Transition and continuity mark this year Never Lu Quebec. Continuity, when this 11e edition of the festival takes up all the elements of its usual formula; Marianne Marceau, who has held the artistic direction since 2015, however hands over the reins to author and actress Marie-Ève Lussier-Gariépy.
For this present edition, which will be done in a common direction, the two women have chosen the theme Revolution tenderness. The festival, after more than two years of a pandemic which cut short all collective momentum, thus wishes to announce a return of the movement.
The various texts presented as part of the Never Read thus come together in the same search for community, argues Marianne Marceau (An enemy of the people, Christine, the queen-boy), “the same common call”. The need for closeness was assumed there: in their own way, these texts all achieved “the tour de force of doing a work of kindness”, adds Marie-Ève Lussier-Gariépy (Work title(s), .ES), who will take over alone from next year the reins of this festival which aims to nourish the theatrical vitality in Quebec.
From mother to daughter
Beyond the transfer of the artistic direction, continuity will however be required. Between unpublished readings, master class and festive atmosphere, the main elements of the Never Lu festival are there for an edition which, still at Périscope, will be held this year over four days, from November 30 to December 3.
One of the festival’s traditional activities, the Particle Accelerator, will present five stories in progress. These twenty-minute extracts will allow you to hear in particular I don’t understand my mother tongue, a first text by Miryam Amrouche rooted in her experience.
Born of an Algerian father and, above all, of a Russian mother who chose not to transmit her own language to her, the graduate of the last promotion of the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Québec evokes the singularity of a girl and his mother who were able to learn French “at the same time”… in a very different context, however: one as a second language, the other as a first language.
Edited in a series of flashes, his text will seek to combine registers of expression: French as a first language, French as a second language, French Google Translate – but music and poetry as reinforcements, too. If the language shapes our identities, it sometimes also feeds the distance that can settle between two generations, while migrations multiply on the globe.
Fatherhood in mind
kilonovaone of the two texts presented in full reading this year, will also mark the return to writing of actor and author Nicola-Frank Vachon — who gave us Low (Dramaturges Éditeurs, to be published in a comic book version), premiered at Premier Acte in 2017 and later revived.
The success of this last piece, which “all the same worked well”, admits the principal interested party, moreover contributed to the time of gestation of this new project, around the duet formed by a prisoner and a dancer, style cam girl “How do you learn to live again after thirty years in prison? But also, how do we bond with someone we’ve never known… and who says they’re our daughter? »
This proposal, served here in a reading for seven actors led by Maryse Lapierre, will have drawn unconsciously from the love of a father for his children: “Just the fact of imagining that they disappear, I am incapable: a void, a hole like that… It’s not badly the engine of the text. But that, I realized afterwards. How much, when you become a parent, your heart no longer belongs to you. Your relationship to life changes…”