As part of Les Journées de la culture, Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal (PWM) is proud to present In-situ Cité, a theatre audio tour on September 30th and October 1st, 2006 between 12 noon and 5 pm. There is no admission fee. Donations will be accepted at the door. The tour will start at Casa del Poplo, 4873 saint-laurent blvd (St. Joseph).

In-situ Cité is an interactive project which combines a familiar streetscape with unfamiliar, intriguing stories, experiential audio environments and site specific visual art and performance. Presented in collaboration with Les Journées de la Culture, OBORO New Media Lab, and CKUT Radio, this project will be part of the second edition of the Intercultural Encounters, an initiative from Les Journées de la culture to promote professional emerging artists from Montreal’s cultural communities.

For this exciting project, PWM is working with director Stephen Lawson, and five women writers of distinct cultural backgrounds. The participating writers are all artists who apply a trans-disciplinary approach to arts creation and presentation: poet and web artist J.R. Carpenter, interdisciplinary and performance artist Nathalie Derome, author and performer Skidmore, journalist and writer Geeta Nadkarni, and filmmaker/editor Rosella Tursi.

The public is invited to explore five unusual sites or cultural landmarks in the Mile-End through the audio atmospheres and scenes created by the artists. Starting from the Mile End cultural hot spot Casa del Popolo you will be equipped with a map of the district and a CD player. Audience members travel from location to location and re-visit this unique neighborhood. The tour lasts approximately an hour and will start from a location within Mile End provided to audience members with a reservation. Audience members are also invited to stick around after their tour to meet the artists during one of the two talkback sessions hosted by Stephen Lawson on Saturday, September 30th and Sunday, October 1st at 4 pm.

Stephen Lawson, Performance Director
Since 1988, Stephen Lawson has been considered an artistic chameleon, repeatedly traversing the discipline defined boundaries of theatre, music, television/radio, print and video. His work as a director has been primarily focused on large scale contemporary music pieces (choral and orchestral) including having directed the premiere of an outdoor opera by acclaimed composer R. Murray Shaffer. He has produced several video art collaborations which have been screened internationally and his work with the much-admired Canadian performance artist Lorri Millan can be seen at the National Art Gallery. Stephen has developed cultural commentary work for print, radio, and television. Under the collaborative name 2boys.tv, he has been partnering since 2002 with multidisciplinary artist Aaron Pollard creating and touring transmedia performances and videos throughout Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

J. R. Carpenter is a poet, fiction writer and web artist based in Montréal. She stumbled across the Web during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 1995 and continues to explore and exploit the web's ever broadening potential for interactivity, non-linear narrative and the integration of image and text. She constructs online fictions with Internet flotsam and jetsam: found images, found audio, found data, and found scripts. A collage artist and packrat at heart, she lurks in listserves, prowls developer-sites, copy and pastes and habitually Views Source. She collects old textbooks in the alleyway and photographs other people’s graffiti. Her web art projects have been exhibited internationally and include, most recently: Entre Ville (http://luckysoap.com/entreville), commissioned by Oboro New Media Lab in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Conseil des Arts de Montréal; and How I Loved the Broken Things of Rome (http://luckysoap.com/brokenthings), named a Web Art Finalist in the Drunken Boat PanLiterary Awards 2006 and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto in association with the 19th Annual imagesFestival, 2006. These, like most of her web art projects, are based on a piece of her own writing. J. R. Carpenter is a two-time winner of the CBC Québec Short Story Competition, in 2003-2004 for Precipice and in 2005-2006 for Air Holes. Other of her short stories and poems have appeared in various anthologies journals in Canada, the US and the UK. More information about her writing and web art projects can be found at: http://Luckysoap.com.

“I moved to Montreal in large part because of reading the Anglo Jewish poets of the Plateau - Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, Shamulis Yelin, even old Richler - they were heroes to me when I was the lone Jewish girl poet in all of small town Nova Scotia. I thought about them and that initial pull to Montreal, especially when I was making Entre Ville http://luckysoap.com/entreville/index.html” JR Carpenter

Nathalie Derome , an interdisciplinary and performance artist, passionately jumps from one subject to another _ a hotchpotch of various genres, a patchwork, spoken word. Since 1983, she challenges the codes used for representing reality and the approaches used to “make believe” in different modes. Two avenues are drawn in her practice: performances presented as part of contemporary art events, and interdisciplinary shows incorporating several artists produced by her interdisciplinary arts company Les Productions Nathalie Derome. In 2000, she launched her first album, a collection of her songs: Les 4 ronds sont allumés, chansons parodisiaques, followed in October 2004, by a second disc from her show Les Écoutilles, cabaret de fortune. Her work has been seen in Quebec, English Canada, Europe, and in the United States. In 2004, her Chantillons was the opening act for Les Reines Prochaines (Sala Rossa) during the Edgy Women Festival. She is currently working on a performance for young audiences on changing seasons, and on a new interdisciplinary show to premier in the 2007-2008 season. http://www.nathaliederome.qc.ca/

Skidmore (aka Skid) has steadily embraced text as a medium since graduating from Concordia in '92. This trans-media trans-disciplinary artist quickly established a critical voice as art and culture writer at the Montreal Mirror, working in print, on radio and cable television, and, until 2001, as culture columnist and Arts Editor for Hour magazine. By 1996 Skid was performing text-based work almost exclusively, becoming well known for her alter ego, the crotch-obsessed satirist Bob Loblaw. This multi-queer artist has studied pure forms, embraced and experimented with conventions of slam, narrative storytelling, stand-up, 'journalistic objectivity', on both the page and stage. Performances have included appearances at: Kiss My Cabaret; Le Boudoir; Voix des Ameriques spoken word festival; The Ottawa International Writer's Festival; and the Ubud Writers Festival in Bali. Skidmore will debut a new CD this fall featuring panoply of new original stories and audio crimes.

Geeta Nadkarni is a Montreal-based freelance journalist and mad cat lady. She was born and raised in Mumbai, India and lived and worked in Singapore before moving to Quebec. To support her animal habit, she works for print, radio and television. She reports for CBC's News at Six and researches, writes and reports for The Gazette, CBC Radio, Global News and several magazines internationally. She currently reports on-air for CBC TV's News at Six and also hosts Indo-Montreal on CH Montreal. Scheduling gives her hairballs.
Luckily, she has the support of her family who all do their bit to help out: cats Elvis and Steenki don't do 'snooze' and often leap onto her keyboard and press 'send' if they've been ignored too long. Her partner, Patrice Blain, makes sure she eats regularly and attends to basic personal hygiene, and Lucie the dog is in charge of taking her out for long walks so she doesn't develop unsightly "journo-bum".

Rosella Tursi has worked in production in the television and film business for over eight years. Her editing and directing work ranges from edgy independent films to television pieces covering topics such as fashion, music, and design, to documentaries that focus on cultural issues such as the process of adopting a child for a same-sex couple. What ties all of this together is a mixture of Rosella’s thirst for knowledge, passion for culture, and most of all, her love of storytelling. Recent editing assignments include Mommy Mommy, a moving documentary set to air on CBC's Rough Cuts early in 2007 and the Gemini-nominated From The Ground Up with Debbie Travis which aired on Global TV. Rosella is currently putting the finishing touches on her soon-to-be-released short Felice’s 8 1/2. The film finds her Italian family selling their beloved matriarch’s home after her death. While sifting through fifty years of family history, they celebrate the experiences that bind families together. http://www.rosellatursi.com

Production assistant : Raul Gomez Carcagno
began working in theatre nine years ago in Peru with the group Jagannatah on their presentations of The Ramayana and parts of The Mahabaratah and Srimad Bagavatam. After attending a workshop led by Peruvian director R. Angeles, Raul soon shifted his interests towards western authors such as Shakespeare, Ibsen and Sofocles. His interests in filmmaking led him to a workshop on digital filmmaking with a Peruvian director, who Raul then assisted in shooting. Followed several workshops on scrip writing, lighting for the stage, and theatre, all led by outstanding Peruvian professionals, the later led by A. Isola a former student of Giorgio Streller. Raul directed and produced Ionesco’s The Chairs in 2003. He came to Canada the same year to study theatre at Concordia University. There he directed and performed his own piece, The Cave, at the FC. Smith Auditorium. He is currently assisting director Greg Kramer in the Concordia Theatre Department production of Sarah Daniel’s The Gut Girls, and working on his own project in which he is exploring correspondences between music notation and fractal geometry.

PWM would like to thank the following for their support and generous donations:

Les journées de la culture: Everything must be seen! (2006 slogan)
Les Journées de la Culture is a three-day festival (September 29, September 30, and October 1, 2006) highlighting culture and its many facets throughout Quebec. It is an event created to shine the spotlight on Canadian creators, artists, artisans, and cultural workers. Attracting over 300,000 participants since 2004, this festival is continuously growing, and presents an important opportunity to spread the knowledge and the interest of Quebec's cultural performances each season. The Intercultural Encounters is an initiative that showcases the practices of professional artists from ethnocultural and aboriginal communities within the institutional networks of art and culture.
http://www.journeesdelaculture.qc.ca

Oboro, New Media Lab: A centre dedicated to production and presentation of art, contemporary practices and new media.
Founded in 1982 with the conviction that living transcultural artistic experiences contribute to the betterment of humankind, OBORO is an artist centre that favours the development of art practices locally, nationally and internationally. OBORO’s sphere of activity encompasses visual and media arts, new technologies, new performing arts and emerging practices. PWM recieved support through the OBORO, New Media Lab, Production Assistance Program, 2006.
http://www.oboro.net

CKUT Radio 90.3 FM
CKUT 90.3 FM McGill Radio Inc. is a non-profit campus community radio station that provides alternative music, news and spoken word programming to the city of Montreal and surrounding areas. CKUT broadcasts 24 hours a day, every day. You can hear them at 90.3 MHz on your FM dial, or 91.7 by cable, or tune in by Real Audio over the Internet.
http://www.ckut.ca/

Imperial Tobacco Canada Foundation
The Imperial Tobacco Canada Foundation is a private charitable foundation funded solely by Imperial Tobacco Canada Limited. The Foundation is responsible for managing Imperial Tobacco Canada's community investment programs across the country in accordance with the Company’s criteria, guidelines and longstanding tradition as a leading corporate donor in Canada. The Foundation's three primary focus areas are arts and culture, human services and post-secondary education.
http://www.fondationimperialtobacco.ca/home.htm

Casa Del Popolo
Established in September 2000, Casa Del Popolo (The House of the People) is Montréal's only family-run neighborhood vegetarian hot-spot! Part fair-trade café, part music venue, part bar, and part art gallery… a perfect location for the start of any audio tour.
http://www.casadelpopolo.com/casa/home.html

Farine Orpheline cherche Ailleurs Meilleur
http://www.farineorpheline.qc.ca/

ARGGL!
Activité Répétitive Grandement Grandement Libératrice!