The Waste Land — A Ritual in Five Acts

a rite of ruin and renewal for ghosts and survivors

These fragments I have shored against my ruins. — T. S. Eliot

The Waste Land — A Ritual in Five Acts is a live performance, visual art installation, and French-language retranslation of T. S. Eliot’s monumental 1922 poem. This adaptation transforms the original’s anguish and fragmentation into a collective act of reckoning—with empire, with grief, and with the ecological end-times we’re now living through. Staged in English with French overtitles, it is part séance, part incantation, part funeral, and part rite of renewal.

This is a multidisciplinary performance that reimagines T.S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece as a theatrical ritual of fragmentation, chaos, and transformation. Combining live performance with a fully realized visual art installation, this immersive work explores themes of spiritual desolation, cultural decay, and the struggle for meaning in a fractured world.

The project’s visual art component plays a central role, with found-object sculptures, intricate masks, and mixed-media set pieces serving as both performance tools and standalone works. These pieces create a haunting, layered experience that extends beyond the stage, blurring the line between theater and gallery space. Lighting design and projection elements further shape the atmosphere, immersing audiences in a shifting landscape of ruin and renewal.

Staged as a dynamic solo performance, The Wasteland: A Ritual in Five Acts fuses movement, voice, and visual elements to bring Eliot’s poem to life. The piece unfolds across five distinct sections, each shifting through characters, tones, and textures to embody the collapse and potential rebirth at the heart of the work. A rich soundscape of audio collages, ambient noise, and live vocal elements add to the experience.

Following its debut at the 2025 Montreal Fringe Festival, the project will extend into a visual art exhibition showcasing the performance’s props, sets, and concept-driven sculptural works. An online radio-play style adaptation will further expand its reach, offering an auditory experience of the piece’s haunting, ritualistic intensity.

More than just a performance, The Wasteland: A Ritual in Five Acts is a raw, immersive confrontation with our contemporary moment—an exploration of what it means to seek renewal amid a collapsing society.

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

The Waste Land — A Ritual in Five Acts will premiere as part of the 2025 Montreal Fringe Festival (June 4–15) in the haunting, resonant space of La Grande Chapelle—formerly a chapel, now a stage for ruins and revelation.

Venue: La Grande Chapelle, Cité-des-Hospitalières, 251 Ave Pins, Montreal, Quebec H2W 1R6 MAPS LINK

Showtimes

SHOW 1 of 6, OPENING NIGHT, 5 juin/june 5th, jeudi/Thursday, 7:45pm/19h45 RSVP Facebook / RSVP Eventbrite

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