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Lévesque, Danièle

Danièle Lévesque
Danièle Lévesque

One of Canada's top set, costume and lighting designers, Danièle Lévesque (born January 12, 1958) works out of Quebec.

She studied applied arts at the CEGEP du Vieux Montréal and then went on to the National Theatre School of Canada, graduating in 1983. Since 2002, she has been teaching there.

Lévesque has won the Quebec Critics' Award for best design three times: for Euripides' Médée/Medea at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde/TNM, Réjean Ducharme's À Quelle heure on meurt? at Espace Go; and Ducharme's Ha Ha! at the TNM.

Whether Lévesque has the budgets provided by the TNM or the minuscule amounts allowed by the smaller companies, her designs never cease to amaze. Together with Lou Arteau in 1994 at Espace Go, she struck the critical community dumb with a superb and ingenious design full of mirrors and scrims for Daniel Danis' Cendres de cailloux.

She has designed for many of the province's top directors including Alice Ronfard (several times but notably Euripides' Les Troyennes/Trojan Women, 1993, TNM); Lorraine Pintal (notably the 1993 revival of Marcel Dubé's Les beaux Dimanches and the 1998 revival of Claude Gauvreau's Les oranges sont vertes, both at TNM); René Richard Cyr (several times but notably Jean Genet's Les Bonnes/The Maids, 1992, Espace Go); Jean Asselin (Shakespeare's Le Roi Lear/King Lear, TNM, 1992); Brigitte Haentjens (notably Racine's Bérénice, 1992, Espace Go), as well as designing for dance, opera and museums.

CTE photo
Danièle Lévesque's lighting for the world premiere of Normand Chaurette's Stabat Mater II, October, 1999, Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, directed by Lorraine Pintal (photo: Pierre Desjardins)

More recently she designed the Théâtre du Rideau Vert production of Hamlet and the TNM production of Stabat Mater (both in 1999), the Théâtre de Quat'Sous production of Le Désire de Gobi, the Juste Pour Rire production of Pop-Corn and the TNM production of Dom Juan (all in 2000).

She has been nominated twice for the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre.

Categorizing her work is difficult, but she stays on top of the new technologies and avails herself of the new materials. The major tendency of her work is toward austerity.

Profile by Gaetan Charlebois.

Last updated 2020-09-22