“Ten sheep, nine sparrows…and a green mouse” are gone. The whole of Quebec mourns Louisette Dussault. Trained in classical theater, a true icon for the children of an entire generation, the actress was 82 years old.
On public television, for five years, from 1966 to 1971, she played the Green Mouse. The program was rebroadcast without interruption until 1976. Among its writers was the writer and playwright Denise Boucher. No wonder that Dussault, quickly very socially and politically involved, found himself in the adventure of Fairies are thirsty (1978), Boucher’s feminist play, a real thunderclap in the midst of Quebec society.
Dussault will play the theater of Michel Tremblay, Jean-Claude Germain and Marie Laberge as well as Molière, Ionesco or Maeterlinck. The public knows and loves her for her character of Marilyn in the soap opera of the same name. She plays in several other soap operas, such as At Denise’s, chop suey Or The Brave Park. In the cinema, she is part of the crazy distribution ofIXE-13 (1971), by Jacques Godbout, and plays notably in Second-hand happinessby Claude Fournier (1983).
“Our beginnings, our emotions, our laughter, his laughter, his sparkling eyes, his song sung on the head in Lysistratehis eight characters in ten minutes in mistero buffo, momthe play she had written and played for so long, her aunt in It was before the war at Anse-à-GilTHEby Marie Laberge, and all the rest,” recounts Michel Tremblay, weeping for his “Souisette,” as he called her.
Kindergarten for all
In the 1960s, the craze for children’s programs exploded. Broadcast in the morning, the program The Green Mouse, with its different characters, aims to be “a real kindergarten where the child, under a given theme, will be called upon to observe things more closely, to change, to learn gymnastic movements, to do crafts and to draw “. Louisette Dussault also tells stories to children. Several programs for young people were then integrated into a set known as The surprise box. The Green Mouseit enjoys a separate educational status.
“A home kindergarten, asks Radio-Canada in 1966, isn’t this the solution for too young children who cannot attend public kindergarten? “It is in any case, affirms the state broadcaster, a “partial solution for mothers who live in centers too far away to give their children the opportunity to attend kindergarten”. Education, the only business of women at the time?
In 1966, the show had already existed for two years, as a daily morning show. In the great tradition of European puppetry, the Green Mouse was then only a fabric character.
Two discs of songs by The Green Mouse are produced under the Radio-Canada banner. To promote it, Louisette Dussault appears in various public places, such as shopping centers, in her mouse costume. She talks to the children. She offers them her autograph: “Green mouse”.
The name of the character refers to a traditional nursery rhyme, sung throughout the French-speaking world at least since the end of the 17th century.e century. However, it is the original songs of the show, written by Marie Racine on music by pianist André Gagnon, that Louisette Dussault embodies.
Even after the arrival of Master key, the character of the Green Mouse will be used for years, including in real kindergartens. Louisette Dussault marks in this way generations of children who, now grown up, mourn her death in the name of the persistent life of the past.
Born in Thetford Mines in 1940, Louisette Dussault would have liked to be heard as a soprano. His mother, a piano teacher, taught music for a long time, notably in Sherbrooke. The actress studied at the National Theater School of Canada, and the auditorium of the Polyvalente de Thetford was named in her honor.
The role of this mischievous little mouse definitely sticks to the skin of this great actress, who will also play in the children’s series peck. She sometimes feels the need to skin the image of the mouse to better move on. When she presented herself as a candidate for the Rhinoceros Party in 1972, she became, derisively, the “Vârte Mouse”.
In the mid-1990s, Louisette Dussault chaired the Quebec Theater Council, while making her voice heard in favor of Quebec sovereignty.