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Québécois Theatre: Michel Tremblay and Marie Laberge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
Extract
The French colonists (‘habitants’) who began settling Canada in the early seventeenth century brought with them the French language, the Catholic religion, and French cultural traditions. These basic elements of ‘le patrimoine’ continued to evolve in the North American context after France abandoned the colony in 1760. Under the influence of a conservative political establishment and the Catholic Church for two centuries, French Canadians perceived themselves as an isolated minority whose duty was to preserve their language, religion, culture, and agrarian traditions. A collective identity crisis during the 1960s led to the conclusion that the old social, educational, and religious institutions had failed to keep up with the forces of modernization, industrialization, and urbanization which had transformed the province. During the period known as the ‘Révolution tranquille’, political reforms gave Quebec greater autonomy within the Canadian confederation, economic reforms improved material conditions, and educational reforms began preparing future generations for productive careers. Rejecting the term ‘Canadien français’ because it connoted colonial status, Quebec intellectuals adopted the term ‘Québécois’ and called for the creation of a national literature, independent from its French roots and its Anglo-American connections. This distinctive Québécois literature would reflect the reality of their lives and speak to them in the language of Quebec.
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References
Notes
1. For a fuller treatment of French-Canadian theatre history, see my ‘Drama in Québec’, in Studies on Canadian Literature: Introductory and Critical Essays, edited by Davidson, Arnold E. (New York: Modern Language Association, 1990), pp. 248–70Google Scholar which includes a lengthy bibliography.
2. Tremblay's awards include first prize in the Radio Canada young playwrights contest (1964), the Société Saint-Jean Baptiste de Montréal Victor Morin Prize (1974), the Ontario Lieutenant General's Medal (1976), the France-Québec Prize (1981), the Chalmer's Prize (1986), the Athanase-David Prize (1988), the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal (1989), the Jacques Carder Medal of Merit (Lyon, 1991). He has been named Chevalier de I'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France (1984), decorated by the Ordre du Québec (1991), and granted honorary doctorates from Concordia and McGill Universities (Montreal) and the University of Stirling (Scotland).
3. A word about ‘joual’ may be in order: the term was coined in the early 60s by André Laurendeau, editor of the Montreal French-language newspaper Le Devoir, who along with a priest named Jean-Paul Desbiens, wrote a series of articles denouncing the quality of French spoken and taught in Quebec. To illustrate his point about the poor pronunciation of the average Québécois, he used the example of the word ‘cheval’ which was mispronounced ‘joual’. The term was picked up by other critics and the debate was on over the purity of the French language. ‘Joual’ is not merely a matter of pronunciation; it refers to the mixture of Anglicisms, Old French, standard French and neologisms, which has become the popular idiom of the province. To some critics, ‘joual’ was a degenerate form of French, a symbol of the decadence of Quebec society, the ignorance of its people, the contaminating effect of contact with English. To others, ‘joual’ was a symbol of Quebec's unique cultural identity and a rallying point for nationalist and separatist sentiments.
4. ‘Damned sex! Ha! They don't say that in the movies, for example! Ha! No, those things just aren't said! That a woman is obliged to endure a pig all her life because she had the misfortune of saying ‘yes’ one time, that's not interesting enough!’
5. ‘Ah! damned place, damned place!! That's where one loses one's soul. Damned drink, damned dancing! That's where our husbands lose their heads and spend all their pay with wicked women! Aren't you ashamed, Angeline Sauvé, to frequent such a place?’
6. The five-part Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal includes La Grosse Femme d'à côté est enceinte (1978), Thérèse et Pierrette à l'école des Saints-Anges (1980), La Duchesse et le routier (1982), Des Nouvelles d'Édouard (1984), and Le Premier Quartier de la lune (1989).
7. In the early version of the play, the characters were named Hélène, Robertine, Henri, and Claude. The same characters appear under the names Thérèse, Albertine, Gérard, and Marcel in the Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal, Albertine en cinq temps, and Marcel poursuivi par les chiens. Thérèse is the childhood friend of Les Belles-sœurs character, Pierrette Guérin; both are featured in the novel Pierrette et Thérèse à l'école des Saints-Anges.
8. Although Tremblay has always maintained that homosexuality and transvestism are metaphors for national identity in his theatre, it should be pointed out that he was a precursor of the gay theatre of the 1980s. See my ‘Sexual Games: Hypertheatricality and Homosexuality in Recent Quebec Plays’, American Review of Canadian Studies (17,3; 1987; pp. 287–96) and ‘Dramatizing Sexual Difference: Gay and Lesbian Theater in Quebec’, American Review of Canadian Studies (22,4; 1992; pp. 489–98). The Quebec theatre journal Jeu devoted a special issue (54, 1990) to ‘Théâtre et homosexualité’.
9. La Duchesse reappears as Édouard in the Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal and in La Maison suspendue.
10. Tremblay's 1986 novel, Le Cœur découvert also suggests the possibility of renewing the basic family structure by establishing homosexual families.
11. Four short pieces—‘Profession, je l'aime’; ‘On a ben failli s'comprendre’; ‘T'sé veux dire’; ‘Eva et Evelyne’—were performed in Quebec City in January 1979. The historical, musical epic, Il étaient venus pour …, was written in 1978 and given two public readings in 1979–80 before being staged in Quebec City in July 1981.
12. C'était avant la guerre à l'Anse-à-Gilles has been translated into English for a Toronto production and it has often been revived in Montreal and Quebec City.
13. Maurice Duplessis was Premier of Quebec from 1936 to 1939, and then again from 1944 until his death in 1959. He was a reactionary nationalist who preached isolationism, anti-communism, and rural values. His Union Nationale Party aligned itself with the Catholic Church. With the end of the Duplessis era (often called ‘Quebec's Dark Ages’) came the progressive reform period known as the Quiet Revolution.
14. The ‘roman de la terre’ or ‘du terroir’ was a popular nineteenth and early twentieth-century genre. It celebrated the traditional values of rural life and preached fidelity to the Catholic religion and Quebec's French heritage. One of the most famous examples of the ‘roman de la terre’ was Louis Hémon's 1914 classic, Maria Chapdelaine. In it, the lovely young Maria chooses between three suitors who present three options: the harsh existence of a northern Quebec farmer, the adventurous life of a woodsman, the exciting experience of an emigrant to New England. Maria chooses to continue the ‘habitant’ tradition of her family by marrying a neighbour.
15. ‘I'm tired of the past, Honoré, I'm tired of carrying the torch and working for beliefs I don't hold: I think something dies, I think that we women die in silence and dullness. We wear our past like a fur stole, glued to the neck, face buried within, and we don't see anything anymore. I don't want to raise children in a past that says a master can beat and rape his servant girl without care; I don't want to see any more Rosalies defeated and broken forever because that's man's law of desire, I don't want to perpetuate the reign of boredom, the reign of time stuck between misery and tides, and laundries, and silences and rosaries. I don't want to stay in a place where people don't want anything to change, because I say that we have the right to more than a pink georgette dress and a church full of flowers the day of our wedding, and the day of our death. And that's why I'm leaving, Honoré. And I'm taking Rosalie with me. Maybe it's the same elsewhere, maybe silence and prayer rule everywhere in the world, but at least I'll know because I will have seen it’.
16. Jeu (21), pp. 60–61.
17. Translated into six languages, L'Homme gris has established Laberge's international reputation.
18. Laberge, SUNY-Plattsburgh Seminar, 4 March 1989.