A sight-optional
immersive experience

Audrey-Anne Bouchard’s “Fragments : celle qui m’habitait déjà” prioritizes our other senses

By Faith Langston

November 3, 2025

How can a play possibly be performed without its mainstays, costumes, sets and props? Doesn’t an actor’s body language give life to a script? Audrey-Anne Bouchard, a creator and stage director of the interdisciplinary collective Au-delà du visuel, bravely faces these questions. Fragments : celle qui m’habitait déjà is an immersive experience which calls on all the senses except for sight.

Artistic choices are made not for their visual qualities but rather for their sonic, tactile, and spatial ones, Bouchard explains. We are developing a whole new creative methodology. What can a set reveal when it is not seen but experienced? How can movement be conveyed when it is not observed, but rather felt?

Bouchard’s creative methodology involves supplying audience members with eyeshades. Now deprived of their usual visual acuity, they are guided by actors towards the ‘set’ of the play – an old house in Sainte-Anne-de Sorel. Here, an atmosphere is made tangible through smells and sounds.

Bouchard’s creative methodology involves supplying audience members with eyeshades. Now deprived of their usual visual acuity, they are guided by actors towards the ‘set’ of the play – an old house in Sainte-Anne-de Sorel.

We learn that a young woman has taken refuge here and that the house was inhabited years ago by a female writer. Discussion between the two women brings certain questions to the fore. When are we really free? Can we ever escape societal expectations? Are intangible things less real than palpable ones?

Is the theatre world a tough one? Of course it is. It must be said, however, that the interdisciplinary collective Au-delà du visuel rejects any form of self-pity. They approach disability as a source of inspiration for innovation. Their research is rooted in collective creation and post-dramatic theatre. Their interdisciplinary and immersive language emerges from collaborations among artists with and without visual impairments from diverse practices.

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No question the combined expertise of each member has contributed to the unmitigated success of this collective. Audrey-Anne Bouchard, who heads the team, contributes both practical experience and recognition. Her Camille: un rendez-vous au-delà du visuel, presented in 2019 at MAI, and Camille: le récit / Camille: The Story, received the Monique Lefebvre Universal Accessibility Award as well as the META (Montreal English Theatre Award) for Outstanding Direction in 2022.

In addition, for the past ten years, Bouchard has also served as a mentor in the directing and production programs (English section) at the National Theatre School of Canada and regularly acts as an accessibility consultant.

‘Fragments : celle qui m’habitait déjà speaks eloquently in a world where our relationships are increasingly visual and virtual, creating experiences that prioritize our other senses, and opening new ways of encountering one another and connecting.’

Choreographers Laurie-Anne Langis and Marijoe Foucher, who are also massage therapists, develop the movement and physical interactions between performers and spectators. Actor Marc-André Lapointe explores non-visual acting and has co-written the script with Bouchard. Diana Uribe and Andréa Marsolais-Roy each design the scenic and sound environments of the piece. Last, but certainly not least, pianist Vytautas Bucionis composes and performs live piano for the show while also contributing his lived experience as a blind artist to the creative process.

Fragments : celle qui m’habitait déjà speaks eloquently in a world where our relationships are increasingly visual and virtual, creating experiences that prioritize our other senses, and opening new ways of encountering one another and connecting.

The experience is fully accessible to people living with a visual disability and to a sighted audience, who are invited to wear an eye shade from the beginning to the end of the piece. An intermediate knowledge of French is advised.

Fragments : celle qui m’habitait déjà is presented in the MAI gallery until November 8, 2025. A limited number of tickets are reserved for blind and partially sighted audience members. If the performance you wish to attend is sold out, please don’t hesitate to contact the box office. A ticket may still be available for you. To reserve by phone, call the box office at 514 982-3386.

Feature image: courtesy of Au-delà du visuel

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Faith Langston is a Concordia graduate with a long-standing interest in theatre. For the last ten years, she has worked as a literacy tutor with the Jamaican Association.