By the author, director and actress Pénélope Deraîche-Dallaire’s own admission, stories of emancipation and the quest for identity are not original. One would be tempted to answer that those inspired by the figure of the mushroom are, on the other hand, rarer. This is what the play proposes Dear diary; a mutationa show that opens the first season of Espace Libre entirely designed by Félix-Antoine Boutin, artistic director of the theater since 2023.
Why the mushroom? “Because I like its ability to emerge from death and decomposition. I work from dialectical images and I find that the mushroom carries several contrasting symbols. It is associated with life and death, it is toxic and super rich from a nutritional point of view, it is neither animal nor vegetable, it is a separate being. Its shape also amuses me; it can be related to phallic shapes or to female genital shapes,” explains Pénélope Deraîche-Dallaire.
For the creator, who has been interested in this subject since her research-creation studies at the École supérieure de théâtre de l’UQAM, where she submitted a master’s thesis in 2020, the mushroom is also associated with the quest for identity. “It allows me to think about ways to be reborn, to recompose, to compost. The mushroom therefore becomes an ideal of mutation and emancipation, thanks in part to its capacity for resistance. Spores can survive dormant for a long time and resurface. I find that all these elements together are bearers of hope.”
Embracing Contradictions
Dear Diary; A Mutation brings the spectators into contact with three women, each in her own space in the middle of a strange forest conducive to the awakening of the unconscious: the one who “creates the material universe”, the one who “activates the universe and sets it in motion” and, at the center, the one who “writes and invents herself” by means of her diary. Even if the text takes up more space than in its previous creation (Case(s), in 2016, more on the side of the tableau vivant and performativity), Pénélope Deraîche-Dallaire continues to work on a stage form that opens layers of meaning through the text. “It is in the language of the stage that I work on my contradictory symbols. I am in accumulation of meaning, I create chaos. I like polysemic images, the deployment of meaning, and I dare to hope that these three bodies on stage that act in different ways will be able to come together and pull the strings to allow the meaning to unfold.”
The text also opens the door to the unconscious, through this woman who learns to listen to herself and observe herself in order to understand her own contradictory desires. By addressing themes such as motherhood, traditional roles, hunting (animal and romantic) or eroticism, the author questions her own relationship to the world. As she explains, “the text was long full of crossings out that I left displayed on the page to highlight the character’s internal contradictions. On stage, we can feel touches of humor or irony that allow us to guess the self-criticism that, for me, comes through this gesture of visible crossing out. We are both in autofiction and in something very fantasized.”
For someone who worked, in her master’s thesis, on the desire to “desecrate the theatrical device from a feminist perspective”, this gesture of self-affirmation was not always easy. “During my master’s degree, I was looking for how to live according to my values. Is it possible to resist without losing your skin? For me, fear is an obstacle to possible emancipation and I was afraid to fully display myself or make feminist statements on stage.” If fear has not disappeared, it now serves as a catalyst for creation, particularly in the work on the duality of things or situations, which can be both attractive and repulsive… Like the mushroom.
Diving into fear
As she embodies the woman who invents herself, Pénélope Deraîche-Dallaire called upon Catherine Cédilot and Catherine Beauchemin to accompany her on stage. For her, the creative process is contaminated throughout the creative process. “The scenic material is important and I let myself be influenced by the suggestions of the actresses, but also of the designers. I need us to create a dialogue between our imaginations to nourish the overall proposal that I created at the start,” she explains.
The result is a teeming universe that offers a dive into fantasies and the unconscious while also trying to play with the theatrical form. “Before the show, the audience will be invited to enter this forest and visit it like an installation. Through all of this, we work to make a show that operates a form of synesthesia, we get closer to something spiritual. It may be utopian, I know, but we must first dream of utopia for it to exist.”