In nearly twenty years, Ève Pressault has carved out a unique place for herself in the world of theater and dance. His great understanding of the text and his incomparable physicality have earned him collaborations with Dave St-Pierre, Christian Lapointe, Alice Ronfard and Brigitte Haentjens, among others. Recently, she shone in The breach at Espace Go and in Attacks on his life at Usine C. In April, at the Quat’Sous, it will be Wollstonecraftthe new play by Sarah Berthiaume.
If we meet her on this sunny November morning, one-on-one in the foyer of the Center du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, it is because the actress is preparing to reconnect, for three evenings only, with The virus and the prey, a show created for the Festival TransAmériques and the Carrefour international de théâtre de Québec last summer. About Pierre Lefebvre’s text, Pressault is full of praise: “It’s a harsh monologue that arouses many reactions, because it awakens many buried emotions, because it crystallizes our feeling of powerlessness. If you are on the left in the slightest, if you want to find a common space in your society, if you question the system, this show is for you. »
I write you a letter
Someone who has little speaks to someone who has a lot — a prime minister, a CEO, a funder, a producer or even an artistic director — in order to name the violence of which he is the victim and the witness. “I am not writing you a letter, sir, I am confessing to you that I am powerless. » It is about the established order and inequality, about the domination and control of humans, animals and the environment, but also about work, health and education, money and privileges.
“In full democracy […], it’s still amazing not to be able to find a single place where it would be possible for us to meet, sir, to recognize each other, then to exchange like people, I mean like two participating beings, cahin-caha, to the same impossible, untenable task, that of living. This impossible encounter between power and those who suffer from it, this economic and class violence, often paternalistic, is also what Édouard Louis describes in Who killed my father?a monologue that can be heard right now at the Quat’Sous.
The joys of quarantine
Percussive, incisive, the text by Pierre Lefebvre, published by Écosociété, was entrusted by the director Benoît Vermeulen to four bodies, four voices. Ève Pressault thus shares the stage with Tania Kontoyanni, Alexis Martin and Madani Tall (who replaces Étienne Lou), performers of various ages, genres and cultural backgrounds. “To deliver this thought to four, in a choral way, it is full of meaning, considers the actress. Because this is not just one person frustrated with the government. It is a collective, inclusive statement, a lucid indictment, but not devoid of humor, a fair and honest word that concerns us and empowers us all. It is literary while being direct. For an actress, it’s as demanding and satisfying as playing Heiner Müller. »
Find the lightness
But how to bring such a rant to the stage, how to avoid the presentation or the conference, how to offer counterpoints to the speech, but without moving away from the subject, without parasitizing it? “As far as the body is concerned, explains Pressault, we allowed ourselves to go into slightly more poetic spaces. With Line Nault, movement advisor, we have cultivated a playfulness, a lightness, a humor which also comes from the music of Guido Del Fabbro and which creates breaks in the density of the text, breaks in tone which allow the whole to breathe. It’s not a spectacular show, it’s done with a certain simplicity, a sobriety that puts the word forward. The richness of the proposal is in the intelligence of the text, in the precise way in which Pierre distills the ideas. »
The prey of the title, of course, is that which is subject to the domination of the predator. As for the virus, which incidentally has nothing to do with COVID-19, it is the one that the prey plans to become, so as to be contracted by its torturer. “Perhaps it would be possible for me at that time to create a focus, of infection, in order to cause you, sir, as usual, once again, to catch me, but this time not like prey. Like a virus. It is perhaps through that end, in the background, that I could reach you. By becoming insignificant, perhaps it would be possible for me to happen to you, as accidents, sickness, death happen. »
For Ève Pressault, being a creator means being a virus: “In any case, that’s the way I see the role of the artist. In my eyes, Pierre Lefebvre is a virus, a useful, necessary virus, which, like the flapping of a butterfly’s wing, helps to challenge the established order. »