Biographie

Marie Brassard is an actress, director and author. In 2001, after working in close collaboration with Robert Lepage for fifteen years in the theater and in films, she created her first solo show, Jimmy, as part of the Festival de théâtre des Amériques (now FTA). The success of this work prompted her to start her own production company, Infrarouge and to begin a solo career. Since then, in collaboration with guest artists from different disciplines and origins, she has created surreal theatre with virtuoso acting skills and innovative video, light and sound installations.

After Jimmy, there was The Darkness (2003), Peepshow (2005), The Glass Eye (2007), The Invisible (2008), Me talking to Myself in the Future (2010) and Trieste (2013), pieces in which she continues her technological experiments, exploring the possible ways to use sound and light in the theater. Her pieces, performed in French or English have been presented and acclaimed in many countries in the Americas, Europe and in Australia, among other cities in Paris, Brussel, London, Dublin and Berlin, in Vienna, Lisbon and Madrid, in Milan, Oslo and Stockholm, New York and Mexico, Sydney and Melbourne, in places as Le Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris, the Barbican Center in London (PIT), the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Sophiensaele in Berlin, the Halle G im Museums Quartier and the Brut im Künstlerhaus in Vienna and the Kulturhuset in Stockholm and at The Studio of the Sydney Opera in Sydney and the Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre in Melbourne.

In 2013, at Sophie Cadieux' invitation she made a collage of texts of the quebecois author Nelly Arcan, that she directed with a cast of six actresses and a dancer, titled The Fury of my Thoughts.  The piece, a major success originally produced and created at ESPACE GO,  was re-created by Infrarouge in Spring 2017 and presented in front of full houses in Ottawa (CNA), Québec (Carrefour international-Grand Théâtre de Québec) and Montréal (FTA-Usine C). In April 2018, the play was programmed in Madrid, at the famous Teatro Espanol, and in autumn 2018, it was part of the Festival des Francophonies en Limousin in Limoges and was then shown in Amsterdam, at the Stadsschouwburg (ITA-Rabozaal).

Marie Brassard then directed this show in its Japanese version in Tokyo. Produced in collaboration with PARCO, this play, which premiered at the Galaxy Theater on November 4, 2017, ran there for three weeks, then went on tour to Hiroshima, Kitakyushu, Kyoto and Toyohashi.

Marie Brassard is currently developing a new solo work that will be declined in two steps. The first segment of the projet, titled Introduction to Violence, will be created in company of  artists Antonin Sorel, Alexander MacSween, Pascal Grandmaison, Mikko Hynninen and Sabrina Ratté. It will open in Spring 2019, at Montreal Usine C. Initiated in 2016 while in residency at the Montevideo Centre in  Marseille, the work officially started in Sweden Göteborg, in August 2018, in the context of a creation residency at the Vitlycke Centre for Performing Arts, commissioned by the Göteborg Dance and Theatre Festival.

In recent years, Marie Brassard has also been involved as a director and dramaturg in dance. She has created two shows in collaboration with choreographer and performer Sarah Williams, Moving in this World (2014), that was presented in Montreal, Potsdam and Madrid, States of Transe (2013), creation in situ at the Darling Foundry, and choreographed a solo for she in the triptych Here is always somewhere else (2010). She also worked with dancer and choreographer Anne Plamondon on her solo The same Eyes (2012), presented in Montreal and on tour in Quebec and also acted as director for Mécaniques Noctures (2017). She danced for Isabelle Van Grimde (Perspective Montréal et Le corps en question), acted as artistic advisor for Dana Gingras and Animals of Distinction (Another) and collaborated in different ways and to different degrees with choreographers Anne Thériault, Annik Hamel , Jane Mappin, and Karine Denault.

She also plays occasionally in films. She has appeared in films by directors Robert Lepage, Michael Winterbottom, Ryan McKenna, Denis Côté, Sophie Deraspe, Erik Canuel, Guy Maddin, Matthew Rankin and Stéphane Lafleur, among others.

In 2016, she was awarded the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec, an honorary distinction highlighting her exceptional contribution to the Quebec artistic community.