Matthew Jocelyn was named artistic and general director at Canadian Stage Company on Wednesday. (George Pimentel/Canadian Stage)

Matthew Jocelyn, a Canadian who has spent the last 10 years running a multidisciplinary arts centre in France, has been lured back to Toronto to take over the Canadian Stage Company.

Canadian Stage chair of the board Maureen Parkinson announced Wednesday that Jocelyn is the new artistic and general manager of the contemporary theatre company.

He will take over from Martin Bragg, who steps down at the end of March.

Jocelyn, 51, is currently director of Atelier du Rhin, a national centre of drama, opera and dance in Colmar, France.

He is credited with luring corporate sponsors to the centre, updating its theatres and creating an international voice training centre.

Jocelyn has been working internationally for more than 30 years, including directing at the Atelier Chekhov in Paris and the Paris National Opera.

He also has translated several plays and directed works such asDancing At Lughnasa by Brian Friel, fils nat. by Graham Smith, and l'Annonce faite à Marie by Paul Claudel at Atelier du Rhin. In 2006, he directed Pierre Corneille's The Liar at Stratford.

An international search firm identified Jocelyn as a potential candidate to run CanStage and he was chosen from among 50 applicants.

He acknowledged he is " insufficiently equipped" at this point to say much about his vision for the company, saying he plans to work with Bragg over the next six weeks and spend some time getting to know Canada's artistic community.

"I always want to engage in something exciting, challenging and necessary, and in the search process, I've come to realize how exciting, challenging and necessary CanStage is," he said.

Despite his background producing opera and dance, Jocelyn said he's not thinking of adding dance or opera to the CanStage season.

"The mandate until now has been clearly text-based, but we also have a mandate to present contemporary theatre, to show what's happening today," he said. "Artists are pulling from other disciplines like dance and opera in their work."

Jocelyn said he admires the work of playwrights such as Amiel Gladstone of Victoria and Wajdi Mouawad of Montreal and plans to spend some time getting to know Canadian writers such as Judith Thomson and John Mighton.

Canadian work has to be central at Canadian Stage, he said, but there is no "miracle recipe" for what is right for the company.

"I do want to make sure Canadian Stage represents the most cutting-edge theatre that Canadians are producing today in dialogue with what is being produced by international artists from other countries. Canadian Stage can be a world stage with Canada at its centre," he said.

It's also "about time" Canada's anglophone and francophone theatre companies began paying more attention to one another, Jocelyn said, holding out hope for more Quebec theatre coming the Toronto stage.

"There's a wealth there I hope to be able to tap," he said.

Jocelyn foresees a time when the company might have enough resources to have a more extended production schedule, perhaps with five or six weeks of rehearsals.

"Really, what it allows is for the directors to go beyond just telling the story and getting the actors to act. They can then work toward more formal theatre, or more fragmented interpretations or simply theatre in which the immediate narrative is not the only thing they are concerned with," he said.

'A sense of coming home'

Jocelyn was educated at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick and at Montreal's McGill University, and he was a Rhodes scholar.

He studied with Polish director Jerzy Grotowsky and Japanese Butoh dance master Tanaka Min, and was assistant to French enfant terrible director Patrice Chéreau.

Jocelyn said he's been back and forth to Canada frequently over the last 30 years, but "it will take time" to get to know Toronto audiences.

"Toronto is exceptionally rich in diversity," he said. "I want Canadian Stage to reflect that diversity both on stage in and in the audiences."

Jocelyn grew up in Toronto's Beaches neighbourhood, and was introduced to theatre at Ontario's Stratford Festival and at Toronto theatres such as Tarragon and Toronto Free Theatre.

"There is a sense of coming home for me in taking up the position of artistic and general director," he said. "In the last 30 years, the city has grown young, as I've grown older."

Jocelyn will be directing the coming season, already programmed by Bragg, at Canadian Stage, but will not program a full season himself until 2010-11.