In March 2020, performances of The Underworld at the Little Unicorn had been prematurely interrupted by the closure of the theaters. Three years and a period of confinement in front of our screens later, the social context seems to have made the theme of the show, which the La Bête Humaine theater takes up at Fred-Barry, even more appropriate. This gripping dystopian thriller from American Jennifer Haley explores a futuristic version of the Internet where you can completely immerse yourself in a virtual universe.
Its relevance is even more obvious with the current discussion around artificial intelligence (AI), notes director Catherine Vidal. But also realizing the side effects of technology, particularly isolation. “With the pandemic, we have all experienced it, this loneliness, [le manque] of human contact. The play speaks above all of the rarefaction of human connections. And how many will find themselves with emotional holes, which other people, like gurus, will be able to exploit. » A real “buffet” for predators in a virtual space which is not legislated, and which “is going to become a Wild West. It already is, in fact, with the dark web “.
In The Underworld, humans spend a lot of time in this very advanced virtual world to escape a reality that seems gray, where nature has almost disappeared. They live in silos, and it is on these virtual sites that they meet in groups. “The collective fabric has crumbled. »
In our reality, hyperconnectivity also exists: we are all on our phones, sometimes instead of talking to the person next to us… This dystopian world is not that far away, explains Vidal. “It’s really upon us. Technology is improving so quickly that I’m sure it won’t take that long [avant] that the Underworld really exists. In any case, it wouldn’t surprise me if virtual reality becomes very, very sophisticated. »
Roleplay
The story follows a detective investigating Le Refuge, a virtual role-playing game allowing fans to project themselves into another identity, a body different from their own. But also to realize their worst fantasies, among others with a little girl avatar… played by an adult man. Can’t these acts constitute crimes in the real world?
In the playful form of a thriller, the playwright offers an interesting debate between the characters. “The creator of the site says that it allows pedophiles to vent: they no longer become public dangers and they can satisfy their impulses, but not with real children, with images manipulated by adults. And the investigator responds that on the contrary, it legitimizes, even makes these impulses desirable. There is such a fine line between reality and the virtual. » Should we therefore, he retorts, legislate the imagination, “the only private domain”? To what extent can we bring ethics and morality into people’s imagination?
Great food for thought, says the director. “I think Jennifer Haley asks good questions. She does not answer. She just says: this is what awaits us. We will have to look into this. And she used pedophilia so that the debate became emotional and urgent, so that we said to ourselves: “we have to think about it”. »
The characters of The Underworld project themselves, strangely, into a nostalgic world: a bucolic Victorian environment. Catherine Vidal saw a reference to Lewis Carroll, whose relationship with the real model of Alice in Wonderland “wasn’t very clear.” She will have the opportunity to test her intuition, since author Jennifer Haley will participate in a post-show discussion on October 11, during a conversation with translator Étienne Lepage on stage.
Faced with the challenges of AI, which we are talking about so much currently, the designer admits to being a little ambivalent. “Of course it depends on how it is used. Right now, it’s not that advanced. I find that it can give good starting ideas, where it just becomes another tool. » She cites the example of the set designer Geneviève Lizotte — the one who created the two very contrasting environments of the show, who would sometimes use them for this effect.
But in this area too, it is the absence of reflection that Vidal deplores, innovation seeming to precede ethical questions. “The machine moves forward before we even think about the consequences. » The theater allows him to question himself: “It is still an agora where we can, without necessarily giving answers, raise different points of view and look at the blind spots of a situation. »
New distribution
The passage of time has meant that half of the original cast of The underworld changed.
Only Yannick Chapdelaine and Igor Ovadis are back, alongside Rose-Anne Déry – who “brings another color” to the role of the inspector created by Catherine Lavoie – and Fabrice Yvanoff Sénate. And even if the show does not contain anything graphic, which we are in the suggestion, Catherine Vidal this time wanted a professional actress to play the avatar of the child, alternately embodied by two little girls in the creation. “I was a little stressed by the subject: are we going to fucker the heads of two little ones? It scared me. But everything went well. And we never went into detail. »
However, once in the theater, at the stage where the director puts herself in the shoes of a spectator in front of her show, she understood that this worry would have caused her to drop out of the show. “And we didn’t need that. Theater is a convention. It’s going to be disturbing anyway: the interpreter Anaïs Cadorette-Bonin looks very, very young. » But with a distance that allows us to “be more in the debate and, I think, in what the author really wants. Otherwise, there is little sensationalism. And it seems to me that that’s not the heart of the piece. It’s not pedophilia, the central subject. »
The co-director
These days, Catherine Vidal combines her rehearsals with an unforeseen task: her new position as co-director at Quat’Sous. A role that she did not expect to take on so soon, the management of a theater being part of her distant plans. But she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to co-direct this theater where she has been an associated artist for years: an institution that is not too big, which allows “risk-taking”.
Especially since she shares responsibility for artistic and administrative direction with Xavier Inchauspé. “I wanted to be in conversation, to validate what we are going to program. I really like working in pairs. And coming together, we feel like we can take the house, and shape it [à notre goût], with a fairly clear direction project. »
A program that the duo wants to focus on contemporary international dramaturgy, in dialogue with Quebec creation. “We are looking for texts where we want to put fiction back in the spotlight, which has been somewhat evacuated with all the [courant] post-dramatic, where we were very much in the performative. It seemed that the text was almost obsolete. It is to see how, after this movement, we have renewed our way of telling stories, how we write theater today, all over the world. »
And the new directors want to be attentive, adds Catherine Vidal, to finding their place in the “theatrical ecology”, without encroaching as much as possible on the dramaturgical territories of other places, which broadcast a more linear fiction or, at the opposite , a slightly more niche word. “We want to keep the popular character of Quat’Sous, and at the same time take risks. »
To be continued, therefore.