Why Montreal theatres use English on francophone stages—and why it stirs debate

Montreal's 2025-2026 theatre season was marked by a pattern: French-language productions integrating English terms, lines or entire passages. Hamlet at Usine C, Visages at Espace Go, Christian Lapointe's Laarm de Ploers, Ne vous faites pas de souci at théâtre Prospero, François Ruel-Côté's trilogy (Poisson glissant, Terrain glissant, Glissant glissant) at Centre du Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui and Espace libre, and Que notre joie demeure at théâtre du Nouveau Monde all featured the language. Even École nationale de cirque's graduating-student production of Macbeth alternated between French and English.

But the choice is never neutral in Quebec. In Ruel-Côté's trilogy, English represents the language of the villain or antagonist. In Lapointe's Laarm de Ploers, English depicts a dystopia where the language of Gates, Musk and Trump has cannibalized all others until erasing them. When short English phrases were inserted into a translation of Ah, ta yeule l'obscurité! at théâtre de Quat'sous, it was to integrate anglophone artist Jon Lachlan Stewart into the scene.

Philippe Cyr, artistic director of théâtre Prospero, calls the decision "a super sensitive subject that regularly comes to our agenda." When English is being considered, the team questions whether it is being used lightly or represents "a choice that generates a form of discourse." Cyr notes that not only spoken English but also play titles and songs in English provoke audience reaction.

"The resonance of English is necessarily sociopolitical in Quebec, whether we want it to be or not," says Jeanne Bovet, a professor at Université de Montréal's Department of French-Language Literatures who has studied heterolingualism in Quebec dramaturgy. She points to the company PME-Art, which makes French-English bilingualism the foundation of its creative work. "It reflects Montreal reality, their way of working together. But as a spectator, when we attend their performances or installations, we cannot help but interpret the presence of English in terms of the English-French relationship in Quebec. Even if, perhaps, from the creators' perspective, English isn't necessarily used in a sociopolitical way, I think we continue to receive it that way as an audience."

Bovet notes this dynamic might hold less sway among younger generations, for whom the bilingual texture of Montreal life may feel less freighted with political weight.