The Theatre des Petites Lanternes, a Sherbrooke-based theatre company known around the world for its work on the community-inspired, collectively-written Great Harvest of Words projects, is planning a bold new project that is looking to take the storytelling skills of its creators from the stage to the great outdoors. This coming September, the company will be presenting an outdoor theatre project called, “River of Lights,” at the Rendez-vous d’Howard festival in Sherbrooke’s Old North Ward.
“Ultimately what we want to do is create a new modern-day fairy tale for Sherbrooke.” explained Kristelle Holliday, Executive Director of the theatre company, “That’s the long-term vision, this year and working with a premade play because they didn’t get the funding in time to launch the full vision in 2015.”
The project, according to Holliday, operates on a similar basis to the company’s word harvest projects in that, over the coming year, a series of workshops will be held throughout Sherbrooke to help determine the framework of the city’s modern-day fairy tale. By speaking with the people of the city’s various communities, the company hopes to get a sense of who are the heroes and villains of Sherbrooke today as well as what challenges might face the city moving forward in order to create a living allegory of what it means to live in Sherbrooke today. Once completed, the community will then be invited to walk through the resulting story, living out the fairy tale alongside actors in an hour-long outdoor performance.
Read the full article in Wednesday’s Record.
