Audrey-Anne Bouchard / Part-time Professor in Design for the Theatre
Audrey-Anne works primarily as a lighting designer for both dance and theatre productions in Montreal and abroad. She ceaselessly continues to develop her aesthetic which includes the performance space as part of the lighting tableau, sculpts the set and makes the light interact with the performers, at times following them at others guiding and complementing them. In 2016, Audrey-Anne received a META nomination for an Outstanding lighting design for her work on the play Another Home Invasion (Tableau d'hôte Theatre). Passionate about all aspects of her medium, Audrey-Anne also designs lighting installations.
Audrey-Anne is a lighting designer but she is above all an artist. She likes to get involved in the development of a piece and is regularly sought out to design lights for collective creations. Her great interest in and passion for the creative process has led her to also explore other aspects of it, including writing, directing, dramaturgy and choreography. She is currently developng and directing her own research-creation project called Au-delà du visuel. The objective of this project is to create an artistic experience that shall be entirely accessible to a spectator living with a visual disability.
Audrey-Anne teaches Design for the Theatre at Concordia University and coaches Lighting design and Production management at the National Theatre school of Canada while she continues to develop her own creation projects and to refine her vocabulary as a multidisciplinary artist.
Integration of video projection into the performance space
In 2009,Audrey-Anne was awarded a scholarship by the European Commission to undertake her artistic research in Europe. This research was pursued through the framework of an international masters program in Performing Arts Theory and Practice (jointly offered by Université de Nice and Université Libre de Bruxelles). Audrey-Anne studied the integration of video projection into new artistic practices and the interaction arising among moving images of light and performers. She is particularely interested in studying how the artist use the digital technologies to transform their perceptive experience and thus their corporeal image.
Au-delà du visuel / Beyond sight - Research creation project
Beyond sight is a research-creation project exploring the following question: How to create and communicate an artistic experience that does not involve sight? Directed by Audrey-Anne Bouchard, the project’s team develops different techniques and performance qualities in order to share the arts of dance, theatre and music with a blind folded audience. The ultimate objective of the project is to create an immersive multidisciplinary artistic experience that will be equally accessible in its entirety for spectators living with a visual disability or not. Each spectator will enter and leave the performance space blindfolded. In an immersive setting, the performers will guide the audience through a story told postdramatically through text, scenography, movement, contact dance and sound amongst others. Beyond sight wishes to create a space of encounter and offer new interactions between the performer and the spectator.
