Annabel Soutar is a Montreal-based playwright and theater producer. In 2000 she co-founded the theater company Porte Parole Productions with actor Alex Ivanovici and she has acted as artistic director of the company since its inception. Annabel studied English and theater at Princeton University in New Jersey where she completed her degree in 1994. While at Princeton, under the tutelage of renowned American playwright Emily Mann, Annabel learned about the documentary approach to theater and since 1998 she has been applying it to plays she produces in Montreal. Her original plays, Novembre, 2000 Questions, Sante!, Seeds, Import/Export, and Sexy beton have been mounted in Montreal at the Monument-National, Place des Arts, Espace Go, and at the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts. In 2012 Seeds was published in both English (Talonbooks) and French (Les Editions ecosociete) and presented across Canada in Montreal (Centaur Theatre), Calgary (Theatre Junction), Vancouver (PUSH Festival for the Performing Arts), and in Ottawa (National Arts Centre of Canada) in a production directed by Chris Abraham. In 2012 Annabel was commissioned with Chris Abraham of Crow's Theatre in Toronto to write a new documentary play about fresh water for the 2015 Toronto Pan American/Para Pan American Games cultural program, PANAMANIA. That play, The Watershed, premiered at the Berkeley Street Theatre (Canadian Stage) in Toronto during the games from July 12 to 19, 2015. Soutar lives in Montreal with actor Alex Ivanovici and their two daughters Ella and Beatrice.
Exhaustively researched and performed with verbatim dialogue that's been edited from dozens of hours of interviews ... The Watershed is must-see theatre. - NOW Toronto The Watershed asks us to resist our ideological impulses, start listening to one another, and have some long, hard conversations about what kind of country we want our kids to inherit. - Globe and Mail documentary theatre at a very high level ... We need more political drama like this. We need more politics like this. - National Post