If you're planning on heading out to Montreal anytime soon, you should definitely check out that city's vibrant theatre scene.

Last year an estimated 75 percent of some 300 productions were by Quebec playwrights and one third of these were new works. There are 43 companies and while many of them do work in French, a few are English-speaking and some are cross-lingual, which means they either offer both languages, or their work is of such a strongly imagistic nature that language is not really important.

One of the latter is Carbone 14, an exciting company led by Giles Maheu, with a body of notable work that includes Le Dortoir, Le Rail and the recent Dead Souls.

Carbone 14 works out of Usine C, a 19th century industrial warehouse that used to house a jam factory. Its smoke stack is topped with a sculpture by Richard Purdy, most appropriately named "Deus Ex Machina," a Greek theatrical conceit in which a God descended from Olympus to sort things out and end the play.

It's an all-round fun place to visit, with a cafe-bar in the factory's former boiler room, as well as a research and media arts centre. Carbone 14: 514-521-4493. --By Mira Friedlander
Canadian Correspondent