Her main platform is the state of women in theatre and in particular their travails in Quebec, on the surface an unpromising topic that could reek of academe. But Pelletier, co-artistic director of the Theatre experimentale de Montreal and later in the same post with her Theatre experimentale des femmes in the 1970s and '80s, presents a highly charged show that's as far from the campus as it is from McTheatre.

The discomfort of many observers with the Phantom, Les Miserables (collectively known as McTheatre), Aida-writ-large and such awful emanations as Ottawa's new Museum of Civilization is rooted in a fear that the public may be losing its assumed respect for art.