Website: Centre des auteurs dramatiques

Founded: 1965

Location:
3450, Saint-Urbain Street
Montreal, Quebec
H2X 2N5

Contact Information:
Nadine Desrochers
Telephone - (514) 288-3384 (ext. 223)
Fax - (514) 288-7043

Mandate: Le Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD) has two main objectives: to develop and to promote Quebec and French Canadian plays and playwrights at home and abroad. CEAD understood early on that exporting was key to opening up new doors for these playwrights and to offering them new sources of income. And it goes without saying that exporting and access to new markets usually means translation into other languages, English in particular. The decision in the early eighties to create the position of Co-ordinator of English-language Activities, and to promote playwrights and their plays in this language, allowed access to these new markets.

CEAD wishes to broaden this outreach, in an ever-changing cultural context where the artistic exchanges are such that texts are now becoming part, not only of a national dramaturgy, but of an international one.

Membership: Close to 210 French-language Playwrights.

• A wide range of dramaturgical services and activities that include dramaturgical consultation, workshops, special discussion groups, public readings, national and international exchanges, playwright residencies and a fund, le Fonds Gratien Gélinas, designed to support emerging playwrights.
  
• Promoting Quebec and French Canadian plays in translation through showcase readings, translation workshops and playwrights' exchanges across Canada, as well as with the United Kingdom, Ireland, Mexico, France and other countries.
  
• Transmissions: a translation exchange in co-operation with Playwrights' Workshop Montréal.
  
• A festival of new works, the Semaine de la dramaturgie, held annually in Montreal.
  
• A Resource Centre with a reference library and a circulation service of 2000 and more published and unpublished scripts, serving playwrights, professional theatre artists, the amateur theatre community, theatre historians and members of the media. A database of scripts can be accessed online.

September 12, 2004: CEAD presents a public reading of excerpts taken from the plays which will be translated in its translation residency (September 1-10, 2004). The eight participants will include playwrights from Quebec, Canada and Scotland, who will benefit from the dramaturgical support of Nadine Desrochers (CEAD) and Katherine Mendelsohn (Edinburgh, Scotland).

Post-residency Reading (bilingual event), September 12th, 2004 at 7 pm, at Théâtre La Licorne, 4559, Papineau St., Montreal. Free, reservations mandatory: CEAD, 514-288-3384, extension 221.

October 25, 2004: Édimbourg en Québec, an event celebrating the history of Quebec-Scotland exchanges followed by the reading of the Scottish script translated into French (Quebecois) during the translation residency.
Édimbourg en Québec, October 25th, 2004 at 8pm, at Théâtre La Licorne, 4559, Papineau St., Montreal. Free, reservations mandatory: CEAD, 514-288-3384, extension 221.

November 1, 2004: As part of Transmissions, its annual exchange with Playwrights' Workshop Montréal, CEAD presents the public reading of the English-Canadian script translated by a Quebecois author in its translation residency.
Transmissions, November 1st, 2004 at 8pm, at Théâtre La Licorne, 4559, Papineau St., Montreal. Free, reservations mandatory: CEAD, 514-288-3384, extension 221.

November 30 to December 4, 2004: CEAD presents its 19th annual Semaine de la dramaturgie. A complete week of play readings, an overview of emerging and established playwriting in Quebec and French Canada.
19th Semaine de la dramaturgie, November 30th to December 4th 2004, at Théâtre La Licorne, 4559, Papineau St., Montreal.