER'S GUIDE TO AUTHENTICITY IS A FEELING

La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines has announced two A User's Guide To Authenticity Is a Feeling's performances May 17 and 18, 2021.

Back by popular demand, the show will be presented in English only as part of the accessibility program, La Chapelle More Bilingual than Ever. These two new dates are Jacob Wren's repeat reading-performances previously showed back in April and May 2019 at La Chapelle. Produced by PME-ART, the project was created in residency and co-produced by La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines (Montréal), Inkonst (Malmö), and FTT (Düsseldorf).

"More authentic than ever [Jacob Wren] who has spent the last 20 years creating works where his collaborators could (or even had to) "be themselves on stage" demonstrates here that authenticity is perhaps one of the greatest forms of genius. » - Ève Dumas, La Presse, 2019. (free translation)

To prepare for this performance, PME-ART invites you to a convivial conversation with Daniel Canty and Jessie Mill on Wednesday, May 12 - 5 PM: Un second sentiment d'authenticité: Authenticity Is a Feeling à l'épreuve de la traduction, to be broadcast on PME-ART's Facebook page.

To celebrate twenty years of PME-ART, co-artistic director Jacob Wren wrote a book entitled Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART, a compelling hybrid of history, memoir and performance theory. But books about performance never feel like enough on their own. Addressing performance requires performance. Therefore, he also created A User's Guide to Authenticity is a Feeling. An artist talk turned inside out, a performance asking: why do we do it, why do we continue to believe so stubbornly in the fragile but essential act of "being yourself in a performance situation," and how do we continue to hope against hope that our destabilizing tangle of art and politics might still, in some small way, change the world. The show also documents the reactions of PME-ART's past and current collaborators. What they agreed with and what they found unfair, demonstrating that collaborative dynamics are always complex.

Since the end of the eighties, Jacob Wren's practice has freely mixed literature, collaborative performance and visual art. His books have been published in English, French and Norwegian, among them Unrehearsed Beauty, Families Are Formed Through Copulation, and Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed. His novel Polyamorous Love Song was a finalist for the Fence Modern Prize-Prose and one of The Globe and Mail's 100 best books of 2014. Rich and Poor was a finalist for the 2016 Quebec Writers' Federation Paragraphe-Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Much of his performance work is made as co-artistic Director of Montréal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART. He has also collaborated on projects with Nadia Ross (Sto Union), Lene Berg, Tori Kudo, and Pieter de Buysser, in Canada and abroad. He frequently writes about contemporary art.

The work of PME-ART examines the performance situation with considerable openness to both artistic co-creators and audience. PME-ART has presented in more than fifty cities in Quebec, Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States, including the ICA (London, 2000), Kaaitheater (Brussels, 2006), Festival Spielart (Munich, 2015), and Kiasma (Helsinki, 2016). PME-ART has also participated in the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal's Triennale Québécoise (2011) and La Biennale de Montréal at La ChapelleScènes Contemporaines (2016). Past creations and achievements include the performances Every Song I've Ever Written, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information and HOSPITALITY 3: Individualism Was A Mistake. PME-ART was nominated for the 27th Conseil des arts de Montréal's Grand-Prix (New Artistic Practices) in 2012

Production: PME-ART; Author: Jacob Wren; Costumes: Claudia Fancello; Sound and lighting: Paul Chambers; Production Manager: Nikita Bala; Presented by: La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines; with the explicit or implicit contributions from PME-ART's collaborators.

A PME-ART Production, created in residency and co-produced by La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines (Montréal), Inkonst (Malmö), and FTT (Düsseldorf) supported within the framework of the Alliance of International Production Houses by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. With the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.

La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines continues its mandate as a bilingual presenter by offering more than just francophone and anglophone performances. In fact, in addition to presenting bodies of work in several languages, La Chapelle offers French and/or English subtitles for specific performances. For the past three years, thanks to our partnership with the Cole Foundation, La Chapelle has been working to extend its accessibility and thus further democratize Montreal's local art scene. The initiative La Chapelle, More Bilingual Than Ever allows us to enrich our cultural offer with performances that are aimed at all audiences: Anglophones, Francophones, Allophones, school groups, the curious ones, and people living with hearing disabilities.

Both an experimental and interdisciplinary theatre, La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines is a key institution for Montreal's performing arts. For the past 30 years, its programming has taken us down the less travelled paths that have made it its signature. Each season constantly reinvents itself by showcasing fresh practices and new creative talents. La Chapelle also means 12 weeks of technical residencies for the season's artists; Récréations, an introductory educational program in contemporary performing arts for elementary school students; and finally La Chapelle More Bilingual Than Ever, which offers a bilingual sur- or subtitle translation program, projects that combine both French and English (for certain performances), and much more.

Due to COVID-19, the scheduled performances are subject to change. Some shows scheduled in the 2020-2021 season may be presented in an alternative format from the traditional theatrical live performance. For the most recent updates, please visit our website at lachapelle.org

 

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