This week, I went to see The Ten Commandments by Dorothy Dix by Stéphanie Jasmin, under the direction of Denis Marleau, at Espace Go. The audience savored its reunion with the stage after the winter vacuum. Julie Le Breton, alone on the boards, lived, murmuring or vibrating, a beautiful female character placed before the cracked mold of her life. During the pandemic, theaters will have concocted several monologues, saving performers the hassle of distancing measures. This process deprives several actors of performance, while offering pieces of bravery to the one who takes all the light solo. Thus, the talent of the performer shone all the stronger on Wednesday evening without the support of playing partners, like a star emerging from its Milky Way.
The resumption of activities, under full gauge from February 28 in theaters and cinemas, seems almost unreal, but relieves after the concerts of gnashing of teeth heard everywhere. We put our noses outside, half numb, while the Quebec government’s recovery schedule sheds light on avenues for the future almost everywhere. Even major festivals can plan summer programming, since from March 14 outdoor events will no longer limit their number of spectators.
Land on the horizon! Start the engines again and turn on the headlights. Put your horns on mute, truckers! There will be more to see soon! Circulate! The most optimistic will no doubt hang new rainbows in the windows. Though…
No one had predicted the Omicron tsunami. So, his shortness of breath may lead to the lifting of barriers, doubts remain in the noggins of walkers. The cultural community lives like everyone else in the perspective of new viral mutations that have arisen without announcing themselves. And if the sky were to fall on his head…
He wants to believe it, but feels his pulse. Painful was the journey of the arts during the dark months. Open, close, half-open theaters and cinemas in front of a masked, frightened or absent audience. Because several subscribers to cultural outings, confined to the home, have learned to taste their fate. Very quiet to put on a bunch of TV series, without having to zigzag between the orange cones and look for parking before the show in town. Others have kept the fear of human contact.
If the health skies really clear up in the long run, those will be hard to get back to the cause. It will take three years, maybe five, before putting the cultural community back on track, we expect. All this public to tame. This landscape to revive. This memory to resuscitate. This pep to find. The challenges of recovery promise to be greater than the sum of its parts. We hardly consider their magnitude, to be honest.
Too many Quebecers still question the essential character of art. They didn’t get enough warmth from his sun. Without it, the trials of life make one shiver. Besides, the cold reigns. We would like rich harmonies to circulate everywhere, in order to lighten everyone’s burden. Some creators seek to reassure their world by resuscitating the good old days, under the lullabies of familiar songs. Isn’t Gregory Charles working on an adaptation at the St-Denis theater of The melody of happiness, launched in 1959 on Broadway before the cult film ? A whole public will certainly gather in front of this hymn to joy in the course of tests. Just to regain hope watching all those Austrian children and their governess singing and dancing. Less cheerful proposals should snatch more.
It will not have been so noisy since the beginning of the scourge, the people of culture, above all sounded, worried for their fate and for that of the nourishing art. So many pots were broken behind the scenes. Artists faltered along the way, while others sank into depression or, worse, committed suicide in the shadows. We have seen some drop off their guitars or their starry tunics to become innkeepers, computer specialists or sellers of second-hand motorcycles, leaving empty holes to be filled. Stillborn shows have disappeared into inaccessible limbo or have been sent back indefinitely. The losses are not measured only in figures, nor even in the demobilization of troops, but in cut inspiration, in precious blocked exchanges.
Running to the cinema, the theatre, the concert or the show of your liking could become a collective bet for a return to civilization. Let’s dream, my brothers. If we got down to it, sang Ferland. In the hope that the artists are not the only ones to sow the flowers of the path, but that there are also people to pick them.