What is good? Are human beings naturally benevolent, and is it always good to want to do what is right, at any cost? In an age where our rectitude on various subjects is publicly scrutinized, in a society quick to point the finger at individuals for language or behavior deemed wrong, the play Doing good examines these philosophical questions, not without humor.
One year later The shadowthis is the second edition at the Théâtre du Rideau vert of the annual project co-produced with the Théâtre français du Centre national des arts (CNA), which allows beginning performers to take part in a professional production. Chosen to oversee this new creation, director Claude Poissant entrusted the writing to François Archambault and Gabrielle Chapdelaine.
“Claude wanted to give the young actors somewhat rough roles, roles that weren’t virtuous,” explains the author. “He wanted it to grate.” And for the writing to deviate from the consensus, therefore. But in order not to fall into provocation for the sake of provocation, the duo of playwrights needed a guiding principle, a “kind of paradox” to explore. “And we said to ourselves: people who defend causes, they think they’re doing the right thing. We all think we’re doing [ce qu’il faut faire] ! So we looked at: at what moments do we defend a good idea, but in the wrong way, and that it ultimately has the opposite effect? It was about finding angles in patterns like that.
A succession of a dozen scenes in different tones, Doing good — which will be published by Leméac at the end of August — paints a “slightly offbeat” and sometimes distorting portrait of the contemporary world and the ethical issues we face, particularly in personal relationships. A man tests the consent of a woman he wants to kiss by announcing his actions in advance in the smallest details. During a work meeting, a group tries “impeccable speech,” exchanges that eliminate all negative vocabulary. A good Samaritan who helps a beggar turns out to be mainly concerned about her image.
Playwrights often push situations to the point of absurdity. From the human resources manager refusing to fire underperforming employees to the actor concerned about pay equity, well-intentioned characters experience unexpected consequences. As a popular adage goes, the best is the enemy of the good… Some paintings even fall into the genre of anticipation. As if, driven by utopian intentions of collective progress, we could instead slip into a dystopia.
This comedy depicts a world where social relationships have become complex. Gabrielle Chapdelaine agrees: “Currently, I police myself when I speak. Besides, it’s not because I pay attention to what I say that I censor myself, either. But yes, it’s complex. And it’s okay that it is. The idea of a simple world is a nostalgia for what didn’t really exist! The people right now who are really demanding the simplicity of life are the trad wives. » These traditional wives who advocate a return to the home. “If this is simplicity, I think I prefer the complex world…”
The fact remains that before, “everyone played in the same book. Now, there are several plays at the same time in which we participate as best we can,” she illustrates with a laugh. Hence our difficulty in juggling with these social rules to follow to mark out living together.
The author adds that the pandemic influenced the show’s themes. “After the pandemic, I didn’t know how to be with people anymore. I was afraid to go out, to see people. And at the same time, I’m a fan of small talk at the grocery store. I love it. There, there are self-checkouts, we forget about that. And those contacts with people, it seems like we don’t know how to have them anymore. We’ve lost them. So it was also about the anxiety of returning to community life and wondering what it means to be together.
Twinning
To write Doing goodGabrielle Chapdelaine therefore teamed up with François Archambault, who had been her dialogue teacher at the National Theatre School. Initially, the young author, who had already proven herself with the plays One daycrowned by the 2018 Gratien-Gélinas prize and then created at the Quat’Sous, and The makeran adaptation of Balzac staged at the Denise-Pelletier theater, wondered whether disagreements would arise with the experienced author of You will remember me. Not at all. “At no point did we experience a generational shock – which wouldn’t have been bad either. But we understood each other really well right away. At the beginning, we wanted to write together. In the end, we each wrote on our own, but every week, we met, there was a real exchange.”
She has nothing but good things to say about her “super” colleague: “His listening skills, the person he is, his calm, his kind of confidence in things and, at the same time, the doubt that is always there. He really calmed me down.”
This pairing with an artist from another generation also takes place within the cast of the show: the eight graduates of various theatre schools (Xavier Bergeron, Anaelle Boily-Talbot, Mehdi Boumalki, Simon Champagne, Christophe Levac, Elizabeth Mageren, Charlotte Richer and Léa Roy) benefit from the expertise of the excellent Eve Landry at their side.
And the actors participated in the discussion about the play. In particular, during a two-day residency at the NAC in Ottawa, which helped create a group spirit and sparked “great conversations” around the first version of the text. And while Chapdelaine felt that one scene “went a little too far,” the young performers, on the contrary, pushed the authors to be even more daring. “I think they saw that we were being cautious, and it was to encourage us, out of solidarity. As an author, you would say that you don’t want to be the person who has one line too many. Coming into a group with a text is always stressful: you hope that you won’t be misinterpreted.”
By “taking the situations so far”, thanks to the distorting mirror that the play provides, the playwright hopes to transmit to the spectators a certain liberation from guilt. “Maybe we can [cesser de s’en faire] about: am I doing the right thing, am I looking the right way? Giving yourself a break from the control you impose on yourself.
And for Gabrielle Chapdelaine, whose works are imbued with humor (“it’s in my personality”), the goal of entertaining the public remains very important. As co-creator, she also feels freer to say that Doing good is “really funny. Whereas if it were just me the author, I would have a hard time saying that, out of modesty! [rires] “.
In her next project, the author nevertheless retains her natural penchant for humor. She is currently developing a first feature film, a historical drama inspired by a workers’ conflict involving Montreal seamstresses in 1937. An event, called the Midinettes’ Strike, which, for its part, led to undeniable progress for the working conditions of women.