According to the two creators, the attraction that brings us to another is as mysterious in the sphere of friendship as in love. The impression of already knowing this person, they experienced it at the age of 10. “Alexia, I think this is one of the first meetings in my life, if not the first, where I felt completely accepted for who I was, says Fanny Britt. Even with our parents, it’s complicated! They project things onto us. And in love, there are expectations of what the other will fulfill in us. But in a good friendship, we are free. We are in a family-type acceptance, but at the same time we are free from obligation. This is what makes friendship unique. »
All things, created at the Théâtre de Quat’Sous — where the future creators fell in love with contemporary theater from the fourth secondary — marks the first staging by Alexia Bürger of a text by Fanny Britt on a professional stage. But the duo, who met at FACE school and followed each other from elementary school to CEGEP, had their first theatrical adventures together. In interviews, where their complicity is obvious, they call them back, from their student productions to a joint show, Showdown (2006), after their training.
The creator of Hardings and the author of Stormwind then dug their respective paths, with the success that we know. But an informal collaboration continued. “We talked a lot about our projects, notes Fanny Britt. It’s as if we were the secret adviser of the productions [l’une de l’autre]. And we ask our opinion before accepting a project. »
In 2015, they united to develop a television project, which never saw the light of day. A nevertheless “very rich” exercise, which confirmed that their complicity also operated in the work.
The idea of All things sprouted as they co-created the epic Lysis for the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, a big production marked by hazards – and which unfortunately has not yet been able to be born on stage due to the pandemic. “We were working in very enriching beacons, but I think that at one point, and especially with the multiple stops, we wanted to go towards something more intimate, says Fanny Britt. As if we needed to find ourselves in the smallest bubble possible. »
A desire to dive back into childhood memories. And what emerged first was Stand-by-Me, the beloved film from their childhood, whose lines they know by heart. The author has reviewed this adaptation of a short story by Stephen King where four 12-year-old boys go in search of a corpse, a story evoking the strong friendships of this age and a forced transition to adulthood. She realized how much the film is about mourning, loss. And Stand-by-Me thus strangely foreshadows what they themselves would have to face later: the brutal death of a brother.
Fanny Britt lost hers — which was the first boyfriend by Alexia Bürger — in 1997. Her friend experienced a similar mourning twelve years later. During a working session around the unfinished text, the director made unpublished remarks on “the reflection of the two bereavements”, which struck the author. She reports it, addressing her accomplice: “You said: ‘the fact that we were so close and that we experienced this mourning in 1997, in a certain way, when it happened in 2009 is as if it had already happened. As if I already had the road map of mourning”. »
“Relationships of friendship that last over time become a sharing of common burdens and experiences,” explains Alexia Bürger. I would finish, I who have [mauvaise] memory, by almost no longer knowing what happened to you and what happened to me, it accumulates so much. We create a third story that is made up of both. »
In the play, this mourning is evoked, but not explicitly. “I think we want the public to feel it, more than to understand it, says its author. But we give clues. And this certain vagueness also allows the viewer to project another type of drama. “For us, the meaning of the test is this: that it could be of use to someone else. Because it doesn’t make sense, these great ordeals. It’s not true that they exist for a reason. »
playfulness
For All things, Fanny Britt took on the pen alone, but in a “constant dialogue” with the director. A complicity which allowed him a freedom of writing. “Because it’s her, I allowed myself a lot more experimentation. “We see two alter ego artists, Rousse and Brune, revisit their relationship and question the nature of friendship. “We are not at all in the autobiography, specifies Alexia Bürger. Their bond resembles us. But we go into the darkness of Brune and into Rousse’s anxiety in a theatrical way. “. The latter prepares to mourn the eventual loss of her friend, reflecting on what this loss means. “Does that mean losing part of your own history? They pretend to tame this idea. »
Everything goes through the game in the play: Rousse and Brune redo scenes from their cult film, and embody a series of successive duets, according to the principle of Russian dolls. A tandem camped by “two extraordinary actresses”, Kathleen Fortin and Sophie Cadieux. “And it’s interesting because there is such a bond between Sophie and Kathleen that it shines through,” adds Alexia Bürger. A layer which is added to the others in the representation: the characters of the play, those of Stand-by-Me and the figures of the creators. The interpreters would even have “developed a two-headed thought, too. A contagious symbiosis, in short.