Tuesday morning cold and sunny. I arrive at the Patro Villeray, on the run, as usual. On my tombstone, they will write: “He was always five minutes late. »
They are there, a dozen, seated in a circle, for the theater workshop. Isabelle Côté, the host, talks about party coming Christmas whose theme will be karaoke, if I understood correctly.
In the circle, there are Luc and Stéphane in wheelchairs, there are Alexandre, Péguy, Danielle and Michel who are seated on chairs, just like Bahadur, his walker in front of him.
Today is the theater workshop without words.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Micheline Gauthier, taking part in an exercise by the Théâtre Aphasique
That’s good: the participants all have speech problems, they are all (except Chantal, I will come back to this) aphasic, most of them after a stroke that damaged the left side of their brain.
Aphaquoi? Aphasia: suffers from this when the person has lost the ability to speak or understand their language. It is a spectrum, aphasics do not all suffer from it in the same way.
Michel constantly says “Ha-ha-ha”, but he understands everything.
Danielle is asked her name, she searches, she searches, she searches, but she can’t find it, and it’s Bahadur who shouts at her: “Danielle! » and Danielle who says, laughing: « I know it! »
That’s aphasia. The stroke may have left physical scars, this is the case for those who, on this sunny morning, are in a wheelchair. Luc hardly moves a hand; Stéphane can move easily in his wheelchair…
The damage differs for everyone. As I said: aphasia is a spectrum.
When you’re aphasic, the race is over. Everything is slow afterwards.
Isabelle Côté studied theater. Her friend Anne-Marie Théroux, a speech therapist-actress who launched the Théâtre Aphasique, invited her there in 1993. It was embryonic. Isabelle fell in love, she became the boss in 1996.
“Love at first sight, Isabelle?
“I fell in love with that world. I find them extraordinary. »
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Professor Isabelle Cote
On the program that morning, in the large sunny room of the Patro Villeray: mime exercise of trades, dance steps (yes, even in a wheelchair), memorization, concentration…
For you and me, the level of difficulty of this workshop is the equivalent of counting to ten.
For them, it’s the equivalent of running a marathon while learning a new language, while juggling…
There are several workshops like that every week, several groups. In 2021, 160 aphasics took part in the Theater workshops. Some of them are in the troupe that puts on plays. And once a year, the troupe does a show at TNM.
“Love at first sight, Isabelle?
“You left too soon,” she told me when I called her back for the interview on Saturday. You should have seen Luc, you know, Luc, the one who only moves his arm? »
I remembered Luc, whose words are incomprehensible, Luc, slumped on his right side, who understands everything.
“He had to play a customer dissatisfied with his pie, continued Isabelle. He was SO good! His anger was just, and everyone was laughing…”
And Isabelle told me in detail how the whole group reacted to Luc’s antics.
everyone was laughing.
For you and me, it’s nothing; for Luc, that’s… everything.
The idea of these workshops at Théâtre Aphasique—one of those organizations that work miracles with $200,000 a year—is to pursue the rehabilitation of aphasics in a different way after they leave the rehabilitation center, by stimulating their intellect, their body, mind, creativity…
And to get them out of isolation, too.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Myrian Alphonse, following a workshop at the Théâtre Aphasique
Which brings me back to Chantal Gauthier. Chantal is 56 years old, she is not aphasic: her stroke damaged the right side of her brain. Enough to make it invalid.
She was 34, she couldn’t work, she couldn’t drive, and she spoke, yes, but in a desperately monotonous tone, with no facial expression.
“I left rehabilitation in 2003. They let you out, you’re in for nothing, loosely released into the wild…”
Before her stroke, Chantal was working, she was playing music, she had… Yes, that’s it: before, Chantal had a life.
After ?
After that, well, nothing. There was the rehabilitation. And after, his life was a desert. Imagine: you can no longer work, make music, drive. You tire very quickly. You talk like an automaton…
What are you doing ?
Chantal stayed at home, counting every penny of her salary insurance check and her disability pension…
Only.
Chantal didn’t tell me like that, but what I understood from what she told me — and from what Isabelle told me about her actors — the worst after the stroke, it is loneliness. Friends move away, spouses disappear (not always, but often).
Life goes fast. But not you.
“In 2011, I discovered the Théâtre Aphasique, says Chantal. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
“Why, Chantal?”
— It was like the continuity of rehabilitation, it forced me to learn a text, it’s as if I had a job. I never stopped doing the workshops.
— What do you get out of the workshops?
– The social. You are with people like you. And I love the stage, it gives me a lot. It is the pride of doing something. »
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Chantal Gauthier (right)
If you met Chantal in the street, if you talked to her, you wouldn’t know that her stroke made her disabled: the after-effects are not visible, they are not audible.
Chantal wouldn’t tell you either: “I don’t talk about my stroke. I don’t want to be the-girl-who-had-a-stroke. I have a name: Chantal. »
For the record, I ran into Isabelle at the Jean-Talon market over a year ago. She wanted me to write about “her” aphasics. I said yes, then I jerked off, there were missed appointments, there was the pandemic, and it didn’t happen… Until Tuesday.
In a break, during the workshop, Isabelle was telling me about her Theater and she began to apologize for having asked me so often to come and see her gang…
I told him that I should have come long before…
“Why do you like them like that, Isabelle?”
‘I’ve never seen such brave people. »