Two months after having portrayed with virtuosity 43 characters in Rose and the machine, Julie Le Breton returns to the stage. Even in these uncertain times for the living arts, this very popular actress on the screens has never considered putting the theater aside. “When people call me to offer me theater, that’s probably what gives me the most pleasure. This invalidates, I believe, an insecurity or a feeling of imposture that still lives in me after almost 25 years of career, and it solidifies the actress. As if the theater were a place of improvement. We have time to work on the game, to get out of our reflexes, to break our tics, to look elsewhere. »
A widespread feeling of imposture, she believes, because “as a performer, you are a bit of a slave to the desire of the other”. “Artistic self-esteem” therefore takes a little time to build. “And sometimes I have to say to myself: ‘Don’t succumb to the desire of the other. Do you want it too?” And that comes with age, I think, and confidence. »
Questions that precisely echo the character of the Ten Commandments by Dorothy Dix that she is going to create at Espace Go. A woman who has buried her personal desires. “I think that’s what resonated very strongly,” says Julie Le Breton. When I read certain sentences, I stopped, it was so dazzling: I had the impression that it was an intimate voice that I was repressing and that I didn’t allow myself to bring to light. And suddenly, this word existed and spoke to me a lot. »
The third piece by Stéphanie Jasmin draws “a journey through the psyche of a woman, whose existence may seem quite banal from the outside, but who has a very abundant inner life. A formidable course, because complex, sometimes painful and sometimes luminous. With desires that appear, disappear and then come back like undertows.
“The image of the sea is very present in the writing. Stephanie wrote a sort of circular motion of a wave. There is something very upsetting there, which I believe many women can identify with — many men too. But we heard less of this feminine voice on stage. » The author of The Daisies was inspired by her grandmother to imagine this character from whom emerges a voice that gives access to her intimate world, to everything she has silenced, or not dared to name, including a dream of writing, “the desire to ‘to exist outside of a domestic life’.
The actress also remembers her own grandmother. “It was always my grandfather, a fisherman in the Magdalen Islands, who told his stories — the same ones all the time. Everyone listened to him and laughed. And my grandmother was behind, when she also had a lot of business! It was she who took care of the eight children while he was gone for three months, she who lived through the mourning and the dramas on a daily basis. But it’s as if that story had never mattered. This woman’s word does not exist. So she deserves to be heard. »
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The monologue is structured by the commandments of Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, alias Dorothy Dix (1861-1951), an American columnist whose recipes for happiness, the dictates serve as a guide to life for the protagonist. “This is attached to the American dream, to this possibility of happiness on the surface, a kind of sublimated image of everyday life, of a large family, of always being well dressed, of a well-kept house. And it ensures that everything that is more intimate and deeper is evacuated. She maintained this facade all her life. »
As a child, one of her first major flaws will be the absence of her mother’s gaze on her, continues Julie Le Breton. “She had to become an image so that her mother could finally look at her and validate her. A revolt inhabits the character throughout, which does not manifest itself in anger, but in a solidification of her bases to continue to maintain this representation of herself, which has taken up more space than her dramas. Not giving importance to one’s sorrows, to one’s disappointments, is also a way of denying oneself. »
Themes, the need to look at oneself, the image that one builds for others, which also refer to theatrical representation. “There is a mise en abyme in the room. This woman, who will turn 100 the next day, is like a ghost revisiting the rituals of her life. From the start, she redid her make-up like an actress, to immerse herself in what her life was like. And it comes up at several times, this reference to the staging of oneself. So, with me, who is going to play this woman, there are like two levels of gaze. »
Firsts
In this non-linear score that travels through the ages, Julie Le Breton is “like a channel that allows all these voices to exist. It is sometimes the centenarian, an 8-year-old child or a 20-year-old girl who discovers the world. And I am directed by Denis Marleau, it is sure that we are not in caricature (laughs), it is much more suggested than acted. But there is still voice and rhythm work. It’s a wonderful job, which I see as a long sewing thread: it’s one and the same woman and they all have to be connected. It’s as if old age just becomes a shell, and inside, we still have the same soul, we vibrate the same way. »
The actress highly appreciates this first collaboration with the two co-directors of the UBU Theater (Stéphanie Jasmin also shot the “magnificent” video projections of the show herself). “Ubu has such a great coherence in his artistic approach, it’s a pleasure to enter this setting. I have the impression of arriving in a very rigorous but flexible system. “Julie Le Breton is immersed in “a very rich, but strong work”, taking. She compares herself laughingly to a nun: “I just sleep, eat and do that. »
The ten Commandments… — which she will be performing in Paris in June — also marks her first solo. “It’s a little dizzying and at the same time very exhilarating. I always told myself that I wouldn’t. I am very solitary in life, and for me, work is a place of meetings, of the company. I love gangs when I work, and I love being home alone the rest of the time. It terrified me, actually, of being alone on stage, of not having a partner you can dive into if you feel a bit lost, of not sharing the stage fright beforehand. Seems like the isolation I experienced, like many people, during the pandemic gave me confidence. I am able to provide for my own emotional needs right now. So I think I’ll be able to wear this solo with confidence and pleasure, above all. It’s very galvanizing. »
At 46, Julie Le Breton believes that this new experience is timely in her career, at a stage where she combines energy and profession. And his show will be one of the first to hit the stage again after theaters reopen. “We come back in front of the public with a project all in lace and softness. There is something benevolent in what we are going to present. I think that’s fine. »