The schedule
Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, late afternoon last Friday. We find Fred Pellerin in the dressing room of the theater next to the CEGEP. The storyteller left early from Saint-Élie-de-Caxton, in Mauricie, where he lives “in the woods” – the nearest neighbor is 1.5 km from his home! He rode in the middle of a storm and made a stop in Montreal for two professional activities before heading to his destination, in western Montérégie. “Often, on performance days, I add a lot of stuff, which keeps me white boxes elsewhere,” says Fred Pellerin, who explains that he has two separate lives, “one very withdrawn, and another public, made up of shows, encounters, moments of creation”. Moreover, he will not return home until three days later, since he must give another show on Saturday in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, then one on Sunday in Drummondville. “It takes two and a half hours to go home, it’s not worth it. But hotel time and lodge time, for me, is good writing time. »
The team
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Lighting designer Martin Boisclair and tour director and sound engineer Steve Branchaud
It’s time for the sound test, which is both effective and good-natured. Fred Pellerin tours with a small team: his tour manager and sound engineer Steve Branchaud, who has been with him since his stage debut in 2001, and lighting designer Martin Boisclair, a guy from Saint-Élie, who has been with him since 2009. “With Steve, we’ve been sitting in the van for 22 years… The accumulation of cases that have happened to us, of anecdotes, it’s really incredible! It unites us, and beyond work, it also becomes friendships. It’s funny, our lives are separated by cycles of four years, by slices of tour! »
The weather
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Among the tasks to do before the show: iron your shirt!
The tour The descent to business, which began in the fall of 2022, should last until the end of 2025, therefore not far from four years, like its previous ones. No question, however, of imposing such a busy rhythm on itself: it has gone from 120 to 70 performances per year, including jumps in Europe – it is therefore heading towards something like 250 shows rather than the usual 350 to 400. Fred Pellerin also reserves long inactive periods, interspersed with busier weeks. “But it’s not to listen to Netflix, there! Besides that, I have my truffle field, my sugar shack, my forest, my children, my friends, my loves…”
Like many people, the pandemic shutdown shook Fred Pellerin, who above all did not want to “start again as before”, more aware than ever of the “finitude of things”.
I also have a child who was very sick. The time that is counted, it is not counted equal for everyone. It is no longer theoretical for me. It generates a sense of urgency to do things, to do nothing sometimes, and to do the right things.
Fred Pellerin
Time is also the theme of this new show, a subject that has always haunted him daily. “It was a source of anxiety for a long time. Until the day when I turned it upside down to make it something stimulating rather than restrictive. »
The audience
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
In 22 years, Fred Pellerin has seen Quebec change and evolve. “It’s a great privilege when we tour, because we go back there every four years. We see the new murals, the artistic café that has just opened, the shop which closed and became an industrial incubator. If you go around Quebec once, you have a portrait. But what we have is a film. »
It’s a tradition, unless it’s the beginning of the week and everything is closed, Fred Pellerin goes to dinner at the restaurant with his team before the show. “And we eat well. En masse! During the meal, we chat quietly, we take the opportunity to hear from each other about the children who are growing up, the projects in progress. Leaving the restaurant, three seated couples smile at the storyteller and shout at him: they are coming to see the show later. ” It happens all the time ! »
The storyteller has established a privileged relationship with the public throughout Quebec. We give him presents, we tell him stories, we invite him for a drink or a helicopter ride. This incredible proximity means that it fills its rooms without really investing in promotion. “Since 2006, I have never played in front of a room that is not full. In Montreal, we will do 10 sold out at Maisonneuve and we haven’t played a night yet! He measures his luck, and takes nothing for granted. “I know the privilege, past 20 years, to see my rooms displaying full. Each tour I tell myself that the magic may be over, that I will do less. But there is really something that has been built up over the years. »
The text
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Back in the room to conduct a final sound test, tune his guitar, put his glass of juice on a stool. “This is the last placement of my little bubble. Suddenly someone played with the buttons! At 7:30 p.m., the storyteller and his team “clear” the room, so that we can begin to let the public in.
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PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
In the boxes, it’s time to drink tea and eat some chocolates. “Look, this is the show! », says Fred Pellerin, showing us two sheets printed in schematic format and filled with not really clear handwritten additions. “It takes me a year to get to that! It’s because the storyteller doesn’t come on stage with a “written” text. He knows the structure of his story and above all, he knows very well where he is going. But the room for improvisation is great. “There is no sentence learned, except the first. »
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PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
With only about forty shows in the pipeline, Fred Pellerin is still having fun “opening doors” and hitting the road to storytelling. “Later, I will have more trails. The longer it goes, the more things will freeze… more or less. Because when I freeze too much, I get annoyed! So I challenge myself to break what is too routine. »
1/3
The show
It’s almost 8 p.m., it’s time to go on stage. The 850-seat room is full of an audience already conquered and happy to find the fauna of Saint-Élie-de-Caxton: Méo the hairdresser, the village priest, Madame Gélinas who had 473 children, the blacksmith and his daughter the beautiful Lurette, all these characters who are now part of the popular imagination.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
A look around the room, just before going on stage
In The descent to business, which revolves around Toussaint Brodeur and his wife Janette, the owner of the general store, a notorious rogue and scratchy businessman, who does not lack imagination to accumulate always more money and goods, and it’s very funny . But when, faced with the inevitable, he wants to set time back by a single second, he will realize that not everything can be bought…
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
The public rediscovers the world of the storyteller with happiness.
We’re at Fred Pellerin here and that’s good, with a bit of the supernatural, mass exaggeration, fine and sometimes less fine humor – including a frankly pleasing scatological passage! –, lots of puns, a few well-chosen, well-placed and beautifully performed songs, and emotion when, like a magician, he ties together all the threads of his tale.
“I thought I had written a tale about time, but I realize more and more that it’s also a tale about love”, confides Fred Pellerin at the end of the show.
Always with a perfect balance between lightness and emotional charge, the magic of the storyteller of Saint-Élie still operates and we emerge under the spell of this show of more than an hour and a half, comforted by his inimitable humor and tenderness.
The scene
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Fred Pellerin during his show in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield last week
When Fred Pellerin hit the road again with his new show last fall, he hadn’t realized how much he had missed the tour. He even thought during the pandemic that he would be able to do without it. “I wrote and created a lot, I told myself that I could still find my business… But when I found myself on stage, I realized that there is a big part of me that just exists there. This overstimulation, this relationship with the public, this unique thing that happens every evening, this energy, this magic… this business, it is not found elsewhere. »
Changing hotels every day, living in his suitcases with “one life that leaves and the other that remains”, all the inconveniences are quickly forgotten in the face of this intensity which has nourished him for 22 years. It’s because at this rate, the road ends up “taking us”, he says. “I wouldn’t do it otherwise. And when everything else gets tiresome, you hear “stand by five”, and you forget everything. »