And Slowly Beauty

Michel Nadeau is an actor, director, and playwright who has long been active in Quebec arts and culture. Since 1987, he has served as artistic director of Quebec City’s Theatre Niveau Parking, and has been writer-in-residence at Theatre du Trident, where he directed, among others, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba. Nadeau has been a professor at Quebec’s national theater and music school since 1986, where he teaches improvisation, dramatic movement, mask work, and commedia dell’arte. From 1996 to 2004, he was the institution’s director.

Maureen Labonte is a dramaturge, translator, and teacher. She has also coordinated a number of play development programs in theaters and play development centers across Canada, including Quebec’s Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD) and Playwrights Workshop Montreal. From 2009 to 2012, she served as jury chair for the prestigious Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. Labonte has been the co-director of the Banff Playwrights’ Colony since 2008, and has been on faculty since 2003, when she began as resident dramaturge. In 2005, she was named program head.

She was literary manager in charge of play development at the Shaw Festival for three seasons and, previous to that, she worked at the National Theatre School of Canada, first developing and running a pilot directing program and then coordinating the playwriting program and playwrights’ residency. She still teaches at NTSC in the Playwriting and Directing programs.

Labonte has translated more than thirty-five Quebec plays into English, among them And Slowly Beauty by Michel Nadeau, while attending the Playwrights Workshop Montreal Translation Residency. Labonte lives in Montreal with her husband, playwright Jean Marc Dalpe.