by AMY BARRATT

Sometimes the English theatre community here seems like a toddler playing happily in its sandbox, oblivious to everything else. But what happens when the tot starts to explore the rest of the yard, or look beyond the fence? With two shows by local companies opening this week, theatre audiences are about to find out.

Mat Perron and Mike Payette, the co-founders of Tableau D’Hôte, focus their considerable energy on Canadian plays that have never been done in Montreal in English. Their current project is Amigo’s Blue Guitar, by British Columbian playwright Joan MacLeod. Although it won the Governor General’s Award for Drama in 1991, this play has never been produced in Montreal.

It’s not an isolated incident. In the nine seasons I’ve been covering theatre for the Mirror, you’ve had a greater chance of seeing playwrights like MacLeod and George F. Walker produced in French than in English here. “I see these plays come out in other Canadian cities, and they’re not done in Montreal, and it frustrates me,” says Perron.

Meanwhile, newcomer Talisman Theatre Co-operative is focusing on English translations of Quebecois plays. Their first project is Celle-là, by Daniel Danis, translated as That Woman by Linda Gaboriau. The play was first produced in French at Espace Go in 1993. Montrealer Gaboriau’s translation came soon after and has been staged as far away as Edinburgh, but never made it back home, until now.

During the 2005–06 season, an encouraging number of new, local plays got produced, including an all-Montreal line-up at the Centaur. Pulitzer Prize winners and British and American “classics” boldly take their place in any given season. Established Canadian works generally fare worse. What little we saw from Rest-of-Canada playwrights last season was entirely due to indie companies like Underdog Productions (Earshot, by Morris Panych) and Tableau D’Hôte (I Am Yours, by Judith Thompson).

As for Quebecois plays, there was cause for optimism last March when Cheech, by François Letourneau, and Everybody’s Welles, by Patrice Dubois and Martin Labrecque were on stage at the Centaur and Segal theatres respectively. It suggests that the English mainstream is becoming aware of the rich vein of material waiting to be mined in its own back yard. (This season, Centaur will present Michel Tremblay’s Assorted Candies, also translated by Gaboriau).

Still, these productions barely scratch the surface—dozens of new French plays come out each year, and then there’s all the stuff from past years that never got picked up for English language production. That’s where That Woman and Talisman Productions come in.

As indie theatre companies go, this one is fairly high-powered. It was started by hot young director Emma Tibaldo and fellow NTS graduate, designer Lyne Paquette. Tibaldo’s cast features two actors better known as directors: Guy Sprung, artistic director of Infinitheatre, and Sarah Stanley, former AD of Buddies in Bad Times, who now splits her time between Toronto and Montreal. The cast is completed by Marcelo Arroyo, another NTS grad who until now has mostly worked in French.

“It’s a tribute to this play that all of these people with other irons in the fire are willing to devote themselves,” says Gaboriau. “It’s a very difficult play, but a very rewarding one, I think, both for the artists and the audience.”

Amigo’s Blue Guitar, to Sept. 24, at Theatre Calixa-Lavallée (Parc Lafontaine), 915-9297. That Woman, to Sept. 30, at Geordie Space (4001 Berri, #103), 875-8873, www. talisman-theatre.com

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