When she discovered her heroine during a guided Aboriginal history tour in Montreal a dozen years ago, Émilie Monnet was shocked. “It got into me, because I had never heard of her, says the creator of Marguerite: fire. I knew there had been slavery here, but not that long, not that significantly. And especially not that most of the people enslaved then were Aboriginal. Marguerite was more or less the age that I was at that time, which challenged me. And she was catapulted into a system that was not made for her, into a society completely disconnected from her own. »
Marguerite Duplessis was the first Aboriginal person to have started a legal process in New France and the “first person enslaved to bring a lawsuit to have their freedom recognized”. However, this striking story has not been transmitted, regrets the interdisciplinary artist, in residence at Espace Go. “For me, she is as important as Jeanne Mance, or other historical figures. She’s a pioneer. If she had won her case, she would have set a precedent. And maybe that would have had an impact on the history of slavery here, that it would have been abolished earlier. »
This litigation, in 1740, opposed two versions. Marguerite argued there that she was the natural daughter of a Sieur Duplessis and a free native woman, therefore born free. Two witnesses claimed, on the contrary, to recognize in her a slave since childhood. “Historians go more towards the version of the witnesses. But me… Why couldn’t she tell the truth? Could the witnesses have been lying, or being wrong? We’ll never know. But there are signs that lead to questions. Just the fact that she managed to make allies, whereas at the time, slaves were furniture objects. They could not be subjects before the law. »
We also do not know how his fate ends. After losing her case, Marguerite was deported to the plantation of the one in which she was held captive. Émilie Monnet went to Martinique to find, in vain, her traces. A trip that changed his initial quest. “It was no longer so much to know exactly what happened to her, as to see all that she passed on to us: this fire of resistance that I have seen manifest in women, for so many generations. In indigenous struggles, it is often women who go to the front to demand justice, to be indignant. So it became more of a tribute to Marguerite and her fight. »
Marguerite: fire also discusses how to fill the gaps in history. The designer has worked with historians. But this story has holes. “And I think as artists, it’s kind of our privilege to use our imagination to offer interpretations. So I gave myself the freedom to fill in those holes. Especially in the form of questions asked in the show.
For the author, it was important to bring to the surface what is a “founding story of this territory”. Slavery is a “collective wound, so there is an urge to sit down together and see what conversations can emerge from it”. And the stage helps to touch people on an emotional level. “We don’t want to make a moralizing show. »
Daisy Triples
This vast project is embodied in a triad of mediums, which offer “different prisms” and allow the designer to give a “three-dimensional understanding of who Marguerite was and what her story means today”. Had it not been for the pandemic, Émilie Monnet would have presented a stage of her creation at the Center du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui (CDT’A) in the spring of 2021. Instead, she had the idea of composing a sound journey in the Old Montreal, Marguerite: the stone. A way to “reactivate the memory” of the places where Marguerite lived, rue Saint-Paul.
“It is also a poetic reflection on the stones which, in our indigenous cultures, carry the memory of times. There will also be a series of “performance-conferences” at CDT’A, Emilie holds a salon. A podcast series, Marguerite: the crossingfor its part, documents the quest of the designer, through several interviews offering a “broader” reflection on the subject.
For the stage version, Émilie Monnet wanted to tend more towards a poetic text, using in particular the transcription of the trial in Old French as musical material. The author carries this polyphonic score with Marie-Madeleine Sarr and Aïcha Bastien N’Diaye. “It’s like a great monologue, but with three voices. I wanted to create a choral Marguerite, which comes in several women, several faces. And with indigenous and Afro-descendant origins.
Especially since Marguerite Duplessis was the neighbor of Marie-Josèphe-Angélique, this black slave known because she was the “scapegoat” for the fire in Montreal, for which she was hanged in 1734. Émilie Monnet sees several parallels between these two women, who rubbed shoulders. “It came mainly from the desire to make connections between slavery and colonization, between the stories of black and indigenous women that we do not hear often enough, in my opinion. These relationships existed in history. »
The text also begins with an evocation of the violence that these women still suffer. “There are a lot of Marguerites today. And I wanted to create this dialogue between contemporary Daisies, whether it’s a domestic slave from Africa or a woman put on cargo ships between Thunder Bay and Duluth — one of the main routes sexual slavery, trafficking in women. »
Immersive experience
In Marguerite: fire, each element also contributes to the story: the text, the body, the sound, the light, the music by Laura Ortman, the video by Caroline Monnet. “It’s important that each element becomes a protagonist and not just a background, notes stage comedian Angélique Willkie, who joins the conversation halfway through. But their role changes during the show. And for me, the play is about a lot of things, but mostly about loss. So, this void must resonate. Leaving this space available brings a [charge] additional to picture and sound. According to the playwright and dance artist, Daisyoffers “a story to understand, of course, but above all something to feel, to experience. »
Émilie Monnet explains this desire to “create full silences” in the performance and the importance of elements other than the text by the need to express what, in these tragic stories, goes “often beyond the words. We carry this charge in the body and I think that sometimes there are no more words”.
The creators want to create a collective, immersive experience. Through an intimate scenic configuration, Angélique Willkie aims to include the spectators in this story. “We go through the accusation, the mourning, the humor, the loss, the History. And it’s a way of saying: it’s all of our history. It’s where we live, so it affects us all. An injustice that continues to take place. “For me, that’s the reason to look at Marguerite’s story: to realize that it’s been going on for centuries. And we are still there. »