The inclusion of the APA Office in the Marquise du Trident constitutes a first surprise: a signature gesture, in a way, of Olivier Arteau, who this year offered his first season as artistic director. It was he who approached the Bureau, this “undisciplined DIY living arts workshop”, which has been operating for around twenty years, always sheltered from the main institutions.
“Olivier was a genius. He had a lot of audacity,” says Laurence Brunelle-Côté, artistic co-director of the APA Office. Firefighters and arsonistsan environmentalist and feminist collection by Martine Delvaux around the figure of fire, proves to be particularly in tune with the concerns of the collective, audible in its latest show: the “conference-demonstration” The show about the collapse that won’t happenlast March at the Charpente des fauves.
“The big stage belongs to everyone,” specifies Arteau, who recognizes the reckless nature of this “essay” piece, a collage without characters or story, which underlines, in the same gesture, his wish that Martine Delvaux be served by “ artists who resemble him” at the same time as the need to promote “theatrical codes which fluctuate, which destabilize us, even if it is a theater national “.
So here is a certain vision that he hopes to bring to the helm of the Trident, he who wishes to offer the public of the institution, beyond the main meal, the complete service – from starter to dessert. “For me, the APA is a major gap in the season. It’s saying: “Phew, I need to change my habits. I need to modify my palate and my taste buds to better prepare for what comes next.” »
The DIY theater
On stage, the show will stick closely to the essayist’s concerned and combative words, in a vast workshop designed around a work by the BGL collective (The source2004) that the artist Jasmin Bilodeau adapted for the stage: a bric-a-brac where young people will try to create a house made of materials that are burned.
The meeting around atypical artistic projects constituting a modus operandi of the collective, it is a bric-a-brac which brought together creators from all horizons, without support in a fiction, without a game: the friends of the APA Danya Ortman and Pascal Robitaille, an interpreter to offer a live sign language translation or even Éléonore Delvaux-Beaudoin, daughter of the author, to whom Firefighters and arsonists is addressed.
“We go to people and invite them to work with us because we like what they do; something surprises us, and it becomes like pieces of a puzzle in a DIY project,” explains Julie Cloutier Delorme, who joined the APA office around fifteen years ago, fascinated by the letting go that printed the “undisciplined” representations of the collective. “Each person will capture [les choses] in his own way, and it’s the right way. The APA office showed me this way of receiving a benefit differently. »
“The idea that there are no lies on stage has something absolutely charming,” Arteau continues. We will not be secretive: it is destabilizing to witness this in the Octave-Crémazie room at the Trident. »
This DIY side, in particular, could destabilize our habits, our codes, our reflexes. “For me, that’s definitely what excites me the most — but what scares me, too. It therefore has the potential to be a real vector of change. The taste for risk is present, thoroughly. »
Environment, feminism, fire
Firefighters and arsonists announces a spectacle, finally, whose extreme topicality we can only underline, after a summer of 2023 when, from Greece to Northern Quebec, the observation of a world in bad shape became clearer. “We felt very trendy! » jokes Julie Cloutier Delorme… before discussing more seriously our changing mentalities: the beauty, for example, of a spring which, traditionally associated with joy and renewal, will be increasingly associated with future risks from the hot season, to anxiety…
This world into which we are entering, Delvaux’s essay strives to put into words, through different female figures, UN statistics recalling a risk of 250 million environmentally displaced people in 2050, cries from the heart – the one reminding that “our house is burning”, for example, as Greta Thunberg put it.
Now, fire, if it destroys, is also what allows the great conflagration necessary for the future. In an essay intended for young people, this fire takes the form of a love to be cultivated, fuel for the struggles to come. The APA office wanted to approach the theme of the environment from the angle of fragility. “We were attracted by performance,” says Laurence Brunelle-Côté who, suffering from a neuromuscular disease, will take to the stage as usual. “By creating accidents, too, and exploring fragility. In relation to me, in relation to my disability, that’s for sure, but also in relation to fragility in general. […] A sentence from the book goes like this: “Beauty doesn’t need us.” But what will be important is that we are part of the beauty. »