Since its publication in 1868, Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, has touched several generations of readers. And has often been adapted to the small and the big screen. A century and a half later, the story of Doctor March’s four daughters, faced with the passage from adolescence to adult life, has retained all its freshness.
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
Louis-Karl Tremblay had a crush on the March sisters around the age of 10, while watching the film Little Women with Winona Ryder. Two decades later, he proposed to the artistic director Claude Poissant to produce a show, on display at the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier on Wednesday, with Julie-Anne Ranger-Beauregard to write the text. “Louisa May Alcott has inspired several generations of women to write and emancipate themselves through art,” says the director.
Her work has inspired designers from diverse backgrounds over time, from Fanny Britt to Patti Smith to JK Rowling.
Louis-Karl Tremblay, director
The show is a free adaptation of the work. (The play is also published by Leméac and available in bookstores on Wednesday.) If the story is faithful to the time, the public will be immersed in “a temporal blur, an eternal winter”. “We want to highlight what is similar between the United States of 1860 and Quebec of 2022: the human beings who live there,” explains Julie-Anne Ranger-Beauregard.
“Become whoever you want in life”
This is the aspiration of Jo, central character and alter ego of Louisa May Alcott in the book. Like Jo, the author loudly affirmed her desire for celibacy. She resisted the social pressure of marriage at all costs. “Jo carries within her the ardor and revolt of childhood, transported into her adult life. She does not want to sacrifice her freedom and her idealism with age. The sisterhood between the four girls is also a central theme of the play. They will be performed by Rose-Anne Déry (Jo), Laetitia Isambert, Sarah Anne Parent and Clara Prévost. Dominique Quesnel and Mattis Savard-Verhoeven complete the cast.
According to Ranger-Beauregard, the desire for emancipation of these women is still current.
Feminist and avant-garde, Louisa May Alcott was also conditioned by her time, her limits and personal taboos, like all of us.
Julie-Anne Ranger-Beauregard, playwright
In the interview, we immediately feel the complicity between these two 38-year-old artists who have been working on this project (delayed because of the pandemic) for more than four years.
Does Tremblay feel welcome in this group of women? “I’ve always been the guy in the girl gang,” he replies. I have always liked to surround myself with women. I identify with their struggles. I am a feminist ally. And I often put female characters front and center in my work. Same child, when I looked Little Women on repeat during the Holidays, I didn’t think that Jo’s story was aimed at girls. I was Joe! »
From March 16 to April 9, at Théâtre Denise-Pelletier.