For Steve Jodoin, Theatre Arts ’04, the spotlight wasn’t a choice – it was simply where he belonged. “I realized quite early that I loved the attention,” he says. “I was always the goofball, trying to get people to laugh. I just felt comfortable doing that.”
In grade school in Quebec, he channelled that energy into roles in class plays, but it wasn’t until he moved to Jasper that he considered pursuing acting outside of the classroom. His theatre-minded coworkers’ plan to stage a show for the hotel’s guests was derailed by scheduling conflicts, but for Jodoin, the ill-fated idea was life changing.
“It sparked everything,” says the 2026 Distinguished Alumni Award honoree. He looked into MacEwan’s Theatre Arts program and soon found himself in Edmonton.
“I ended up in a place where we could all be a bunch of weirdos together. We loved theatre, we loved music, we loved being creative. I felt right at home,” says Jodoin.
His love of that tight-knit theatre community followed him into his career. An audition for Emerge led to his first contract with L’UniThéâtre, the only professional Francophone theatre company in Edmonton. There, Jodoin engaged with Francophone and French-immersion schools across the province, presenting student workshops and mentoring drama programs. At École Maurice-Lavallée, he served as artist in residence, and worked with a high-school theatre troupe on a production they performed at a festival in Winnipeg.
Jodoin also hosted Oniva!, a French-language children’s TV show, where he met Marie-France Guerrette, who would later be his co-founder of Productions Loft. The Francophone media production company has since produced award-winning documentaries and series, including Cowboy Urbain, which has aired in over a dozen countries.
“Productions Loft is more for TV and the web, and in between projects, I’d go back to theatre. It was really nice as an artist to be doing something different all the time.”
Jodoin worked his way up to artistic director and general manager of L’UniThéâtre, and now helps up-and-coming talent break out the same way the company helped him. And though the performances are in French, he notes that they’re accessible to English-speaking audiences as well – and might provide them an entirely new theatre experience.
“We present everything with surtitles, so we’re really open to having people come and check it out. We watch shows on Netflix with subtitles, so why not check it out when it’s a live event?” he says. “What we do here is quite unique. French actors don’t necessarily act the same. The presence on stage is different, so it’s a whole different vibe. That uniqueness is what’s interesting.”
Jodoin is also collaborating with other theatre companies across Canada on a massive, three-play project called Boréalis. The production will tour nationally next fall, and will feature actors from five different Francophone companies telling an interconnected story set in one universe.
Even in such a broad production, the Canadian Francophone theatre community feels close. Jodoin says that when he began his career, he saw himself eventually moving back to Quebec. But now that he’s built his own community and family here, he can’t imagine leaving.
“The connection I have with my community here because of the arts, because of theatre, because of documentaries that I’ve done, because of events – I think it’s quite special,” he says. “I just love it, and I’m very proud of it.”