With his famous novel May our joy remain, Kevin Lambert paid tribute to Marie-Claire Blais. And now he is adapting for the theater the final completed novel of the great writer, who died in 2021. The recent winner of the Medici Prize sees this as reciprocal support. “She helped me to write, I learned a lot from her literature on writing. And even more: about existence, the world. And there, it’s me who accompanies his work to the stage. I have the impression that we work hand in hand, beyond death. »
After the magnificent fresco Thirst Materials, directors Denis Marleau and Stéphanie Jasmin wanted to bring the world of Blais to the stage again. Kevin Lambert — who had interviewed the writer during a public meeting after the creation of the show at the Festival TransAmériques — immediately thought of A heart inhabited by a thousand voices, which became his “literary and political testament”. A novel which, with its closed session and certain dialogues, lent itself well to the theater. “And it is a book that speaks of the memory of past struggles [féministes et LGBTQ+, entre autres], which is necessary for the struggles of the future. An important vision of the world to be heard,” recalls the writer.
And this notion of the multiplicity of voices expressed in the title is precisely one of the “deepest” lessons he learned from the work of the late author. “There is always this idea with Marie-Claire Blais that we must understand the world from the multiple. The individual point of view is important, and she explores it very far, in the consciousness, even the unconscious of the characters. But what she shows us, through the sentence so long and embedded with various points of view, is how it is interdependent on other existences. From this form, I almost draw a reflection on human consciousness. I think that humans are constructed like his novels: made of a choir of voices, sometimes contradictory, in debate with each other, but sometimes also in communion. We have contradictions within us. His work lifts them up. But at the same time, she has a real sensitivity towards the injustices that underlie our world. »
A 93-year-old former cabaret pianist, René (Jean Marchand) is confined to his home. Her friend Louise (Christiane Pasquier) comes to tell her about her own life: her loves, the mourning that broke up their group of lesbian friends and the great militant battles led by this trans man, born in a “lying body”. Memories which, quietly, will be brought to life on stage, explains the author. “How through words, we invoke characters, situations. René’s friends appear thanks to the power of the story. »
Although he has never signed an original play (“that interests me, I have vague projects,” he says), Kevin Lambert is far from being a stranger to stage art. He sees and reads a lot of theater. But for this work of adaptation, he silenced his own authorial voice. And didn’t write anything himself. “I didn’t want to add text from my pen, it was almost an ethical rule that I gave myself. Marie-Claire Blais’ writing is so extraordinary and self-sufficient. It was like sculpting work: sometimes I took a piece there which I put [ailleurs]. » And in order to flesh out a character, the writer also drew on another novel, The angel of lonelinesswhere he already appeared.
“It was about following her own paths, basically. » The knowledge of the man who analyzed Blais’s style in his university thesis was especially useful in one area: his ease with his syntax, “so difficult”. But for the novel-loving adapter, the big challenge proved to be time constraints. “This is what I learned the hard way: my first version lasted 4 hours! » he laughs.
Transmission
And for Kevin Lambert, it is relevant thatA heart inhabited by a thousand voices becomes the latest creation produced by Espace Go — the former Women’s Experimental Theater — under the directorship of Ginette Noiseux. The play features activist characters, belonging to the same age group as the outgoing director. “I found it interesting, to conclude his presence, to reflect on the legacy of this generation that we are going to see on stage. » René, in particular, questions himself: is the contribution of their engaged struggle recognized? Will we remember it?
A question that touches the author. “For minority communities, there are some pretty burning questions of memory. How do we ensure a form of memory transmission when there are fewer social institutions to take care of it? Fewer university courses on LGBT or women’s literature, fewer journals, etc. » The piece reflects on these questions of transmission, “but in a poetic way, with great beauty and depth. And, basically, what the finale tells us is that we need memory for the fight in the future. There is a sort of abolition of temporalities in Marie-Claire Blais in any case, which provides an encounter between the past and the future. »
The author of Roberval Quarrel also sees it as a play about desire, “in the broadest sense, not just sexual. The desire for life, for change. And the beautiful thing is that it shows that it continues even after death. » René convinces his younger friends to go and demonstrate in his place. It is therefore the story of a handover, a transmission. An approach that the author also accomplished by adapting this novel by Blais for the stage.
And he considers it crucial that these words against intolerance be heard now. “I see this novel as a bit of a continuation of the little essay she wrote, Inside the Threat. Marie-Claire was at the forefront: from Key West, she saw all the social movements coming. And his work is prescient in several respects. So I think she saw the kind of counter-reform coming, against LGBT, trans, gay rights. Those of women too. In the United States, the rise of transphobia is frightening. It is even reaching Quebec, as we saw last fall, with the demonstrations. And if she wanted to write [ce roman] on the need to fight, remembering the struggles of the past, this is her response to this extreme right political movement, in my opinion. This is what we wanted to update by putting on this show. And with what happened, it becomes even more current. »
Even here, the writer deplores that we are witnessing an “attempt at the ideological exploitation of drag queens and trans people”. And he criticizes the Committee of Elders on Gender Identity, set up by the CAQ government, “which we didn’t really need. This is really worrying because it is a government that leads by polls. And we don’t know where at all [ce comité] will lead us.”
Theater allows us to humanize this question, by displaying a trans being “in all their complexity, the richness of their experience. And I find it beautiful to show him in his old age too. Older trans characters are rare in literature. Marie-Claire Blais makes visible a generation that we rarely see in the arts. »
Kevin Lambert was moved while attending rehearsals for the show — also worn by Louise Laprade, Sylvie Léonard, Pascale Drevillon, Nadine Jean and Élisabeth Chouvalidzé.
“To hear a very demanding text carried out so well by such good performers is truly enjoyable. When we read Marie-Claire Blais, with her sentence that fills the pages, we can almost forget that there are bodies underneath! When I saw Thirst Materials, it was like a dream. It was so beautiful to see the faces on these characters that I had imagined. Also, it reminds us that there is some form of truth in what she describes. When Marie-Claire Blais wrote, for her, her characters existed. This is perhaps why his work lends itself well to the theater. The characters are alive in the text. And by putting them on stage, they take on a mind-blowing relief. »