Sylvain Lavoie is a candidate in the PhD Humanities program at Concordia University. His interdisciplinary project, entitled “La (seconde) nature du théâtre au Canada,” analyzes the accentuated presence of nature in contemporary Canadian drama, notably with the appearance of animals on stage. Engaging with anthropology (of nature and of the senses, mostly) and philosophy (Continental and phenomenology), he aims at showing how recent theatre puts the concept of the subject into play while blurring the limits of culture, and redefining performance and spectatorship. Also, by centering on the interplay between living bodies instead of usual geopolitical frontiers, his research can help to create a glimpse of other possible collectives, allowing him to question together Aboriginal, English-language and French-language productions without treating them, as it is often the case, as distinct corpuses.

Prior to this, Sylvain has studied science and French language and literature at the University of Alberta, and completed a Masters degree at the Université de Montréal where he focused on popular culture in Europe and Quebec, which led him to guest edit Spirale’s “Rayonnement du cirque québécois” issue, a magazine for which he has been writing as a critic for the past decade. He has also participated in many international projects and events on Canadian culture, published articles on this topic in various journals here and abroad, and coedited, with Ginette Michaud and Élisabeth Nardout-Lafarge, Pierre L’Hérault’s writings on theatre (L’assemblée pensante, Nota bene, 2009). Member of the board of directors of the Société québécoise d’études théâtrales (SQET) for many years, he has worked as a Communications Officer at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and now runs, with Gilbert David, the theatre collection “scène_s” at Les Herbes rouges publishing company.