The more I write about theatre, the more I realize I still have a lot to learn—especially about discovering companies I haven’t had the chance to see yet.
Theatre Gargantua is one of them.
I’ve always appreciated the sound of the company’s name and what it signifies. Have I been missing out on something truly spectacular over the past ten years? Will I regret not seeing the company’s upcoming Dissonant Species in November at Toronto’s Factory Theatre?
When the opportunity arose to interview Jacquie Thomas via email (Gargantua’s Artistic Director), I didn’t want to let that chance slip by. I’m grateful she could take the time.
A graduate of Toronto’s York University, Thomas spent three years training and working with various companies outside of Canada before founding Theatre Gargantua in 1992. Because I liked the company’s name, I was immediately curious about why Jacquie had chosen it.
During her undergraduate years, Jacquie read Rabelais’s satirical Gargantua and Pantagruel, the story of two giants—father and son—who roamed the French countryside causing chaos. When she started Theatre Gargantua:
“ I remembered that book and loved both the name and its playfulness. At the time, we were such a small company that we could barely pay our phone bill, so naming ourselves “Gargantua” felt both ironic and aspirational.”
Gargantua’s website promotes itself as one of Canada’s leading multi-disciplinary theatre companies. Jacquie further explained the meaning of the term multi-disciplinary: the productions blend multiple art forms such as movement, live music, singing, sound design, projection, and visual design. Gargantua’s process in its productions explores socially relevant themes through dynamic theatricality that engages a broad and diverse audience. The company works on a unique two-year cycle—starting with an inspired concept and transforming it into a richly layered work through several exploratory workshops and presentations.
Jacquie quickly highlights how physicality becomes a vital storytelling tool in Garagantua’s productions, working in tandem with music, design, and text. Physicality isn’t just dance; it describes a quality of actors who possess a deep understanding of their bodies in relation to gravity. For each production, Garagantua develops a unique physical vocabulary tailored to that piece—sometimes to emphasize the text, other times to challenge it. Together, this physicality, movement, music, design, and text act as narrative agents, telling stories in a visceral, multidimensional way.
Dissonant Species will run in November at Toronto’s Factory Theatre. Jacquie says about the upcoming production:
“It was initially inspired by the growing disharmony we see in our communities and across the globe. What divides us – and what connects us. Sound became our way into the story. We use it as a musical metaphor for the story, but also as a medium.”
Sound became Gargantua’s way into the story. It’s used as a musical metaphor but also as a medium. Jacquie further explains:
“Every day, we share the planet with people who believe fundamentally different things. Conflict is in some ways inevitable.”
Species begins with a music teacher who is aggressively bumped on the street, and the encounter unsettles him – not just because of the act itself, but because it awakens a violence within him he didn’t know was there. Around the teacher, students and a colleague also experience their own ‘bumps’ – disruptions that send hidden disturbances rippling through their lives.
Thomas finishes this brief synopsis of Species by stating that in the performance, there will be striking sound experiments and reflections of Einstein’s notion that everything in the universe is vibration and therefore sound. While the production delves into the symphony of human discord that surrounds us, it asks if we can find harmony in this dissonance.
A message Jacquie hopes audiences will take away upon exiting the performance:
“Sometimes you have to lean into the dissonance to find the harmony.”
Ah, theatre that gets its audiences to think, to consider, to ponder and to digest.
All that good stuff.
Jacque feels extremely fortunate to work with such a talented team. The award-winning design collaborators include Laird Macdonald (lighting and projection), Michael Gordon Spence (set design), Christopher-Elizabeth and Richard Lam (sound design), and Jackie Chau (costume design). The production team features Andrew Dollar (stage management) and Allan Day (production management).
The ensemble is made up of extraordinary, multi-talented performers: Heather Marie Annis, Nicholas Eddie, Malia Rogers, Michael Gordon Spence, and HannaH Sunley-Paisley.
As we closed our online conversation, I asked what advice Jacquie would give to emerging theatre artists in an industry where one can often be out of work for a time.
“With over 150 professional theatre companies in Toronto, see as much work as possible and figure out what of that work inspires you, aligns with your aesthetics and moves you. After that, make it your mission to create work with those artists and companies. Of course, you can also take inspiration from those works and begin to develop your own unique style as a kind of hybrid of those experiences, which was my path.”
The first preview for Dissonant Species is on November 6. Opening night is Friday, November 7. Performances run to November 23 at Toronto’s Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst Street.
To learn more about Theatre Gargantua, please visit https://theatregargantua.ca/
For tickets to Dissonant Species: purchase.factorytheatre.ca
