For Gabrielle Chapdelaine, the banality of everyday life is anything but ordinary. The playwright is fascinated by the way human beings inhabit their days. “And I think everyone is very weird. If we had the chance to be invisible and spend a day with anyone, hidden, we would see things that we do not expect, even in the person who seems the most normal to us. It’s these little everyday oddities that interest me. As well as all the routines that we impose on ourselves. »
This is what the young author explores in A day, one of his graduating plays in the writing program of the National Theater School, which won the Gratien-Gélinas 2018 prize, a renowned award reserved for emerging playwrights. Created in July in Carleton-sur-Mer, in Gaspésie, by a “tremendous” team, the co-production of Théâtre À tour de role and the company Tableau noir will be shown at Quat’Sous with the same cast. And no, it’s not summer theatre, although the play is “still funny”.
Originally, a very… banal conversation heard in the metro, where two “very different” friends were discussing what they had swallowed at lunch, led to the writing of the text. Gabrielle Chapdelaine has, so to speak, recognized herself in these girls and their choices. “I find that we are constantly changing: sometimes we get up and we are not the same person as the day before. We seem to have a lot of personalities in ourselves. »
And why do we decide one morning to eat oatmeal, and another, a slice of bread? “Finally, it somewhat raises the existential question of what acts in us, what makes us make the choices we make every day? The show unfolds a day in the lives of Nico (Nathalie Claude), Harris (André-Luc Tessier), optimist Alfonso (Renaud Lacelle-Bourdon) and depressed Debs (Rose-Anne Déry).
Four characters with “very different attitudes, but who all hide a malaise, a loneliness, ways of dodging life [quotidienne] », sums up the author. Delighted with the cast that gives birth to her play directed by Olivia Palacci, she can’t wait to see how the performers have “appropriated” her work during the Gaspé performances.
I find that we are constantly changing: sometimes we get up and we are not the same person as the day before. We seem to have a lot of personalities in ourselves.
These form a quartet which could be the four aspects of the same person. We can read it differently, but this is how Gabrielle Chapdelaine conceived her text, as a line that she had imposed on herself “to build a story and have characters balanced between them”.
Figures trapped in their routine and whose actions are often described by another character, the play relying heavily on narration.
Which raises the question: is it the character himself who decides to make such a gesture, or does he have it imposed on him by the narrator? It is up to the viewer to interpret it. “And there is a kind of hierarchy between the four, which, at certain times, becomes more dynamic, which changes”, confides the playwright.
The movies of our life
This piece with a “slightly quirky and ironic” tone is also sprinkled with cinematographic references, films to which the characters allude, but without ever remembering their title.
“I like that one of the ways of interpreting their life is with fictions and how they fit into their own story, explains Gabrielle Chapdelaine. Sometimes it’s just a mention or a wink; at other times it is deeper. I liked it a lot in what it says about the importance of fiction in everyday life. »
The author also enjoys the “little games for the spectators” that she develops. And if the films are named in a footnote in the published text (at Leméac), the public in theaters often only has — depending on the choices of the production — only the description, as brief as possible, of what the characters to guess them. “So it’s interesting, it becomes a little guessing game. »
The playwright was inspired by an entertainment that she herself played with her friends. “And also, since it’s my first long enough piece, it was a way of bringing allies with me. Most of them are films that I saw when I was young, and which did a lot for my cultural education, in a way. »
In A day, the characters will all try to break their routine, to escape from their daily lives, each in their own way. But aren’t our lives made up of these ordinary little moments? “I think that if we spend our lives waiting for great moments, it’s a long, long time,” replies the author. I have often come across this. I feel like when I feel like I should be happy, I’m never happy enough—at parties or parties. We create expectations. I also think that that’s not bad, life: we always have the impression that happiness is at the end of the corridor, that you’ll open the door and there, you’ll be fine. But maybe happiness, you have to find it a little in the corridor…”
And even if the profession of author is “really not glamour “says Gabrielle Chapdelaine laughing, the playwright remains surprised by her unexpected career. This native of Sorel first did theater in high school, then it was while studying literature at the University of Montreal that she began to take up the pen. But the notes collected during creation were not good enough to encourage it. “It seems that I had associated the right to write with doing well in school. I said to myself: maybe what I have to say is not so relevant, basically. »
And when the theater where she worked at the time offered her a permanent job as a full-time receptionist, for her, her professional future was settled: she would be a receptionist. Especially since, like this establishment presenting mainly repertoire, Gabrielle Chapdelaine had little contact with contemporary writing.
“I had trouble finding pieces in which I recognized myself. Then I read Ta Yeule Kathleen by Sebastian David. And that made me: “Oh my God, it could be that too, the theater”. The text stimulated my mind, at a time when I had decided to try my hand at the National School. So I wrote a play while I was still a receptionist. And I was accepted, to my surprise. »
Through theatre, Gabrielle Chapdelaine likes being able to talk to people “directly, without talking to them myself — I’m a bit shy. And writing is like creating problems. I like finding solutions to problems. I realize that I really like the process”. The author traces her path: last year she did a two-month residency at the Never Lu Paris, where she presented a new work for reading, The warehouse. And the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier will stage its adaptation of a play by Balzac next winter, The maker.