Since 2007, Toxique Trottoir has used public spaces for its creative performances and festive interventions, engaging artists, city residents and public locations in a process of uncommon encounter and dialogue. The company builds an original, interactive rapport with audiences, often calling upon “spect-actors.” Its events, a blend of theatre, clown arts and poetry, recast our connections to everyday life, the city, and performance. Fuelled by the conviction that the social and the artistic can intertwine in extraordinary projects, Toxique Trottoir’s creations are festive invitations that broach contemporary issues.

Dominique Marier—Dominique has worked in the theatre milieu for over 30 years, and with Toxique Trottoir for over 15 years, as an actor/creator and co-artistic director. She has contributed to creating 11 shows with the company, including Aquaphonie. Over the years, she has served as artistic director of several events, including the festival La rue Kitétonne (2010–2012) and Leucan’s benefit galas (2018–2019). Her stagecraft is primarily focussed on clown arts and physical comedy, image and object theatre, and more recently, paper and puppet theatre. She also works with the Dr. Clown Foundation as a therapeutic clown with children and elders, and at the Gesù performance hall’s Creativity Centre as an event coordinator.

Muriel de Zangroniz — Being immersed in the theatre world from a very young age, first as an actor, before becoming an author and stage director, notably with the Théâtre qui monstre énormément, Muriel was able to cultivate her creative temperament. Possessed by clowning, laughter has long been the preferred vehicle for her shows, so that art, like a funhouse mirror—inevitably distorting—can examine our humanity in the here and now. Muriel believes in art that is socially committed and can help to forge ties within communities. Her approach finds its deepest meaning in a reconciliation of differences. The founding executive director and co-artistic director of Toxique Trottoir, she has practised street theatre for the past eighteen years, a medium that above all reaches out to others, as well as urging a transformation of our reality.

Évelyne Laniel — A graduate of the Francine Côté Clown and Comedy School (2015), Évelyne Laniel has excelled in creating solo physical comedy acts for adult audiences. To date, she has performed in various cabarets and festivals in Montréal, Toronto, Edmonton and in France. She initially became known through her kitsch and feminist character Gisèle of the show Gisèle vous reçoit chez elle (At Home with Gisèle) (2017). But after two award nominations at the Montréal St-Ambroise Fringe Festival (for Best Francophone Production [2018] and a judge’s pick at the OUF! Festival Off Casteliers [2019], it was her second solo show, Mme Brulé (2018)—one which critiques the Quebec school system—that Évelyne became established. In addition to her solo

performances, Évelyne is currently directing a production of La rébellion du minuscule with the Théâtre du Renard and has been part of the clown theatre collective Les Collectionneuses since the autumn of 2019. Évelyne is also a therapeutic clown with the Dr. Clown Foundation.