Joining a Festival During a Pandemic: Martine Dennewald and Jessie Mill Discuss the Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal-based Festival TransAmériques (FTA)

Abstract

In this interview, Karen Fricker and Melissa Poll speak with Martine Dennewald and Jessie Mill, the new co-directors of the Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal-based Festival TransAmériques (FTA), North America’s largest performing arts festival. Dennewald and Mill discuss how COVID-19 and the global racial reckoning have impacted the FTA, particularly through the festival’s approach to artist–producer partnerships and ways of working.

Keywords::

• Festival TransAmériques
• COVID-19
• festival theatre
• equity
• inclusion
• diversity
• performance

Notes

1. Festival Theaterformen, https://www.theaterformen.de/en/news (accessed January 18, 2022).

2. ‘Habiter la vie’, Festival TransAmériques, 2022, https://fta.ca/habiter-la-vie-3/ (accessed January 18, 2022).

3. ‘Aleppo. A Portrait of Absence’, Festival TransAmériques, 2021 https://fta.ca/en/archive/aleppo-a-portrait-of-absence/ (accessed January 18, 2022).

4. ‘Worktable’, Festival TransAmériques, 2022, https://fta.ca/spectacle/worktable/ (accessed January 18, 2022).

5. Maud Cucci, ‘An Antane Kapesh, une grande voix de l’anticolonialisme portée au théâtre’, Radio-Canada, May 22, 2021, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/espaces-autochtones/1794931/an-antane-kapesh-fta-theatre-innu-charles-bender-litterature (accessed January 18, 2022).