With the financial support of Caisse Desjardins de la Culture

The book The Beach and Other Stories, co-written by Maria Kefirova and Michael Martini, will be available in print starting September 24, 2026. We will honour Maria Kefirova’s memory at a friendly launch gathering at the MAI Café-Bar (3680 Jeanne-Mance Street). You are warmly invited to join us from 5:30 p.m to 7.30 p.m. 

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Maria Kefirova had a way of shifting the gaze that was entirely her own. She drew our attention to what was beside, behind, and between things, to places no one had thought to look. A keen, off-centre intelligence. A humour entirely her own, always present, that came across just as much in conversation as it did onstage. The Beach and Other Stories was co-produced by Maria Kefirova, Danse-Cité, and Festival TransAmériques, where it premiered in June 2023. It was presented again by Danse-Cité at La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines in November of that same year.

After Maria passed away, we felt strongly that The Beach and Other Stories should become a book. Returning to this work, spending time with her words and images, is also a way of being with her still. The book brings together the text of the performance, co-written by Maria and Michael Martini, two kindred and playful spirits. This book is also for those closest to her, for the artistic community, and for the different generations of artists she touched. A performance exists for a finite time, onstage. With this book, we hope to hold on to a part of it and allow Maria’s work to continue to circulate, to be read, seen, and discovered.

We hope that those who knew Maria will find in these pages something of what they shared with her. And that those discovering her for the first time will encounter, through her work, both the artist and the person she was.