Marie Brassard is an actress, author and director. In 2001, after years of working with Robert Lepage, she began her solo career by founding the production company, Infrarouge, where she is the general and artistic director.
Since then, working closely with musicians and visual artists, she has created shows with surreal atmospheres where video, light and sound play a central role. Intertwining voices and music, crossing levels of reality, her productions take us into a world where the boundary between private and public is blurred and the relationship between human beings and technology becomes intimate. Her unique work has made her a singular voice in the contemporary theatre landscape.
Her plays have been performed in numerous cities across twenty-five countries in America and Europe, as well as in Japan, China and Australia. Presented at the Macao Arts Festival in 2024, her show La fureur de ce que je pense (The Fury of My Thoughts), a collage of texts by Nelly Arcan created in 2013, is still touring.
Most recently, to celebrate her creation and the founding of the Infrarouge company, she staged a revival of the show Jimmy, créature de rêve at Le Prospéro theatre in Montreal. Still relevant today, this unique success has been performed in seventeen countries. Jimmy will be staged again in Quebec City, for a few performances in February, and will go back on the road for an international tour starting in autumn 2026.
In the midst of the pandemic, she worked as co-designer and scriptwriter for the immersive exhibition L’infini, with the PHI Centre and Felix & Paul, showcasing the virtual reality films shot by the latter on the International Space Station. During the same period, she directed a Japanese team rehearsing and filming remotely in Tokyo, Kinosaki and Toyooka, near the Sea of Japan. This work was incorporated into the show Violence, and the travelling installation UV/Violence will soon bear witness to this experience.
Produced by Microclimat Films, Le train, which she wrote and directed, is her first feature film. The film, which was selected as the closing film for the Festival du nouveau cinéma de Montréal (FNC), premiered on 18 October. It was nominated for the 2025 Jean Marc Vallée Discovery Award by the Canadian Directors Guild (CDG).
Marie was awarded the Ordre des arts et des Lettres du Québec in 2016. In 2022, she received the Siminovitch Prize, Canada’s most prestigious award, for the innovative nature of her work as a director.
Photo: Minelly Kamemura