Chimera

Produced by Red Beret Theatre

An installation by Corinne Viau

Corinne Viau gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the City of Ottawa Youth and Culture program for the research and writing portion of this project.

Welcome to Chimera! You have been invited to enter the psyche of Rowan, a young person suffering from depression. Explore as much as you'd like, but don't turn on the lights and don't make a sound. If you do, you might not like what you'll find.

Genesis of the Show:

Growing up with two parents diagnosed with depressive disorders and living myself with such symptoms, I was interested in creating an accurate representation of the mental disability that comes with a mood disorder. I was inspired by the poem “Chacun sa chimère”, which could be translated to “Everyone their own Chimera”, by Charles Baudelaire. The imagery of a monster on your back, clawing at your chest, weighing you down as you walk aimlessly through the land felt a little too familiar, and I wanted to create a space where those who know the feeling can find comfort in being witnessed, and where those who don’t can discover the horror of it.

Corinne Viau

Corinne Viau (they/them) is a queer trilingual francophone playwright, stage manager, director, performer, project manager, designer and theatrical translator based in Ottawa. Their recent works include Camp Cube 3.0 (Rideau Center), Roselia’s Tea House (Ottawa Fringe 2024), 666! (Ottawa and Montreal Fringe 2024), Patchwork (Youth Infringement 2024), Terminally Ill (Undercurrents 2024), Rotten Apple (Ottawa Fringe 2023) and three plays that they translated and captioned for Undercurrents 2023. They also wrote described video scripts for Bell TV channels for over five years. They are excited to explore installation design as a new medium with Chimera.

Premiering October 15 - 18, 2025.