“I was an adult the first time I heard that slavery had existed in Quebec.”

In 1740 New France, a young Indigenous woman named Marguerite Duplessis became the first enslaved person to challenge her captivity in a courtroom. Her story is significant, but why has she been relegated to the footnotes of history?

In Marguerite On Fire, a chorus of Marguerites erupts like a blazing volcano, reclaiming a defiant legacy buried beneath centuries of colonial violence and collective amnesia. A breathtaking blend of chorus, dance, court procedural, and documentary theatre, Émilie Monnet reappropriates fragments from the archives into a searing act of remembrance, resistance, and regeneration.

Illuminating the enduring legacies of colonialism today, this radiant tribute honours a trailblazing activist whose fight for freedom refuses to be extinguished.