Le Soleil
Monday 22nd July 1996
There’s a plentiful supply of Roy Dupuis’ and Sophie Lorain’s and other actors of the new brigade.
Where do the young actors and actresses come from whom we discover each year on our stages, the small screen and the big screen? The different drama schools in the province you say? Of course! But as in any other area a diploma in no way guarantees a job.
Graduates of drama schools must first be seen, be heard, and attract the notice of theatrical agents, casting directors, theatre and film directors, television producers…. Easy? Not really. It’s fortunate therefore that the drama school graduates and self-taught actors have been able to depend on, for eleven years, the springboard offered them by the General Auditions of the Théâtre de Quat’Sous.
Each year, for three days, dozens of new young actors facing real life, the job market, meet on the stage of the little theatre on the Avenue des Pins in Montreal.
Having prepared for a year and more, all the young people are torn between their hopes and their nervousness. They are aware of the importance of their few-minute-long act which, as soon as they leave school, can open the doors for them to the craft they want to make a career.
[There follows a long list of people who have done these auditions]
In the autumn of 1985 Louise Latraverse, Pierre Bernard and Benoît Mailloux started the project which came to establish a bridge between school and the trade for the young performers. Pierre Bernard wished to bring the young unemployed performers and potential employers together in the same place.
"Seventy five people come out of drama school each year and apart from a few professionals who put themselves out to see the end-of-year shows in the schools, nobody sees or hears them," he complains. Aided by Andrée Lachapelle and Suzanne Léveillé, Pierre Bernard launched, in spring ’86, the first General Auditions, for which two young actors enrolled who were not to remain unknown for long - Sylvie Drapeau and Roy Dupuis.