Quebec village of yesteryear | A small revolution by Moment Factory

(Drummondville) Faced with a drop in traffic for at least five years, the Village québécois d’antan in Drummondville needed a serious boost to perpetuate its mission of remembrance with a new clientele, which takes the form of Village parallèle, a small revolution signed Moment Factory.

As soon as we exit the tunnel that propels us into rural Quebec at the end of the 19th century,^e century, we can clearly see that not everything is going well in the village cottages. The barber, who can be seen behind the blinds of his shop, seems to be losing his mind in reaction to problems with hair growths; a little further on, we catch two neighbors talking about strange manifestations that seem to come from a parallel universe…

Suddenly, on our right, a telephone fixed to the post rings; we are told that very strange things are indeed happening here. Do we want to know more about the post office, about Irma Lachance, the clairvoyant, or about Claire Laflamme, the lamplighter? We choose the clairvoyant, after which the voice suggests that we take a look ourselves. After crossing the disturbing covered bridge, here we are at the clairvoyant’s house, who has set up her vast living room on the upper floor of the old sawmill. Irma’s voice greets us as soon as we enter; we recognize her very characteristic intonations…

“I really put a lot of energy into making sure I delivered the best possible text and I think you can hear that we had fun,” drag queen Rita Baga, who voices the fortune teller, tells us. “Irma Lachance was their idea, but they admitted that my name was out there from the start; they wanted to have a personality with an identifiable voice that would also make the experience comical.”

Using voice recognition tools and artificial intelligence, the Moment Factory teams have created an impressive bank of sound capsules that adapt to visitors’ responses, for a unique immersive experience.

Elsewhere, it is the lamplighter Claire Laflamme who is caught partying under the slightly crazy lights of her workshop, while the post office seems to be prey to crazy spirits who amuse themselves by reading the villagers’ mail out loud by suddenly opening the postal drawers.

These experiences are in some cases the nocturnal expression of characters who also live in the village during the day, and who were staged last year by Moment Factory on the occasion of phase 1 of the revitalization project. New characters were thus created, such as the tinkerer Léonard de Brind’scie, who invented the time travel tunnel.

“We wanted to take advantage of what had been done during the day, like the characters, the free wandering, all this charm, this humor, this playful side, Laurence Pasteels, creative director at Moment Factory, tells us. This participatory side was the heart of the parameters that we wanted to continue to have, but with a multimedia twist. So we dove in to create this somewhat fantastical world.”

The Parallel Village thus doubles the traffic of the Village québécois d’antan, which was only open during the day, except during the Halloween period and the holiday season – great successes, indeed.

Preserving heritage, with a multimedia twist

“Our mission is to preserve and pass on our heritage. But the grandparents who came here with their grandchildren 20 years ago are no longer here to explain how a butter churn worked, for example. The younger generations, what interests them? How can we reach them? We had to vary our experiences,” explains Geneviève Legault, general manager, Village québécois d’antan.

Integrating the technology was a challenge for Moment Factory, which had to hide the technological elements so that nothing was visible in broad daylight. The uniqueness of the site is also something relatively new for the Montreal multinational.

“Moment Factory is best known in Quebec for its Lumina tours,” producer François Morel explains. “Here, you’re in a village, you can’t do a tour, we don’t hold people by the hand. We want visitors to have an interesting evening, which is why you can also grab a bite to eat or have a drink around the fireplaces in the central square.” An aspect that is precisely in tune with the third stage of the revitalization plan, the gourmet phase, which starting next year will showcase local products and ancestral techniques.

Moment Factory intends to participate in this sequel, on the current site, but also further afield, because we have been told that there is space to expand the village’s surface area. “I do projects in Singapore, Hong Kong, I do them everywhere,” François Morel tells us. “But the creativity that we have been allowed to have here is very enriching. I have never experienced such a beautiful collaboration. Honestly, we are creating a mini theme park. With the expected success, we will be able to reinvest and add new elements each year. We can stay here for 15 years!”

“A theme park with a mission and an identity,” warns Geneviève Legault with a knowing smile. “The site’s purpose won’t change, but it’s definitely a repositioning. We now have a tourist reach that we didn’t have before.”

The Parallel Village experience is presented all summer until August 31, from Wednesday to Saturday, from 9 p.m. to midnight.

Visit the website of the Village québécois d’antan