Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Côté, Lorraine
Actor, director, and teacher, born in Isle Maligne, Quebec, in 1956.
Lorraine Côté studied at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique de Québec before beginning a distinguished career.
She has performed in over one hundred plays, including leads with Théâtre de la Bordée, Théâtre du Trident, Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, Théâtre Niveau Parking as well as in Robert Lepage's La Trilogie des dragons and Plaques tectoniques. More recent roles are as Madeleine in Les fées ont soif by Denise Boucher, Vivian Bearing in Wit by Margaret Edson (2015), and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (trans. Michel Tremblay, 2016). In November 2020, her appearance in La Sagouine at Théâtre du Trident was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic that closed theatres in Quebec and across Canada and the world.
She won a Masques Award in 2004 for her starring role in Marie Tudor. Her performance in Wit was enthusiastically reviewed in Le Devoir 9 March 2015 by Marie Laliberté: "Lorraine Côté, comédienne d’exception, interprète le rôle de Vivian Bearing avec un mélange d’aplomb, de verve et de finesse auquel se mêlent humilité et profonde humanité, incarnant avec autant de justesse la femme d’esprit que l’être au corps brisé de souffrance. Sa performance est magistrale."
Côté won another Masques Award in 2006, for directing En attendant Godot. She has also directed Fin de partie by Samuel Beckett, Bonjour, là, bonjour by Michel Tremblay, Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, Elvire Jouvet ’40 by Brigitte Jacques, High Life by Lee MacDougall, La demande d’emploi by Michel Vinaver, Kvetch by Steven Berkoff, Iphigénie ou le péché des dieux by Michel Azama, amongst others.
She has been a professor at the Conservatoire since 1998, teaching Greek tragedy and interpretation. She has said of acting, "I'm beginning, without a doubt, to have a little craft, because it is easier than it was to 'put myself in a state' to act. I empty myself or I concentrate on a single thing. Usually it's a sensation, an odor...I pick myself up very quickly. I've learned to let loose; to let things come."
Last updated 2020-11-17
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