ABSTRACT
Francophone theatre artists in Western Canada, who are bilingual by necessity, have explored their bilingualism and enlarged their audience with the use of English surtitles designed to accompany productions presented in French. First conceived to translate the message delivered on the stage, surtitles later became an object of experimentation in creating new, less faithful messages that off er paradoxical meanings accessible only to bilingual or multilingual spectators, as was the case in recent productions such as Boom and Sex, Lies et les Franco-Manitobains. This type of ‘playful translation’ cannot exist outside of the performance since it is created in relation to the performance of a play destined for a specific audience. By offering multiple messages that can be perceived differently according to each spectator's linguistic profile, this mode of theatre translation uses the resources of the performance to explore new intercultural and bilingual aesthetics that echo the polyphony of increasingly diverse and heterogeneous societies. In this article, I intend to reflect upon the performative aspects of this playful use of surtitles and their effect on the reception of a play in performance.
