The girls of the Saint-Lawrence finally land at the Center du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui. Created at La Colline, in Paris, in the fall of 2021, published at that time by Dramatuges Éditeurs, the play by Rébecca Déraspe, developed in collaboration with Annick Lefebvre, is directed by Alexia Bürger. A vibrant tribute to the resilience of women and to the splendor of the River, the show brilliantly intertwines voices and destinies, completed and unfinished lives, so many existences tossed about by the same tides.
First, from Coteau-du-Lac to Blanc-Sablon, from Rimouski to Grandes-Bergeronnes, seven corpses were spat out by the river. These unidentified, unclaimed remains, seven women will have to deal with the shock of their discovery. It is this trauma that serves as a dramatic pretext to unite their voices. At different ages, at very different stages of their existence, they all have wounds that the appearance of a body on the beach will revive. All of them, in their own way, will be both gripped and propelled by the surf.
Embodying the River, with as much ferocious rage as restorative benevolence, Elkahna Talbi is the first to speak. “It screams. The dead in me. Decomposed bodies. I give to drink the bodies of those who die in me. […] I hear the voices. The lowercase ones. The millions. Of anger. Of sorrows. Of joy. I hear his, his pain. I hear his, his suffering, which I have seen grow at the same time as his body. I hear his heart, which I felt beat even in my spray. This is the prologue to a 105-minute choral song that will unite the serious and the futile, the big and the small, anger and reconciliation. “At high tide, I cover the pains. At low tide, I let the voids appear. »
Around Rose (Louise Laprade), the matriarch, from whom the sea has stolen her great love, there is Élodie (Tatiana Zinga Botao), who ardently wishes to have a child, Charlotte (Gabrielle Lessard), who has never experienced orgasm, Lili (Zoé Boudou), her roommate, who has still not digested the death of her sister, Manon (Émilie Monnet), who refuses to draw a line under her couple, Mathilde (Annie Darisse), who would like recover custody of his children, Martin (Ariel Ifergan), who realizes that he is in love with his wife’s sister, Anne (Marie-Thérèse Fortin), who denies the domestic violence of which she has been the victim, and finally Dora ( Catherine Trudeau), who is undermined by a pact that she failed to respect. Rébecca Déraspe delivers a vibrant tribute to motherhood, a portrait that includes immense joys, but without dismissing the terrible suffering.
From this sensitive material, often poignant, but also hilarious in places, connected meshes of existence, snippets of lives agitated by the waves, the director orchestrates a limpid spectacle, an implacable and sumptuous maritime ballet. In the place imagined by Simon Guilbault (scenography) and Marc Parent (lighting), an inclined plane with a multicolored horizon, the director leaves nothing to chance, clearly signifying the main roles and the secondary roles, the events of the present and those of the past, the voiceless bodies and the voices without a body. To the delicate notes of Philippe Brault (music), she adds murmurs and whispers, naked and made-up voices, without forgetting the sound effects produced live. With all the care we know for her, this quest for accuracy where form is never dissociated from emotion, Alexia Bürger once again signs a memorable show.