BOUNDARIES 2002-03 at the Traverse highlights the big players in international theatre.

In 2002 the Traverse Theatre linked with renowned playwrights’ organisation CEAD (le Centre des auteurs dramatiques), Montréal, to forge a year-long playwrights’ exchange between writers from Québec and Scotland.

Two Scottish writers have had their plays translated for Québec: Isabel Wright’s current commission for the Traverse, Mr Placebo, was translated by François Archambault and read at the Carrefour international de théâtre festival in Québec City in May 2002. Gregory Burke’s Gagarin Way will be translated by Yvan Bienvenue, as part of CEAD’s autumn residency in Montréal, and given a public playreading at Montréal’s Théâtre La Licorne in October 2002.

And three leading Québécois playwrights have had their work translated in residency by British playwrights and translators. The Traverse is delighted to culminate the project this autumn by showing the fruit of the year’s work from Québec over three nights:

Soap by Larry Tremblay
(new translation by Katherine Mendelsohn)
(directed by John Mitchell)
Larry Tremblay began working in theatre as an actor before he also started to write. His ground-breaking work as a playwright has now been playing in Québec for the last twenty years, where his new plays continue to be produced in leading theatres. This is the first time this prize-winning dramatist’s work has come to the UK. Soap is a black comedy about our current obsessions with TV soaps pitted against a flailing ‘serious culture’. The play was first workshopped and developed in 1997 and subsequently presented by CEAD in Montréal in 2000.


Please note that each of the Boundaries 2 readings will be followed by an Encounters discussion where there will be an opportunity to discuss with the project with the artistic team.