La Strada - Frédérique Cournoyer Lessard - Scuse

What's it about?

Since 2011, Frédérique Cournoyer Lessard (they/them) has worked as a filmmaker and circus artist. The films PAS, RUE DE LA VICTOIRE, and COCONUT have been shown and awarded at over 90 festivals worldwide. As a specialist in Aerial Hoop, Frédérique has performed internationally with renowned companies such as La Soirée (Australia), The 7 Fingers, and Cirque Éloize. From this extraordinary career, the first stage work SCUSE emerged in 2021 – a pioneering work of so-called "Documentary-Circus" in Québec. In SCUSE, Frédérique Cournoyer Lessard combines informal conversations with acrobatic scenes, drawing on fragments of their own childhood and youth that shaped their perception of femininity and sexuality. In close symbiosis with an aerial hoop, Frédérique investigates how binary upbringing patterns shape power relations in the adult world. From six autobiographical moments – a casual comment in the schoolyard, a mother's sentence about Frédérique's first name, a Spice Girls pop song, or a whispered remark from a coach – an impressive mosaic emerges about the subtle mechanisms of social conditioning.