When we think of theatrical productions where dreams reign, one name comes to mind: Hugo Bélanger. He lent his imagination and his penchant for the marvelous to the staging of his own adaptations of several classic texts intended for the general public (Around the world in 80 days, Münchausen, machinery of the imagination) than to young people (Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland).
However, in May he will be offering not one, but two original pieces from his pen. As well Alice from the other sideat the Maison Théâtre, that The dreamer in his bath, at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, will bear its phantasmagorical seal. “I don’t do tables and chairs theatre,” he says. I want to make people take off from reality. At the moment, we are very into autofiction, into documentary theatre, which I really like, but realism [en tant qu’artiste] doesn’t interest me at all. »
It would be in vain to look for some trace of realism in The dreamer in his bath. An artist (played by Normand D’Amour, joined by, among others, Cynthia Wu-Maheux and Sébastien René), lurking in his bathtub for 20 years, to the chagrin of his son, awaits the return of his muse and therefore of inspiration. In doing so, he evokes the great creators who preceded him.
There will thus succeed one another on stage, in particular, the cartoonist before the letter Winsor McCay, the pioneer of cinema Georges Méliès, the magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, but also women whom the history of art has disdained, such as the dadaist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographer Hannah Höch. It goes without saying that their respective disciplines will visually take shape on stage.
Since, in the theater of Hugo Bélanger, the explicable and the prestidigitation, the true and the whimsical, constantly rub shoulders, we will not be surprised to learn that the situation of his hero is inspired by a real slump, that of the cartoonist Fred, to whom we owe the series Philemon “His latest story is that of a legged locomotive that runs on imaginative steam, but which, for lack of raw material, can no longer move forward. This idea contaminated the author, who for 25 years was unable to finish his comic strip. When he finally completed it, it was published, and a month later he died. »
The mysteries of inspiration, the muses, the gears of creation are common themes in Dreamer in his bath and to Alice on the other side. This latest creation turns out, rather than an adaptation of the Alice through the looking glass by Lewis Carroll, a wacky exploration of the world of theatre, of its trades — from the prompter to the props man — because the young girl, crossing her mirror, finds herself in the middle of a show. The director of the company Tout à Trac approaches this universe all the same “a little in the spirit of Carroll”. Biscornu is therefore there, as is satire, since everyone is mocked, from the critics to the director, presented as a despot “dressed as an Italian fascist, cinema style, à la Cecil B. DeMille” .
Scholarly popular theater
Cultural references abound in Bélanger’s works. Whether Alice from the other side is punctuated by a sung monologue bringing together the most famous phrases in the history of theatre, The dreamer in his bath is built from characters of more or less unknown creators. How can this erudition be combined with the desire of the artist and his company to offer a “popular” theatre? Isn’t there an antinomy here? Not according to the principal concerned. “I hate being told I’m an idiot,” he says. I like to feel smart and I try to do theater where people will feel smart. I like to make shows unifiers, where the regular theater tripe (he sees a lot of referents), but the neophyte too. Like Pixar’s early films or The Simpsons, which combine several levels of reading. »
It is perhaps because he believes so viscerally in the importance of art for everyone that Bélanger has made the artist forgotten — or who fears being so — one of the secondary figures ofAlice and one of the main themes of Dreamer. “McCay is the father of comics and cartoons; he ruined himself for that and fell into oblivion. Méliès is better known, but he nevertheless ended his life in the back of a toy store, in a train station. »
The director himself does not feel sheltered from this gloomy prospect: “It is sure that it is there, this fear of being forgotten. We create something, we try to make a mark, but I make living art… So it dies. Since 2018, I haven’t had a shows theater in Montreal (even though I directed shows by Luc Langevin and André Sauvé) and, especially for young actors, it’s as if I had disappeared. It goes quickly ! »
Before the pandemic, Hugo Bélanger was indeed in China, where he created the permanent Cirque du Soleil show X: The Land of Fantasy. However, the one for whom “creating is dreaming standing up”, and who believes that Descartes’ aphorism should be revised to become “I dream, therefore I am”, is not nostalgic for the huge budgets made available to him by the giant of the circus world. “I said to my company: ‘The day when we will have the means for our ambitions, it will be dangerous'”, because he is firmly convinced that the first idea is rarely the best and that a road strewn with obstacles more surely leads to the fabulous. “I want us to look, and above all to make mistakes. The most beautiful ideas are born from a constraint, an error, an accident. » Fruitful pitfalls that allow us to follow in the footsteps of Méliès and other geniuses of innovation.