Émilie Perreault admits it: her next three weeks will be “a little crazy”. The cultural journalist, author and director saw two big firsts. As she prepares to start hosting the new cultural daily at Ici Première, she goes on stage to deliver a theatrical text of her own. It was the Fous de theater festival at L’Assomption — of which she is the co-spokesperson, with Simon Boulerice — that suggested she write for the stage based on her essay Essential service. And when the offer to fill the fire radio slot The more the merrier, the more we read arrived at the end of May, she was “so happy” with her text and wanted to wear it so badly that she couldn’t bring herself to cancel the performances. But this first stage of creation takes the form of a reading.
In The consented suspension of disbelief, Émilie Perreault starts from this pact on which fiction is based. “It’s a social convention, we accept to believe what is told to us. But why are we going to sit in a room to be told something that is not true? And we need it. It is this question that interests me. I find it beautiful that so many people decide to go to the same place to receive an artist’s word. So I want to think about the role of the spectator, to pay homage to him. Hence the funny sentence: I go on stage to say how much I don’t want to be on stage. I can’t see myself saying anything other than that show. I will not become an actress. But this word, I really want to go and test it. »
The one who describes herself as a professional spectator hopes that those who see her solo will wonder why they are in the theater. “And it’s a metaphysical reflection because I play a little with the codes of the show. A text on the meaning of the theatrical experience itself, therefore. “I haven’t seen a show like this,” notes this great jack-of-all-trades, whose acts of creation often arise from the observation of a lack. ” I wrote Essential service because I couldn’t find that book. Otherwise, sincerely, I prefer to consume! (laughs) I’d rather go see someone who talks to me about it. But maybe that’s what I have to say. »
Animated at the start of a big “syndrome of the impostor”, since she had never written theatre, the author contacted a playwright whom she likes very much, Jean-Philippe Lehoux, who validated her ideas. His support was decisive. “I was lucky to have him as a guide, and what he did was give me confidence. »
Highlights
Based on the two books she has published, her solo is like a theatrical essay. “I go on stage to deepen a thought. And I pass through my memory as a spectator, revisiting shows which were significant. I also graft stories from other people I have met over the course of my career, among other things for the essay do useful work. »
In high school, Émilie Perreault was enrolled in the theater option, “but it was very clear from the start that what I liked was watching other people”. And for the new host of There will always be culture — a title inspired by Dany Laferrière’s quote after the earthquake in Haiti: “when everything falls, culture remains” — art is health. “The theater is a place where I go to take care of myself. I want people to see it a bit like that. Because culture is often the thing we do at the end of the week if we have time left. It is not seen as essential. While we should make appointments. And me, I think that I am the sum of what I saw, of what I read. Each of these works shapes the person I am. »
And it is in the collective experience of the theater that the spectator experiences her greatest “epiphanies”. If nothing is worse, she admits, than flat theater, conversely, when it works, there is nothing comparable. “There is an energy, a power that passes through the theater. »
His solo also addresses, of course, those moments when “the consented suspension of disbelief does not operate. It does not matter not to embark on a show. But it’s interesting to ask yourself: what is it that sometimes we don’t adhere? It may be that a work does not meet us. But it also depends on the disposition with which one arrives in the room. »
And thinking back the next day to certain shows that we think we didn’t like, we can realize that it’s because they bothered us. “It’s good to be confronted sometimes,” she says, quoting To succeed a chicken of Fabien Cloutier, whose end had struck her. We could “take the opportunity to ask ourselves why does it put us off? These moments are very instructive.
Émilie Perreault dives with “tremendous humility” into this first stage adventure. “It may be that after the three performances, I realize that I really prefer to be a spectator and that I have no fun on the scene. And it will end there. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. But I really wish [le spectacle] live beyond that. I allow myself the chance to explore it. »