The Quebec theater community gathered Sunday evening at the Théâtre du Rideau Vert to offer a final tribute to director André Brassard, who died on October 11.
The 425-seat hall was almost full for this celebration hosted by director René Richard Cyr. According to one of the organizers of the event, actress Violette Chauveau, it was André Brassard himself who requested that the event be held at the Rideau Vert. Remember that it was here that his career took off with the presentation of the play by Michel Tremblay The Sisters-in-Lawin 1968.
“This place was important to him, explains Violette Chauveau. Two years ago, when his health was fragile, André also gave me a photo which he asked me to keep preciously so that it could only be taken out during a posthumous tribute. This image, projected on a screen at the back of the stage, was followed by dozens of others during the three-hour event. We were able to see — in photos and on video — André Brassard at different stages of his life.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE THEATER DU RIDEAU VERT
André Brassard himself chose this photo presented during the posthumous ceremony in his honor.
It is therefore under the gaze “full of intelligence, delinquency, but also humanity” of André Brassard (to use the words of René Richard Cyr) that this emotional evening took place.
Tributes and readings
“We imagined a very simple tribute, but one that resembles him, with people he loved and who loved him in return,” says Violette Chauveau. Several actors and actresses went on stage to read excerpts from the texts; some were staged by Brassard during his career, others are by authors he was particularly fond of, such as Jean Genet, François Villon or Paul Claudel. Alex Bergeron, Guy Nadon and Monique Spaziani, in particular, are among those who participated in the readings.
A great thrill ran through the audience when Normand Chouinard and Rémy Girard briefly took over the roles of Vladimir and Estragon, the two main characters ofWaiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett. It was André Brassard who led the duo during the (memorable) presentation of the play at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in 1992.
Kathleen Fortin also offered one of the highlights of the celebration with a very heartfelt interpretation of a song that Brassard loved, why singby Louise Forestier.
The words of Michel Tremblay, with whom André Brassard collaborated for decades, obviously resonated loud and clear, especially with the reading of an excerpt fromAlbertine in five stages by Élise Guilbault, Maude Guérin and Julie Vincent, among others.
PHOTO ANDRÉ CORNELLIER, PROVIDED BY THE THÉATRE DE QUAT’SOUS
Michel Tremblay and André Brassard, in April 1973
When Michel Tremblay went on stage to read a text of his own dedicated to his lifelong sidekick, the room stood up in one block to applaud him for a long time. To which the playwright replied, with a half-smile: “You should have waited until after [la lecture du texte], suddenly you hate it! This text, which imagined Brassard’s arrival “in artists’ paradise”, was full of tenderness and humour.
During the many audio and video excerpts presented, we were able to hear the director and teacher at the National Theater School present his reflections on the sacred side of theatre, on the role of the actor, on illness (he suffered a stroke in 1999 which forced him to leave his job). He evoked with his always colorful style his vision of teaching, quoting one of his greatest inspirations, Jean Genet: “It was a question of igniting you and not of teaching you. »
To which several dozen drama students (past and present) responded by climbing onto the stage to perform the song in chorus. Light the fire by Johnny Hallyday. In the room, everyone jumped up to sing and clap their hands with this improvised choir. The ceremony was not made to end in sadness, but in joy: that of the transmission of the eternal love of the theater. André Brassard would no doubt have agreed.