After a decade of existence, the Théâtre de l’Affamée benefits for the first time from a large stage, with a creation at the Quat’Sous. Its directors welcome this step as the beginning of a new chapter for the company. It is both a recognition of her approach and of the feminist cause which is at its heart.
“I feel that we have reached a certain maturity as creators, where our political commitment is more and more combined with our artistic work, confirms Marie-Claude St-Laurent. Additionally, in recent pre-pandemic years, there has been an explosion of feminist lyrics in the theater world. I think we’re reaching this crossroads where it’s less fearful to affirm your feminism, at least in our milieu. »
The room Sappho originates from the discovery by Marie-Ève Milot of the collection of this legendary poet of ancient Greece. The exhumation in 2014, by a papyrologist, of additional fragments of his poems reactivated his desire to create. There followed a lot of research on the one who would have lived around the VIIand century BC. J.-C. on the island of Lesbos, who wrote his love for young women, and from which derives the term “sapphism”, while that of “lesbianism” comes from the name of the island.
The concreteness of poetry
The authors of recent Ordinary Guerrilla and female dog(s) were immediately struck by the concreteness of his poetry, which names, in such an accessible language, the desire of women, their daily life. And they wondered why they didn’t know Sappho, or her work – of which only fragments have been transmitted until today.
“As soon as we started looking, and that’s really what really grabbed us, we realized how little information there was about his life,” says St-Laurent. However, she was as important in her time as Homer! Which had a great resonance on us, who studied in a theater school: how come this poet is not taught to us? »
Very popular in his time, his poetry was disseminated through songs, which were sung by female choirs during processions and a multitude of events. Lyrical choirs formed in the mystical school, exclusively female, directed by Sappho.
From her, whose history is as fragmented as her work, posterity has retained a figure marked by dichotomy. “She has always been presented as a double, reports Marie-Claude St-Laurent: the artist, the intellectual who taught; and also the impure, the depraved, who kept a house of women who were perhaps imagined to be prostitutes. ” “That was prejudice, says Marie-Ève Milot. Seeing women gathered together was disturbing, and that’s what led to all those faces Sappho wore after. In fact, she taught young women, as equals, music, poetry, art, philosophy, to prepare them for life. It’s wonderful! »
Hence their choice, to bring Sappho to life today, to evoke its different facets by multiplying it into five characters. She is embodied above all by Denise, a former bar owner, who has made her house in the Centre-Sud an art space and a refuge for women. She devotes a cult to the poet, to whom she devotes a kind of scrapbook.
What will take the form in the show of a rear projection live, manipulated by designer and performer Alix Mouysset. A journey in illustrations of the life of Sappho – which has also been immortalized above all by its representation on vases! A way to “keep your story alive”.
Of love and friendship
Despite hardships and disagreements, Denise’s Maison des muses is a place of solidarity, where friendship and this relationship of “ care », the fact of taking care of the other. “It’s a culture of women that we tried to put on stage, summarizes Milot. And this relationship is intergenerational: the characters are from their twenties to their 78s! Horizontal friendships: Denise transmits her knowledge, but receives just as much. That’s what’s beautiful about the piece. »
“This is also where we talk a lot about us, intimately, adds his co-creator. From our great, great friendship. The two accomplices, who consider themselves “chosen sisters”, recognized themselves in the Greek concept of Philiaa link between love and friendship.
And, of course, Sappho also talks about female homosexuality. Why is it important today, when it seems to be accepted? Except that it is not, remind the creators. During the writing of the text in the summer of 2019, two lesbians were brutally attacked on a bus in London because they refused to kiss for a group of young men. Homophobia persists here too: they point, for example, to the comments that Safia Nolin receives.
“Violence against lesbian women who do not correspond to the norms, there is still a lot,” laments Marie-Claude St-Laurent. As well as this vision according to which they “have the right to exist only in the gaze of men”.
A gaze that eroticizes them, specifies its co-author. “That’s why, in the play, we go somewhere else. Women let themselves be what they are and do not live in a logic of desire as we know it, heteronormative. I think that’s what makes these characters feel good. »
“In Quebec dramaturgy, there are very few lesbian figures,” adds Marie-Claude St-Laurent. Their interpreter Nathalie Claude had just written a “great article” on this invisibility of gay women on theatrical stages in the magazine Game, in 2016. “We met her at the beginning of the writing process to talk about the subject. Marie-Claude St-Laurent also qualifies all their actresses as “muses” of the show. “Through their testimonies, their sensitivity, their intelligence, they greatly enriched the writing. »
Rewrite the work
The cast also includes Florence Blain Mbaye, Katia Lévesque and Muriel Dutil, who has established herself as the protagonist. “She has a side that is as down to earth as it is mystical. To embody Denise, who is connected with Sappho, it’s the dream”, says Milot, who directs the play.
If the text was finished in February 2020, the playwrights took advantage of the delay to question and rewrite their work, in light of the changes that have taken place during the pandemic. “benevolent and full of love” universe, centered on a gathering of humans, Sappho do well.
“I would not have wanted to do any other show than that to start making art again” after confinement, says Marie-Ève Milot. “I think it’s a piece, even if it’s not the theme, which is about healing. And the collective ordeal that we have just gone through, and in which we are still, is part of all of our bodies in the show. It was a collective trauma, downright.
This work of repair is all the more important after two years during which the performing arts have been “wounded”. “It’s cliché to say it, but for me, it’s a healing space. And there is a mise en abyme because, in the play, it is also through art, by invoking Sappho, through poetry, that the women heal themselves. A reminder, therefore, of what some seem to have forgotten: art is essential, more than ever.