Artistic
Mission

La Pire Espèce is a brotherhood of merry demiurges, artisans of the extraordinary who are firm believers in hybrids and interminglings. Inspired by the art of clowns, by fairground barkers and puppeteers, its theatre combines raw materials with unbridled imagination, baroque plenitude with surgical precision.

Since 1999, La Pire Espèce has been borrowing techniques from different disciplines such as puppetry, theatre of objects, clowning, cabaret and street theatre. By exploring the creative process, it explores stage conventions and the rules of dramatic narration, and seeks to establish a close complicity with the audience.

La Pire Espèce is also 26 original works, 1 exhibition, 2 street theatre pieces, 7 cabarets and more than 2000 performances. Half of that number was performed abroad during recurrent tours in Europe and around the world. Its work include also 5 Spanish translations, 9 English translations, 1 Korean and Portuguese translatiosn and a bold adaptation for both the deaf and the non-hearing impaired, 7 co-productions in Quebec and in Europe and several professional workshops for theatre artists and teachers.

La Pire Espèce is also a troupe committed to its milieu being both the driving force behind the largest independent theatre ticket subscription network in Canada between 2004 and 2015 – Carte Premières – and a founding member of a creative and performance space for up-and-coming theatre companies – Aux Écuries.

The company will be celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2019.

“They are of La Pire Espèce (of The Worst Kind…)… Great seducers despite themselves; manipulators of raw emotion; counter-top blenders that clarify your emotional butter before churning it into stardust and scrambling what’s left into a moon-shaped omelette. They are exactly as they were this summer in Verdun when we adored their encore performance of Ubu on the table. Irresistible, whatever your age. Because their performances don’t target a single audience group. Instead, they juggle with with many levels of interpretation by fantastically spoon-feeding toddlers, enticing schoolchildren with Lego projects, seducing teens with hip kingpin bling, and taunting adults with 48th-degree sexual references. Even the adults in the audience wind up up laughing like toddlers during performances. No doubt they would hand a walker to their ancestors and have them stroll around drunk with laughter.”

Brigitte Manolo – DFDanse.com, November 2012