A colleague tells me about the time she took her son to see I like Hydro, she felt that the modernity of the subject, the concerns highlighted in the play and the extraordinary performance of Christine Beaulieu would arouse her interest. But at the intermission, the teenager said he was bored … then slipped his headphones into his ears to better endure the rest.
I go one better by detailing the impossible contortions of my daughter on her chair the time when, as she liked to sing, I had thought it appropriate to buy two tickets for us for a Claude Dubois show. By the fifth song, she was kneeling on the ground, her back to the stage, her head on the bench, displaying a grimace frozen between pain, exasperation and The Scream by Edvard Munch. There was no intermission and the show, which lasted three hours, was enhanced by several generous encores. Between reliving that moment and having an ingrown toenail removed, I think she chooses the podiatrist’s chair over the one at Place des Arts without hesitation.
How can we transmit to our young people the desire to go to the theatre, to the cinema, to the museum or, even worse, to the library? It’s not because there are books at home and she sees my nose in them that my interest in literature has been transmitted to the flesh of my flesh. To tell you the pleasure that gives me the fact of seeing, in the perpetual mess of her 15-year-old teenager’s room where you would swear that a hurricane passes by every day, kukum by Michael Jean, where I earth by Caroline Dawson, graphic novels like Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds and Mausof Art Spiegelman (thanks to his French teacher) among his school things, leftover lunches, dirty stockings, empty cups of bubble tea.
During spring break, I had the idea of taking my daughter to the theatre. After carefully studying the programming of all the establishments in the city, hesitating between I’m youcries in the middle of a beautiful storminspired by the amorous correspondences of Albert Camus and the actress Maria Casarès, and the scenic documentary Not lost by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette and Émile Proulx-Cloutier, I chose the piece Hedwig and the raging thumbworn by Benoît McGinnis at the top of his game.
My daughter came out of there with question marks in her eyes, wondering how it was that such an audacious, even punk piece attracted a majority of older people… So, I had to explain to her that it They weren’t bad, these people with white heads, who keep the cultural economy rolling, buy novels, albums, take out annual subscriptions to theaters, etc.
I also dragged Charlotte to the movies to The plunger. She went back to see the movie a second time with her friends. Then a third with me, after learning that a special performance would take place at the Beaubien cinema, during which the film crew would be there.
While the credits were scrolling, director Francis Leclerc, author Stéphane Larue, several actors (including Henri Picard) took to the stage. The questions from the public were relevant and the answers from the artisans enlightening. Something magical happened during that half hour when we broke through the fourth wall together.
When we left Beaubien, surprise! The young actor Henri Picard was waiting alone outside, like a quidam. Charlotte braved her embarrassment and the flood of spectators to tell her how much she liked the film. We took a picture and, on the way back, listened in the car to songs from the film’s musical score: Smack my Bitch Up by Prodigy, Like Spinning Plates by Radiohead, Miss Ecstasy by Dumas, The stolen night dogs…
As I complete this column, she makes me sign a sheet for a school trip. The students will go to the Jean-Duceppe theater to discover Manikanetish, adapted from the novel by the essential Naomi Fontaine. The story of a French teacher working in an Innu reserve who tells the story of her students’ lives and introduces them to theatre. I can’t wait to hear Charlotte’s impressions of the crowd, the play or a comedian cute. I thank all those teachers who bend over backwards to introduce our teenagers to works that will excite them — or not.