Chance or coincidence, the next three shows to be presented in the intimate room of the Prospero theater address the vast question of motherhood from different angles. Émilie Lajoie recounts in our little death “the difficult road of a couple who love each other but cannot give birth”. For Hugo Turgeon, To you I can say anything is “a declaration of love to his mother and to the women who shaped his life”. As for Julien Storini, he describes His mother’s son as “a show about his mother, for his mother, with his mother”.
Under the direction of Sophie Cadieux, Émilie Lajoie embodies Pascale, the main character of her play: “She’s a thirty-year-old who likes organization and efficiency, who is strong on lists and visualization boards. One day, life throws a terrible surprise in her face: infertility. The rather solid couple that Pascale forms with Martin (Simon Rousseau) will be put to the test. As for her mother-in-law (Sylvie Potvin), she is filled with good intentions, but has a series of blunders.
For a first text, Lajoie chose a subject that was delicate to say the least: the mourning of motherhood. “I wanted to give visibility to this reality, she explains, to offer a voice to families who have to mourn a child who will never exist. For the woman as well as for the couple, how can we redefine ourselves after such a hard blow? I also wonder about motherhood as the culmination of a woman’s accomplishment. Where does this idea come from and what consequences does it have on individuals and on society as a whole? »
all about my mother
Directed by Gill Champagne, Hugo Turgeon’s play revolves around three women he knew well. “It’s first of all the story of my mother, he reveals, a flamboyant, temperamental and charismatic character, endowed with a scathing repartee. She is surrounded by her sister and her mother, women who belong to an often heavy, conflicting past, an era that constantly haunts her. Then there’s me, her son, the one to whom she can “tell everything” without using a filter, the one who listens to her, understands her, but who doesn’t hesitate to disconcert her either. While Maxime Isabelle plays the son, the trio of women is defended by Frédérike Bédard, Isabelle Drainville and Linda Laplante.
Co-written with Louise Dupuis, who also signs the staging, the solo by Julien Storini, a French actor living in Montreal since 2012, is based on the voice messages that his mother has left on his answering machine since he has been living far from her. “We’re getting the real messages heard,” he explains. These are often infantilizing, sometimes cruel. Facing the mother, but also facing the public, then appear two Juliens: the 40-year-old, who confides willingly, and the 7-year-old, shy, reclusive in his room. One is the reflection of the other. They both live under the maternal yoke. »
According to Hugo Turgeon, the relationship with the mother is a double-edged sword: “It’s a great attachment, a deep love, a limitless complicity, but it’s also a source of extreme tension, of latent and perpetual conflict. Between a mother and her child, the umbilical cord is never really cut. Julien Storini thinks no less: “My piece paints the portrait of an awkward, even suffocating motherhood. My mother is unaware of the scope of her words, in this she also summons humor, a sweet madness. She is the product of a social environment where life, difficult, crushes you, but from which poetry still emerges. »
Art therapy
Hugo Turgeon’s main challenge was to bring reality and fiction together harmoniously: “With the help of Gill Champagne, thanks to his hindsight on my story, I was able to build a more solid dramatic curve, move away from pure autobiographical story. Julien Storini’s task was quite comparable: “The play brings to the stage the real relationship that I have with my parents, but that did not prevent us, Louise Dupuis and me, from inserting here and there false leads, to cause discrepancies, in short to invent. Blurring the boundary between documentary and fiction in this way is a way of keeping the public in active listening. »
For the three artists who answered our questions, creation seems to have played a crucial role in a process of mourning. “It was necessary for me, says Hugo Turgeon. The work was liberating, a great source of relief. Mama’s death, in very peculiar circumstances that I reveal in the play, kind of gave me permission to tell her story. Maybe because she couldn’t intervene anymore. »
Julien Storini’s journey seems to have been just as therapeutic. “My original intention was to transcend ‘shit,'” he explains. During the process, I experienced shame, the fear of being immodest and, finally, when I met a first audience, I felt stronger, as if I could share the load with others. It gave me a lot of distance, enough to face my mother in real life. »
Émilie Lajoie also recently lost her mother. “My mother passed away in October 2020,” she says. Returning to work a few weeks ago after a two-year hiatus [Notre petite mort devait initialement être jouée en avril 2020], it struck me how much my mother is present in my text, how much I find her humor, her sensitivity. I really wish she had seen this show. »
For the three artists, the intimate room of the Prospero theater was the one they needed. “It’s the ideal place to come into direct contact with my characters,” says Émilie Lajoie. I hope to offer a human, luminous and sincere moment. “The room is part of the experience,” adds Hugo Turgeon. As we did, my mother and I, I wish the audience could cry and laugh in the same breath. »
Julien Storini explains that several people came to talk to him about their mother after seeing the show: “The play has a cathartic aspect that the intimate room will certainly accentuate. I hope that people will also grasp the tribute paid to the people who have remained behind, the individuals who have, so to speak, missed the economic, cultural and digital wagon of the 21stand century. »