Brigitte Poupart Named Winner of the Seventh Edition of the Jovette-Marchessault Award!

Montréal, Monday, May 4, 2026 — The Conseil des arts de Montréal (CAM) and Théâtre ESPACE GO are pleased to announce that Brigitte Poupart has won the seventh edition of the Jovette-Marchessault Award, dedicated to female directors. Created to recognize and showcase the contributions of women artists to Montréal’s theatre scene, the Award comes with a $20,000 cash prize, to be presented to the winner by the Conseil. As a partner of ESPACE GO, Air Transat will offer the other two finalists, Marie Brassard and Sophie Gee, a round-trip ticket to Paris.

THE WINNER: BRIGITTE POUPART

Over her prolific career, Poupart has distinguished herself across a remarkable range of artistic disciplines, including theatre, film, dance, comedy, circus, music and digital arts. Her versatility, determination and boundless creativity command admiration. For three decades, as a director, performer, artistic director, playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker, she has pursued a bold multidisciplinary career that breaks down boundaries and defies categorization.

Trained as an actress at the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Montréal, she began creating works early on. Since 1990, she has performed in over thirty theatrical productions, both on institutional stages and in independent creative settings. In 1991, she co-founded the company Transthéâtre with Michel Monty, a platform that allows her to write and direct her own shows. In 1999, she co-wrote with Marie Michaud the show W.C.—an exploration of a women’s public restroom—which was presented at Théâtre de la Nouvelle Scène in Ottawa, then at ESPACE GO and as part of a Québec tour. In 2002, she launched her solo career with Babel, where ESPACE GO audiences experienced the play peering through tall fences. Two years later, at the same theatre, her striking multimedia production Cérémonials transformed the performance space into a church. In 2007, Poupart and Monty launched the Cabarets Insupportables, a series of festive and subversive gatherings tackling the irritants of modern society. In 2012, she wrote and directed La Démesure d’une 32A at ESPACE GO, a cabaret show based on the work of Clémence DesRochers.

Poupart’s shows, for some of which she designs the sets herself, prioritize immersive environments, unconventional spaces and novel sensory experiences. Open to new technologies, her artistic approach goes beyond traditional theatrical conventions to explore the stage-audience relationship and establish a true dialogue with spectators.

In fall 2022, her passion for immersive experiences and hybridizing disciplines reached its zenith with the astonishing Jusqu’à ce qu’on meure. Combining theatre, dance, circus and electronic music, this walk-through performance sold out at Arsenal art contemporain before going on to the Carrefour International de théâtre de Québec, the Nuits de Fourvière in Lyon, and the Grande Halle de La Villette in Paris. The show will pursue its European tour in 2027–28. In 2021, she created Ciel à outrances at the PHI Centre, an immersion in sound based on Madeleine Monette’s collection of poems inspired by the tragedy of 9/11, which won two Numix Awards.

Poupart’s interest in women’s issues, along with her efforts to showcase female writers and actresses, have been constants throughout her career. With her company Transthéâtre, she created Un jour ou l’autre… (ESPACE GO, 2008), a feminist play that highlights real-life heroines. Then in 2015, again with her company, she staged Catherine Chabot’s play Table rase, written in collaboration with Poupart and the actors. Giving a voice to six young friends, this generational show with its strikingly hyperrealistic staging captivated audiences with its candour and accuracy and earned her an award from the Association québécoise des critiques de théâtre. Two years later, at Usine C, she became the first woman director to dare to take on Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s classic on competitiveness and power dynamics, with an all-female cast. In her choice of scripts, she also explores major issues like women’s mental health and the mechanisms of social oppression facing women, within predominantly female teams. In 2024, she directed Kendall Feaver’s Jamais, Toujours, Parfois at Théâtre du Rideau Vert and, with Transthéâtre, directed Alice Birch’s Anatomy of a Suicide at Usine C.

In recognition of that feminist engagement, the organization MUTEK asked her in 2018 to lead an examination of women’s underrepresentation at music festivals. That same year, the association Femmes Monde in Paris paid tribute to her achievements, welcoming the “multidisciplinary and undisciplined artist” as a special guest.

Poupart’s first foray into the world of cinema, in 2012, proved to be a master stroke. In Over My Dead Body, she sensitively filmed choreographer Dave St-Pierre, then awaiting a lung transplant, with whom she had previously danced the scandalous Un peu de tendresse bordel de merde! and created the cinematic duet What’s next. Screened at a wide array of international festivals, the film garnered numerous awards, including an Iris for Best Documentary Feature, the Grand Prix à la création from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and other distinctions from the Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma and Canadian Screen Awards. Ten years later, her short film UWD (Until We Die) once again racked up numerous awards.

In 2025, the filmmaker directed her first feature-length fiction film, Où vont les âmes. Warmly received by critics and spectators alike, it won five awards at the Festival du film canadien de Dieppe, including the Grand prix du Jury, the Prix du Public and the Prix du Jeune jury. She then expanded her body of work with a documentary, À travers tes yeux. Co-directed with her daughter Fabiola Pierre Monty, it earned her the Prix de la Ville de Dieppe.

At the same time, Poupart has been building a career as a film actress. She can be seen in Philippe Falardeau’s excellent Monsieur Lazhar, her performance in Robin Aubert’s Les affamés earned her an acting award at the 2018 Gala Québec Cinéma, and more recently, she starred in Renée Beaulieu’s daring Les salopes, ou le sucre naturel de la peau.

Musicians have also called upon her talents as a director—most notably Lisa Leblanc, Karim Ouellette, Misteur Valaire, Louis-Jean Cormier, Karkwa and Patrick Watson, for whom she directed the music video “Melody Noir.” She also served as director of the ADISQ galas, from 2011 to 2015.

Poupart’s other credits include directing Luzia for Cirque du Soleil, serving as artistic director for various urban festivities (including Ode à la vie, a sound, lighting and projection show presented in Barcelona, and Le grand minuit de Montréal, performed in the Old Port of Montréal on December 31, 2025), and participating in several political satire revues, primarily with the popular comedy group Les Zapartistes.

She has also been working on new projects in Paris, including Magellan, a Journey that Changed the World, which drew 200,000 visitors to the Musée national de la Marine.

Clearly, it would be impossible to list all her achievements, so prolific and diverse is her artistic practice.

Poupart is always eager to share her knowledge and expertise and, to that end, has collaborated on several occasions with the National Theatre School on its acting, directing and set design programs. In 2025, it awarded her the Gascon-Thomas Award for Innovation, acknowledging her substantial contribution to stage practice and her impressive, multifaceted career driven by a sense of daring, a taste for risk and a constant quest for experimentation.

This Conseil des arts de Montréal award was named after Jovette Marchessault in tribute to a great “tuner of souls” whose work is permeated by her desire to bring women’s culture out of the shadows, rewrite history and forge a collective memory that positions women as role models for us all.

The 2027 edition of the Jovette Marchessault Award will be open to female designers, with the call for nominations getting under way in fall 2026.

ABOUT THE CONSEIL DES ARTS DE MONTRÉAL

Founded in 1956, the Conseil des arts de Montréal supports artistic innovation and creative expression in all their diversity by offering various forms of support to promote Montréal artists and organizations that create, produce and present art. For 70 years, it has played a unique role as a catalyst and helped make Montréal a vibrant cultural metropolis, recognized at home and abroad for its artistic vitality.

ABOUT THÉÂTRE ESPACE GO

Ever since it was founded in 1979, Théâtre ESPACE GO has been dedicated to exploring the imaginations of women artists and to the ongoing development of theatre. This mission has given the company a unique position in North America and made it a role model on the world stage.

Picture : Frédérique Ménard-Aubin