La traversée du siècle, a 12-hour performance created by director Alice Ronfard based on the novels and plays of Michel Tremblay, will kick things off on Sept. 7.Supplied
The National Arts Centre has announced its 2024-2025 season – one that will see the Ottawa performing arts centre’s many stages overflowing with large-scale productions from its theatre, dance and music departments. The lineup includes presentations from some of Canadian culture’s heaviest hitters, including the Stratford Festival and the National Ballet of Canada.
While many other Canadian arts organizations are struggling financially amid depressed attendance numbers and rising costs of production because of inflation, the NAC – a Crown corporation funded in part through a direct parliamentary disbursement of more than $30-million each year – is in what president and chief executive officer Christopher Deacon calls a privileged position.
It has been the recipient of additional special funding from the Liberal government to help it recover from the pandemic since reopening – and, in the government’s proposed 2024 budget, there is another $45-million promised to the arts centre over three years.
“This funding answers a huge question and resolves a kind of hanging cloud – and gives us a runway to summer 2028,” says Deacon, who is forecasting a return to 83 per cent of prepandemic ticket-sale revenues this year.
While a jam-packed season is good news for performing arts enthusiasts in the Ottawa region, it also has a trickle-down effect to all the live arts companies across the country that the NAC collaborates and co-produces with or backs through its National Creation Fund.
The 2024-2025 season at the NAC English Theatre, run by director Nina Lee Aquino, certainly is a showcase for major productions from top theatres across the country.
The Shaw Festival’s upcoming production of Snow in Midsummer, an adaptation of a classic Chinese play directed by Aquino, will run at the NAC Oct. 30 to Nov. 9, while the Stratford Festival’s forthcoming world premiere of Salesman in China, a play by Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy about the American playwright Arthur Miller’s collaboration with a Chinese theatre company on a 1980s production of Death of a Salesman, will visit Ottawa from Jan. 16 to 25.
Controlled Damage, Andrea Scott’s play about civil rights activist Viola Desmond, will appear at the NAC in February in a co-production with Halifax’s Neptune Theatre, while Mahabharata, an acclaimed touring two-part adaptation of the ancient Sanskrit epic from Why Not Theatre that the National Creation Fund invested in, will be presented from May 13 to 24, 2025
Other English Theatre shows include the long-awaited Canadian premiere of Trident Moon, Anusree Roy’s thriller set during the partition of India, which Aquino will direct in a co-production with Toronto’s Crow’s Theatre; and First Métis Man of Odesa, a popular touring show from Edmonton’s Punctuate! Theatre about romance and war written and performed by real-life husband and wife Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova.
The NAC French Theatre, which is run by multitalented theatre artist Mani Soleymanlou, features 15 shows in its season, including six for children and youth.
La traversée du siècle, a 12-hour performance created by director Alice Ronfard based on the novels and plays of Michel Tremblay, will kick things off on Sept. 7. (It has already played at many theatres across Quebec.) Another anticipated production is Classique(s), which examines what is considered a classic in Western theatre; it is written by Fanny Britt and Soleymanlou, who also directs and is one of 11 in the cast. It will be presented in Ottawa from April 24 to 26.
The NAC Indigenous Theatre, run by the playwright Kevin Loring and now celebrating its fifth anniversary, has a season that features visits from Kaha:wi Dance Theatre and the Dancers of Damelahamid, as well as plays in multiple languages.
A couple of notable shows on the bill: The Secret to Good Tea, Rosanna Deerchild’s play that navigates “the complex relationships born from surviving the atrocities of residential schools” in English and Cree and will play in the Babs Asper Theatre from March 20 to 29, and Marguerite: le feu, a French-language performance by the internationally acclaimed artist Émilie Monnet about the 18th-century trial of Marguerite Duplessis, an Indigenous woman who declared her freedom from slavery.
The NAC Dance program, run by an executive producer Caroline Ohrt, will feature visits from Ballet BC, Montreal’s Compagnie Catherine Gaudet and the British hip-hop dance theatre company Far From the Norm. The National Ballet of Canada will come in as well from Toronto – bringing Giselle to Southam Hall from Jan. 30 to Feb. 1 – and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet will bring Jekyll & Hyde in from April 3 to 5.
The National Arts Centre Orchestra, run by musical director Alexander Shelley, will be in a particularly collaborative mood in its 2024-2025 season. It kicks off with Sphere, a 10-day festival in September that explores humanity’s relationship with water and will involve the participation of every other department at the NAC – including its culinary arts division.
Sphere opens with Uaque, a commission from the choreographer Andrea Peña that responds to photographs by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky and is performed to live symphonic music conducted by Shelley.
The NACO has also, notably, commissioned new works by composers Ian Cusson, Alexina Louie and John Estacio for a recording project that will pair the new pieces with short ones by Richard Strauss.
J. Kelly Nestruck