Laughter is not necessarily synonymous with lightness. In Étienne Lepage and Catherine Vidal, laughter is rather marked by a great lucidity about the man and his fiancée.
The playwright and the director join their talents for the fifth time with the show All too humanpresented on the stage of the Théâtre de Quat’sous.
Composed of 14 scenes of varying length, the play casts a magnifying glass on the failings of humanity, its misplaced pride and its disappointed hopes. The texts, which take the form of monologues, are performed by a cast of ten performers, including Renaud Lacelle-Bourdon, Ève Pressault, Didier Lucien and Luc Bourgeois.
“These texts were written like impulses or poems over the last four years,” says Étienne Lepage. “Put together, they create a bouquet that has its own flavor, its own scent.”
This smell is that of imperfect humanity, believes Catherine Vidal.
Etienne’s text allows us to see what humans hide behind their ideals or behind the representation they have of themselves. The text is like a mirror that throws our imperfections, our impulses, right in our faces.
Catherine Vidal, director
The characters gathered here are all highly perfectible humans. One carries within him a limitless greed, the other dreams of an apocalypse from which he alone would emerge unscathed. The other still uses all the tools of manipulation to achieve his ends. All are however laughable in their clothes too big for the smallness of their souls.
“It’s comedy,” says Étienne Lepage. “I like to get closer to Molière and his characters. Like this guy [dans Les fourberies de Scapin] who hesitates, but really, between paying a ransom and leaving his son to rot in a galley!
There is laughter, but never heavy morality or accusations, Catherine Vidal is careful to point out.
The rarity of laughter
It is clear that since the return of the pandemic, laughter has been rare in the theater. The two acolytes have also noticed it. “It seems that theater needs to reflect the seriousness of reality,” says Étienne Lepage.
“We are in a phase where we feel that we need to fix things,” adds Catherine Vidal. “As if we needed to give the theatre a justification other than simply existing. As if we always needed to get messages across.”
The playwright takes the ball on the rebound: “The world of theater is made up of progressive and committed people who want the world to change. They would like that by continuing to make their theater, it will change all the problems of the world. I think that theater can do a lot for society, but it can’t do everything.”
Theatre is not going to save us, but it makes us live now. And it is not because we laugh that we are not worried. On the contrary. If I have to die tomorrow, I want to live today in a great burst of luminous laughter.
Etienne Lepage, playwright
“Perhaps we need to rediscover all the human grandeur of comedy. We need to go and rub shoulders with laughter. Laughter too is dangerous, it’s a double-edged sword.”
“And that can provoke thought,” adds Catherine Vidal.
The secret of a tandem
Étienne Lepage and Catherine Vidal have worked together on numerous occasions, notably on the stage adaptation of The idiot by Dostoevsky, presented at the TNM in 2018.
How can we explain the longevity – and liveliness – of this collaboration? Catherine Vidal begins: “Every time I read Étienne’s texts with actors, I feel their immediate pleasure. I like the sporty side of theatre, which is well served by Étienne’s words. And what he writes makes me laugh deeply!”
For his part, Étienne Lepage finds in the director a “great director of performers.” “She is also capable of reading and listening to a text well. We have worked on very different projects, but each time, Catherine has been able to find the best language to express what I had written.”
So, for this show, the director (and co-artistic and general director of Quat’Sous) wanted to go beyond a simple string of numbers with a “frank and assumed proposition” to bring unity to the whole. She won’t say more.
“We talk a lot about the shows we’ve seen,” concludes Étienne Lepage. “We have the same tastes about what’s interesting or not in the theater. It’s precious. And it allows us to continue to expand.”
All too human is presented at the Théâtre de Quat’Sous from September 11 to October 5
Check out the show page