Seeing new voices establishing themselves in the theater is not such a widespread phenomenon. The speed with which playwright Rosalie Cournoyer gets there is surprising: the company she co-directs, Vénus à vélo, has already brought to the stage two of her shows strongly imbued with female experiences. A third will be created at the end of November: Delivery.
Fevercreated in 2019 and winner of best original text at the Critics’ Awards, then The eye, played last season and in the running for the same distinction, demonstrated an ability to deal with current issues with all the required distance. ” With FeverI didn’t want to leave my house while it was playing”, confides the one who, also an actress, did not hesitate to draw on the intimate to talk about isolation and relationship with the body: a theme taken up in The eyewhich addressed nudity and the task of reappropriating its image, at the time of its production.
The favorable reception of these shows, in part, is due to its sensitivity in touch with our times; her ability, too, to offer a voice to often hidden female experiences: “I feel that what I do does not please everyone, but I feel that it pleases; I have a lot of feedback from the public, and from the female public. I feel this echo, and that is very important. »
The taboos of motherhood
Perhaps proof of writing that resonates, the 2018 graduate of the Drama Conservatory is going through a particularly busy fall. A rather unprecedented coincidence, Deliverywill take the stage at Premier Acte… At the very moment when The eyeon the other side of avenue De Salaberry, will be taken over at Périscope.
This third show will look towards maternity to show other facets of it, maintains Cournoyer who, despite alternative discourses audible here and there, nevertheless feels heavy taboos weighing on childbirth. “A woman who has just given birth and doesn’t want to take her baby… That’s not very well received, is it? Or who doesn’t fall in love with it right away? And there are all these clichés, these “my life before the child, my life after the child” wanting that motherhood gives meaning to everything… But, perhaps not. »
The main character of Delivery will return home, full of an upcoming birth never announced to her family. With the ice storm of 1998 as a pretext for forced promiscuity, the play will deploy different points of view on childbirth and the desire to have a child, indicates the woman who once headed towards midwifery… To finally enter the Conservatory of dramatic art of Quebec. Then there was the pandemic and the uncertainties for the theater sector – and again his readmission to the baccalaureate in midwifery. “And there, finally, I have shows that took off for the following year…”
The choice of theater
This pandemic, in fact, contributes to a very specific creative context for the performing arts, while difficulties persist on the subscription side, with several venues experiencing an occupancy rate that is difficult to bring back to the attendance levels known four or five years ago. This situation goes hand in hand with an increasingly globalized culture: at a time when numerous television productions reach millions of people all over the planet, theater appears to be a resolutely local, if not anachronistic, art.
On the numbers side, shows like Fever And The eye, in the small 80 seats of Premier Acte, and despite the good reception, will have each been seen by around 650 people: “It’s a reflection that I have, for example with the idea of “writing TV”… And it’s also a conversation I had with my psychologist! To be two, three years old with a piece rolling around in my head… For 600 people? »
Added to this creative context is a reduction highlighted by several artists in production subsidies. Various opinions agree in this sense, the Canada Arts Council “underfunds all theater productions”, making the possibility of devoting oneself to this art all the more complex: “It is certain that it is an excessively precarious. I would be lying if I said that I wanted to do this job every day of my life…”
“With Venus on a Bike, it’s the first production that we’ve done with a budget cut in two,” continues the young designer. With Fever And The eye, we had all our subsidies, so these were great conditions for creation. This is our biggest show with the most performers [sept]and you have to do it with half the resources: that’s very exhausting. […] And there, we are only talking about having a basic income. We’re not talking about making $40,000 a year: we’re talking about making $20,000. »
In the meantime, the author is working on the concerns that have brought her to this point, in a desire to offer her actresses something to sustain themselves: “I have no desire at all to perform what I write, but… hey I feel like giving juice to my boyfriends who will defend female characters! Because… Cursed that we were made to play flat and dull scenes, characters who had no substance. Now, I make it my duty to write them down, these complexities, these contradictions. »