At Grosse-Île, 175 years ago, landed tens of thousands of men and women fleeing famine and poverty in Ireland. The playwright Émile Proulx-Cloutier, through the sole intermediary of archival texts, proposes to bring this historical drama back to life.
Such a bet forces the question, while several dangers lie in wait: can the juxtaposition of newspapers, notebooks and intimate or official correspondence create, on stage, a convincing experience?
A breakdown into tables, fortunately, allows a quick and immersive entry into the events – the arrival of the first ships at the place of quarantine, in the first place, through the eyes above all of Doctor Georges Douglas. Hugues Frenette tactfully delivers a man concerned, responsible for the island who is struggling as much as possible in the beginnings of an announced disaster; missing buildings and beds, insufficient hygiene.
A second painting will skilfully shift the focus to the city and its growing concerns, because migrants — a term chosen to summon world news — constitute a danger for Quebec. In this “remix of archives”, according to Proulx-Cloutier, we then have access to protests tinged with legitimate fears, ignorance too; the echoes with our news, therefore, begin to multiply.
And the desire to draw parallels with the present imposes itself, visible at this address to the public as an aside, at the start of the play; also visible in these excerpts which, sometimes in a somewhat emphatic way perhaps, directly echo the pandemic news, the same which plunged Émile Proulx-Cloutier back into this project. The story, it must be agreed, however, is quite similar: that of women and men in desperate situations, without the necessary means to deal with them.
Between past and present
The relative absence of characters and a framed narrative framework may leave the impression of a multiplication of vignettes, at times. On the other hand, the text is orchestrated in a dynamic way and doubled with a delivery inspired by the troop, with a rich scenography, too. Deeply bare and in phase with the proposal, the scene welcomes the small finds contributing to the sensitive quality of Grosse Ile, 1847 : these sound effects that force listening here and there, even contemplation, this powerful choir accompanying the drama or even this sail deployed for a ship, forcing the imagination.
Among the strong images we also come to this doctor Douglas buried in a box, in front of his judges overhanging in the shadows, while a commission will seek to shed light (identify the culprits, in fact) on the human catastrophe Grosse- Island. The piece, then, distances itself from the chronological sequence and seeks a new way of probing events.
While the first part made very little room for Irish migrants, the first witnesses of the drama, this second part takes note of the strange emptiness, and approaches more, even if imperfectly, this essential point of view. At the same time, the narrative gesture is coupled with a desire to understand the political and social dynamics at work, to offer a reading of the system, of the causes of the drama.
On this, the historical vignettes are enlightening, this anchoring in the past lingering above all on patent inequalities. How many inhabitants of St-Roch, for example, bear the brunt of public decisions? The decision-makers then appear in their comfort and their distance, the same for the choices of English imperialism forcing the Irish communities into exile. More broadly, the piece digs here the opposition between authorities who, far from the front, have all the luxury of crossing out the human, and those and those who plunge into the disaster with the means at hand.
The show, after this imperfect but rich overview, will close as it opened: with an address to the public. A direct speech, on the sidelines of the story, which ends up revealing how much the creative gesture has taken to heart the desire to evoke our present and its challenges, what Émile Proulx-Cloutier calls “our own fog”.