Alice Ronfard 

Alice Ronfard is a pillar of Quebec’s performing arts scene. She began contributing to the theatre at a very young age by assisting her father Jean-Pierre Ronfard, who was also a director. Over the years, she has directed more than forty plays and operas. She has received numerous awards, including the Grand Prix de la Communauté urbaine de Montréal for a translation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest that she undertook with her mother, the novelist Marie Cardinal. 

Throughout her career, she has staged numerous classics of French drama, including The Tidings Brought to Mary by Paul Claudel, Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, and The Miser by Molière. She has also delved into Quebec’s theatrical repertoire with Julie by René-Daniel Dubois and Héliotropes by Michel Garneau. More recently, she has collaborated on and directed contemporary works such as Chroniques and Exhibition by Emmanuel Schwartz, with whom she will work again on For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again. 

Beyond theatre, Ronfard has directed several operas, including Euripides’ The Trojan Women, which earned her the Gascon-Roux Award for Best Direction. She has also overseen dance productions and even curated an exhibition at the Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec City titled Women, Body, and Soul. 

She led the Acting Department at the National Theatre School of Canada alongside André Brassard, the renowned director and first actor to play the Narrator in Encore une fois, si vous permettez (For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again) when it premiered at Théâtre du Rideau Vert in 1998. She has also taught at several drama schools, including the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Montréal. 

More recently, alongsideher longtime friend and colleague, the late André Brassard, she embarked on a major project: La Traversée du siècle. This production, staged in several Francophone theatres in Quebec and Ottawa, weaves together various writings by Michel Tremblay from across the course of his long and illustrious career. The project allowed her to further explore Tremblay’s world and gain a deeper understanding of this great Québécois writer. According to Ronfard, the success of La Traversée du siècle was a testament to the creative genius of both Tremblay and her late friend Brassard. 

For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again will be the first play Alice Ronfard directs in English, and we are honoured to welcome her to Centaur Theatre. She will be joined by several artists and designers with whom she has previously collaborated, including set designer Gabriel Tsampalieros, lighting designer Julie Basses and sound designer Joris Rey, all of whom worked on La Traversée du siècle.