In the weeks preceding what will remain her final appearance on stage solo, on November 3, 2023 in Saint-Eustache, Lise Dion felt that her body was telling her to slow down. Until the hours before the curtain rose, the comedian vomited, and vomited, and vomited again, the beginnings of the heart attack which would force her to interrupt a show which had barely begun.
Why didn’t she just cancel the performance before the evening started? “We never cancel a show,” she decides with the same firmness as if she rejected the idea of assassinating someone. Ah good ? “Because there are people who have their tickets and you’re supposed to be in good shape. You’re supposed to act like it’s your first time doing the show. You can’t tell the world that you don’t feel. »
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
Lise Dion in interview
Much of who Lise Dion was as an artist is contained in these few sentences. Much of her loyalty to her many followers. Much of her concerns about the sustainability of her career. Much of her almost dangerous ability to forget herself, without which she would never have managed to offer up to 514 performances of her second show, a marathon that caused her to be visited by dark thoughts, she confides. Her farewell tour, more modest, ended at performance 337.
In 35 years of jokes, Lise Dion has taken the stage in every imaginable state. Presenting a show while suffering from bronchitis? “And I’m talking about severe bronchitis that makes you pee when you cough!” » Give a seated show? “Yes, but that was my fault. I had scraped my feet with a blade and the blade had stuck into my foot. »
“The worst thing is to cancel a show,” she insists. When you have to stay at home, it’s a nightmare. You don’t have fun on a night when you can’t perform. You’re at home and you think about the disappointed people. »
Factory life
Lise Dion’s humble origins are the stuff of legend, largely thanks to her breakout act at the Just for Laughs festival in 1991, in which she wore her Dunkin’ Donuts waitress uniform.
But backbreaking jobs, Lise Dion held more than one before the donuts, in neon, bedspread or drapery factories. The daily life of a factory is the very beginning of its adult life. “Except that I always made funny speeches on the stepladder on Fridays before we finished,” she remembers. Manufacturing jobs were really hard, because there is no humanity, you have to produce. »
Dinner sitting on a conveyor belt, with rats as companions? Lise remembers that too, because despite her 1.2 million tickets sold, and a bank account that we wish her large, it simply cannot be forgotten.
When I pass by the factories on the Métropolitain, my heart still hurts.
Lise Dion
Her respect for her audience is obviously not unrelated to this former faction life, Lise Dion knowing too well that paying for a ticket represents for many the fruit of a few belt-tightening sessions.
“When I started making money,” she says, “I said to myself: “I’m not going to make my audience sweat with money, ever, ever, ever.” One day I bought a little convertible and it took me two years to get used to it. It was in the garage, I was proud to have it, but I didn’t dare walk around with it because I didn’t want to hurt people who don’t have money. »
Embellish the story
Looking back at Lise Dion’s career, it would be tempting to conclude that all you have to do is believe in your dreams and they will come true, the moral that Cinderella stories like hers usually end up with.
“But I never believed it, maybe that’s the recipe,” she says, bursting out laughing and looking back on her meeting with the comedian Yves Rousseau.
One evening, while stopping for a coffee at Dunkin’, the man who was then hosting Just for Laughs Mondays suggested that Lise try her luck as stand-upsomething she had never thought of, despite some amateur theater experiences and a stint at the LaSalle Conservatory where her incarnations ofAntigone had constantly encountered the hilarity it provoked.
Until then, she had used her comic power “just to make life easier,” she said.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
Lise Dion in interview
It’s sad, a shop. As for me, I made the girls laugh to embellish our story. I always wanted to embellish the story.
Lise Dion
Her life would be greatly enhanced by the success of her unforgettable G-spot number in 1995, the triumph from which she would allow herself to no longer glance at the job offers section of The Press.
So the tour is over, but in a way, at 68 years old, Lise Dion’s life is only just beginning. She has dreams of TV, cinema, writing.
“For me, there’s never been anything really serious, except illness or death,” she says, launching into a tirade worthy of a motivational speaker or a gospel singer. “Life is fun at its finest. Take the time to look at it, take the time to taste it, go get yourself a cone, do something. I was like that before, and since I almost died, life is even better.”
Three quotes from our interview
About his respect for the public
“Someone who has the right to have a star attack is someone who has just operated on your brain, or who has just operated on your child, or who has operated on my heart. That, for me, are people who could have whims. But artists who are in the spotlight, who make those around them sweat, I have a hard time with that. It’s a lack of respect for your team, a lack of respect for the public. If you play someone else while you’re on stage, it’s possible that in an interview, at some point, the audience will notice that you’re not as sharp as you seem. ‘air. »
About Social Media
“I’ve told artists before: ‘We don’t care about your travels.’ My travel photos, I’m not going to make people sweat with that. Because there are people who dream of going somewhere and don’t have the money to do it. You can spend your life having dreams and not have the money to do it. So me, on top of that, just to add to it, I’m going to show you that I went there and that it was fun?”
About his very long tours
“I think I could have done with fewer shows, but at the same time, when there’s a demand, you can’t say no. When I wanted to take time off, even though I gave five months notice to give myself a month to recover, my former agent told me: “Yeah, but the tickets are already sold.” Sometimes maybe that wasn’t true. But he didn’t want me to stop. So I didn’t stop. And me, if you tell me: “such and such a date, there are 20 tickets sold”, I will be there. »
Listen to the full episode on our website