He is (for the moment) quite discreet on the small and big screen, but on the boards, Alex Bergeron has already carved out a solid reputation. As proof: the greatest directors have called on him since he left the National Theater School in 2014.
After brilliantly playing the main role in Metamorphosis for Claude Poissant last year, the 31-year-old actor is preparing to return to the Denise-Pelletier Theater stage, this time under the direction of Alice Ronfard. He will be Mercadet – a manipulative but broke financier – in the makera play by Honoré de Balzac, adapted by Gabrielle Chapdelaine.
The project could seem high-sounding: to bring on stage a text written in 1840 by an author better known for his novels than for his dramaturgy. However, Alex Bergeron is having fun like crazy with this play “passed through the blender” by Gabrielle Chapdelaine, who has made it a contemporary comedy where we often laugh, but always with a stomach discomfort.
“This piece speaks of the futility of wealth and the recklessness of the rich, explains Alex Bergeron. We kept the essence of the classic, but it’s happening in downtown Montreal. The piece reflects on power and its erosion, on money, on voluntary servitude. In my opinion, the biggest maker today is Elon Musk, a guy who didn’t invent anything, but who knew how to exploit the flaws in the system to make more and more money.
“With Alice, we also think about the codes of the theater,” he continues. We want to establish a different link with the public; we want to trust his intelligence. »
It’s important to me that the theater speaks to the public, not just that the people in the industry remain among themselves. I have to talk to my mom and my brothers when I do a show. Theater comes from the heart for me.
Alex Bergeron
For Alex Bergeron, the theater starts from the heart, of course, but the text quickly descends into the body for this actor with an ultraphysical game, who will in particular play Julius Caesar in April in the ambitious Shakespearean project Rome, by Brigitte Haentjens. “I need to free myself from theory. A few years ago, I signed up for massage therapy classes because I needed something concrete. I understood how each muscle works. It’s also in my nature! I need to move, otherwise I fall asleep. I have to test things in motion. »
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
“We can no longer be satisfied with just doing theatre. You have to think, overflow a little, ”believes Alex Bergeron.
Anyone who would not say no to an invitation to participate in a dance performance adds: “We can no longer be satisfied with just doing theatre. You have to think, go overboard a bit. Film and television do much better than theater when it comes to realism. We have to offer more to people who travel to see us. »
Lover of letters
The actor born in Plessisville, in the Centre-du-Québec, did not bathe in the theater during his childhood. The vocation came at college, when a professor at the Cégep de Trois-Rivières suggested that she pass her auditions to study in a theater school. “My mother was a director for an insurance company, my father is a pressman for a printer. But my parents have always supported me and attend all my shows. Even when I do a solo on Claude Gauvreau as an explorer! »
He discovered Gauvreau – his literary crush – at the National Theater School. With him came a plethora of other authors. “The School’s librarian, Wolfgang Noethlichs, took me under his wing and advised me to read a book a week during my studies. He set fire to the straw. »
Indeed, the other (very) great passion of the actor is literature. He has also been working for years at the Le Port de tête bookstore, on the Plateau Mont-Royal, and intends to stay there “as long as the owners want to [lui] “.
In the middle of the shelves of books, he met the late director André Brassard. “When I saw him, I literally jumped on him. He must have taken me for a crank. We went out to smoke cigarettes, we chatted. Afterwards, he would call me to put books aside. Every other Friday, I went to bring him his books. We smoked, we drank Coke. We talked. For two and a half years, I accompanied Alice Ronfard and André in their major project on Michel Tremblay [intitulé La traversée du siècle]. »
And during the ceremony in tribute to Brassard, he was on stage to read excerpts from texts by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, two authors whom the director of sisters-in-law admired. “Thanks to people like Brassard, we can do live theater on the asphalt. Those who preceded us cleared the land for us. »
the maker is presented at Théâtre Denise-Pelletier from January 25 to February 18.