Rwatch the backstage spread takes up a few pages and yet its reading requires taking a few breaks. Time to absorb every shock we receive during this tale of a toxic relationship. A story for which Christine Gosselin (life larvae, 2021) drew on her own experience and that of other women. A story that could be yours. Or that of a relative.
“I knew there were going to be women who would recognize themselves and I thought for a long time about doing a trauma warning, but I’m not a fan of that,” explains the author I met at Duty. I love my relationship with booksellers and I told myself that a bookseller who knows his inventory well would be able to present it well. At the end of the book, I absolutely wanted there to be a resource, SOS violence conjugale. This organization not only supports the victims, it also supports those around them. Society is becoming increasingly violent, so it’s everyone’s business. »
Monologue divided into five acts, Watch the backstage spread tells the story of two young actors, Esther, who left Quebec to settle in Montreal, and her future executioner, treated like a king by her mother, an Anglophone who refuses to learn French. Together they will perform in Hamlet ; she will be Ophelia, the tragic lover, and he, Claudius, the murderous king. Obsessed with the talent, the charisma and the beauty of her partner on stage and in the city, Esther will neither want to hear nor see the warning signs of the violent relationship in which she will remain a prisoner for a few years. “I break the fourth wall and release the truth. I do not tell our story in the imperfect: our love was enough, ”she announces at the beginning of act 1.
“Domestic violence does not happen overnight, it is super-insidious, hence the metaphor of the theater, where the story is built little by little, where we are in the making appear. I also liked the metaphor of the spectator, who sees all this happening in front of him, but who is silent. Like Esther, I studied theater in English in CEGEP; so there is a part of my story that is knitted. To knit everything else and find credibility — in the theater, you have to be credible — while keeping my literary style, I spoke to other women who have been victims of domestic violence on different levels, ”continues the one who swapped the boards for sports journalism.
Thus, Esther will be dispossessed of her language, her culture, her career, her friends, her family, her dignity and her body. She will even be deprived of the money she earns to support her lover’s theater company. “The idea of financial abuse came from talking with other women. He plunges her into such loneliness that it becomes easier for her to stay with him than to leave him and start her life over. We don’t talk much about this violence. »
By uniting the voices of other women with that of Esther, Christine Gosselin had in mind a chorus of women, as in Greek tragedies, advancing on stage to tell their story and express their pain. By taking up the pen, she has therefore become their leader.
“The research process was harder than the writing because I really wanted to cry out for these women who don’t have the chance to do it, who are afraid to do it, because some have children with this person who has ruined their lives, or can no longer do so because they are dead. I was writing the book during the period when there were a lot of feminicides; it was a mourning each time. In writing, everything these women have experienced or are still experiencing came back to me. »
A piece of your own
In order to escape the blows of her executioner, to cry to her heart’s content and to heal her wounds, Esther’s only refuge will be the bathroom, which is often the only room in the house that is locked from the inside. , as Christine Gosselin reminds us in Watch the backstage spread.
“In the theater metaphor, I saw the bathroom as the backstage where you’re all alone in front of the mirror, where you can remove your make-up, be yourself, wonder what’s going on on stage. In the idea of the backstage of the theater, there is that of the backstage of blood, of tears, of make-up in the bathroom, of everything that is secret and kept behind the scenes. It’s really the theatrical form that pushed me through and allowed me to take breaks. I also wanted an intermission to show that there had already been love between these two people. »
While he had promised him in the first act to be his Romeo, while defending the ignoble gestures of Claudius, the executioner will play Macbeth, Stanley Kowalski and Richard III. Under the pretext of remaining in his role, he will adopt the behavior of these torturers at home. While she dreamed of being Velma Kelly, a role that he forbade her to interpret by calling her “ slut » (bitch) and « whore (whore), Esther will reluctantly play Lady Macbeth, Stella, Blanche Dubois and Lady Anne in everyday life.
“Each play is linked to what the character tries to say, each act is linked to a form of violence, to the evolution of violence. The characters I chose give different textures and facets to the executioner. Regardless of the role, the name she bears, Esther remains a victim. When Tennessee Williams wrote A streetcar named desire, he saw all the women who were beaten in New Orleans. Homosexual, he was unable to say anything because he risked being beaten by these men. He wrote about it because we didn’t talk about it enough and now, in 2023, I’m doing the same thing because I think we don’t talk about it enough. »
Despite all the horror she describes in Watch behind the scenes spread, Christine Gosselin offers victims of domestic violence a balm to the heart, a form of hope, a soothing accomplice voice. Whether life larvaewhere she spoke about herself using the metaphor of insects (the ants of anxiety; the bedbugs of self-harm; the worms of eating disorders and the praying mantis of infertility), was a self-fiction, she refuses to attach the label of fiction or novel to Watch the backstage spread.
“I say ‘the book’ because they are true stories; it’s the story of several women and one of them is me. After reading the book, there may be women who will congratulate themselves on leaving and who will understand how far it could have gone. Part of me hopes that the victims I’ve spoken to will recover after reading the book; they didn’t write it, but they are very present in it. If I can do it with just one of these women, my God, I’m going to be happy! That said, I don’t want to be the spokesperson for domestic violence, there are people much better equipped than me for that. »
Need help? If you are a victim of domestic violence, you can call the SOS violence conjugale hotline at 1 800 363-9010.