It is rather rare that an artist is asked to stage the same piece twice in 15 years. However, when this director directs one of the most prestigious theater companies in Quebec, when its founder has created some sixty productions in his career, and his work shines around the world, it is an opportunity that Lorraine Pintal seized. by asking Denis Marleau to revisit The Queens.
In 2005, with his show presented in Montreal, Ottawa and France, Marleau highlighted the playful dimension of Normand Chaurette’s tragicomedy, a remarkable, cruel and comical work. What reading will he offer this time?
“I prefer to forget my first production. Because I am working with a new distribution and I try to stay tuned to the text, without preconceptions. The work of the director is first of all to know how to listen, in order to better receive and transmit the work of an author. In addition, I work with six wonderful actresses! They have a sensitivity, an immense playing capacity, and create new sounds. They help me to forget what I did in 2005. ”
Among them, we find Céline Bonnier (who plays Isabelle Warwick), alongside Sophie Cadieux, Kathleen Fortin, Marie-Pier Labrecque, Sylvie Léonard and Monique Spaziani. A reunion, since they have worked together a few times, including on The blind. “I am always fascinated to see him directing the performers,” says Céline Bonnier. Denis has a real listening, an openness, a great attention. ”
“In life, I am drawn to projects that give meaning to my work,” continues the actress ofUnit 9. My meeting with Denis Marleau [en 1999, pour Urfaust] was revealing. For me, working with him (or with Brigitte Haentjens) is a school of play. In terms of depth, rigor and awareness. It still serves me two decades later. ”
PHOTO STÉPHANIE JASMIN, PROVIDED BY THE PRODUCTION
Paul Savoie, in the installation-theater The blind
And for these two artists, the theater is first and foremost a meeting place: “And encounters take place at all levels, with works as well as with collaborators,” says Marleau.
After 45 years of directing, I am still learning, because each project provokes new encounters.
Denis marleau
“The living arts are moving arts, adds Bonnier, because the living is always on the move. The more we advance, the more we realize that there are things that escape us. Hence the importance of research, of the artistic creation process, of having the time to explore each universe before diving. ”
The sisters-in-law by Chaurette
The Queens is a beautifully written play that has traveled the world. Chaurette, who translated several of Shakespeare’s plays, drew on secondary characters from Richard III, among other things, to invent the protagonists of his play. “It’s a thick, very dense text, but which summons the theater in an extraordinary way!” explains Marleau. Beyond the language and the beauty of the images, the piece has a very playful aspect, with strong and precise patterns and features for each of the characters. ”
– You compared The Queens of Sisters-in-law … Astonishing?
“These are six women who are bored in the shadow of male power. They meet for a few hours in the evening and discuss their problems. They come together to speak out, to try to rise up, and at the same time, they reproduce male competition, rivalries, betrayals, power struggles. They are in permanent instability. ”
“They are also, like those of Sisters-in-law, women who aspire to be something else in life, to change their destiny, in order to have a little more control over their existence, ”believes Céline Bonnier.
The childhood of art
Outraged The Queens, Denis Marleau has directed several plays by Normand Chaurette, including The passage of Indiana, which premiered at the Festival d’Avignon in 1996. Along with André Brassard, Marleau is the one who best knows the work of this great unclassifiable author. “With its poetic dimension, its metaphorical language coupled with a sense of theater, Chaurette’s work poses questions to the directors who tackle it. We must find a scenic form in his texts. We are not in the obvious, we are in the discovery. It represents a strangeness in the Quebec theatrical landscape.
“At 67 years old, Normand has remained close to childhood, in his eyes, in his listening, in his amazement. He is also a musician, Normand, and it shows in his theatrical writing, ”concludes Denis Marleau.
The blind and Sleep my little child, two theater installations from the cycle of technological phantasmagoria by Denis Marleau and Stéphanie Jasmin, taken over as part of Ubu’s 40th anniversary. At Espace Go, until November 28.
The Queens. At the TNM, from November 16 to December 11.