Outaouais artists take on grief, trauma, prison walls and the natural world

Tashi Farmilo

From a rap album recorded inside the Hull detention centre to Marie-Pier Lajoie's unflinching theatrical exploration of trauma and identity to a children's show in an Aylmer forest, 26 Outaouais artists and organizations were announced on April 13 as recipients of support through the Programme de partenariat territorial de l'Outaouais, reflecting a regional cultural scene that is ambitious, community-rooted, and anything but timid.

Among the most arresting individual projects is that of Gatineau hip-hop artist David Dufour, known as D-Track, who will record a rap album with inmates at the Hull prison. Once complete, the work will anchor a public photo and audio exhibition putting the participants' stories and creativity front and centre. Equally striking is the work of playwright and author Sonia Cotten, whose project brings together people living with Parkinson's disease, in partnership with Parkinson Outaouais, to create a stage work that honours their bodies, voices, and lived experience.

Playwright Marie-Pier Lajoie, also of Gatineau, will develop Point Nemo, a theatrical text for general audiences that uses a dreamlike symbolic universe, navigating between memory, hope and reality, to explore identity reconstruction in the aftermath of physical and sexual trauma. Her Gatineau colleague Pierre Antoine Lafon Simard takes theatre in a decidedly technological direction, developing a stage production built around the Pepper's Ghost illusion technique and generative artificial intelligence.

Theatre is not the only discipline getting a workout. Frédérique Drolet, based in Plaisance in the Papineau MRC, will stage a multidisciplinary performance in nature, combining lyric song, contemporary dance and ambient sound design to explore humanity's relationship with forests through four fantastical forest creatures. Elaine Juteau, from Saint-Émile-de-Suffolk, turns to the equally universal themes of rites of passage and end-of-life through an interdisciplinary theatre work examining the connections between the living and grief.

Eric Larose, the Lac-des-Plages-based artist known as Monsieur Larose, is taking his practice directly into his community, engaging residents throughout the entire creation process of an interdisciplinary laboratory show aimed at reviving what he describes as the collective creative, poetic and rebellious imagination of the Lac-des-Plages area.

On the visual arts side, Chelsea artist Emily Rose Michaud will collaborate with Chez Les Simone and La Fab to produce large-format botanical ink and cyanotype works, followed by ecology-focused workshops for regional community groups. Gatineau filmmaker Cristi Andrei Parpalita received support for Les Braconniers, a narrative short film about a brother and sister who reunite to sell the family cottage after their father's death and must reckon with a decade-long estrangement. Julien Morissette, a past CALQ Outaouais Artist of the Year, will research and write a collection of fictional stories rooted in Outaouais folklore, hauntings, and reinvented archival testimony.

Among the organizations, Gatineau's Théâtre Dérives urbaines will stage ten performances of Chanterelle et les héros de la forêt, a children's play by Gatineau playwright Isabelle Bélisle, in the Forêt-Boucher park in Aylmer this coming October. Also returning to outdoor performance is Fâcheux Théâtre, which will mount Molière's Le Malade imaginaire at Parc Fontaine in Vieux-Hull, with additional performances in other city parks.

Music fills several corners of the project list as well. The Cercle des amis et amies de Norteño will bring the ensemble Norteño into long-term care facilities across Gatineau for six concerts, while the Société de musique de chambre de Gatineau will focus on developing new audiences and integrating emerging musicians through open rehearsals and discovery concerts in collaboration with the Conservatoire. Plaisirs du clavecin will present a historical musical panorama under the theme of pacifism, tracing the role music has played in comforting communities through conflict across the centuries. In Papineau, Ripon trad will collect and record traditional songs and tunes specific to the Outaouais repertoire, with live captures at the 2026 Ripon trad festival, creating a permanent archive of the region's musical heritage.

The organization DEVENIRS CORPS, based in Montpellier, will present the third edition of Festival DU.O from July 3 to 5, a gathering of dance and live arts featuring workshops, bold performances, and community events. In Chelsea, L'eau du bain will develop a theatrical creation based on the novel La lucina by Antonio Moresco, paired with school-based workshops. The Centre des arts, de la culture et du patrimoine de Chelsea is developing a multidisciplinary exhibition on the mythological significance of ravens and crows, with Indigenous participation and a partnership with Éco-Echo.

The funding behind these projects comes from the Programme de partenariat territorial de l'Outaouais, a triennial agreement running from 2024 to 2027, to which partners have collectively committed $1,205,500. Projects were chosen by a jury of peers drawn from multiple artistic disciplines, on the basis of merit, excellence and fit with programme objectives.