Pierre Tetrault - Artistic Director

Pierre began his artistic career as an actor working in theatres across Canada after graduating from the Playhouse Acting School in Vancouver founded by Powys Thomas and Christopher Newton.

Pierre decided to focus on a career as an artistic director in theatre apprenticing at Toronto Workshop Productions with Robert Rooney and George Luscombe. He was appointed artistic director of Carousel Players in St. Catharines, Ontario for eight successful seasons of original new stories for the whole family. This led to his appointment as artistic director of Young Peoples Theatre in Toronto. He continued to create original new work for the theatre over four years before moving on to new challenges in the world of documentary and independent film.

One topic he had long wanted to tackle was the story of his brother Phil’s experiences living with schizophrenia. The result was a documentary produced by the National Film Board called “This Beggar’s Description” that chronicled Phil’s life as an artist, a poet, living with schizophrenia. The documentary has been screened at film festivals, universities, hospitals and television and has been called a major contribution to the understanding of schizophrenia and its effects on the individual and the family.

This film led to more projects in mental health and intellectual disability issues including an invitation from CAMH (The Centre For Addiction and Mental Health) to produce a film on client rights in the hospital that is currently being used as a training film for clients and staff.

The Canadian Association For Community Living at the same time asked for a film dealing with issues facing people with intellectual disabilities in Canada. The result was “The R Word”, a one hour documentary developed with Doris Rajan for Omni Television that has had numerous airings on television across Canada.

Pierre regards his recent appointment as artistic director of Abilities Arts Festival as a unique opportunity to combine what he has learned as an artistic director with what he has learned researching challenges that people with disabilities face in society. He feels honoured and privileged to be in a position to promote artists with disabilities and looks forward to being a part of getting all their great work out there to as many people as possible.