In 1969, when he was still only a “young, slightly drooling bearded man”, Michel Bélair entered the Duty for “shoes[er] the big shoes of the very influential critic that Jean Basile was then. A journalistic adventure began and was to last 50 years: 50 years of covering the theater, of taking the pulse of the creators, of this rich and lively cultural life, of discovering new forms, notably youth theater, for which he would develop not only only a specialization, but a deep attachment.
And to bear witness to this experience, but above all to tell the theater from the inside, from the field where everything was played out, the journalist – at the request of the editor Serge Théroux – “rapaille” in Live theater. 50 years of creation in Quebec (editions Somme tout/Le Devoir) the fruit of a life’s work. “It’s a good part of my life in any case,” he will say on the phone from Rivière-Ouelle, where he has lived for five years. It was after rereading an interview that Michel Bélair had done with Claude Gauvreau at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s that Théroux proposed this project to him: “He said to me: “You wouldn’t feel like digging around there again. ‘in and make a book with interviews you’ve done?’ I thought it was a very good idea […] I wrote the column for quite a long time at Duty ; I saw almost everything that was done over a good dozen years. I went to the theater at least three evenings a week, plus youth theater, plus festivals. I really dabbled in it for a long, long time. And I said to myself, “Hey, I’m going to try to structure it all in four sections,” he says.
Four sections covering two eras. A first, that of his arrival at Duty, which goes from 1969 to 1973, and a second, his return to the newspaper, which extends from 1991 to 2015. First, “Dramaturgie”, which brings together ten essential names, notably Michel Tremblay, Wajdi Mouawad and Suzanne Lebeau, with which Bélair spoke about and whose works he covered. Next comes “Mise en scène”, where André Brassard rubs shoulders with Brigitte Haentjens and Denis Marleau. Part three reports on meetings with actors and actresses, including Anne-Marie Cadieux, Pierre Lebeau, Hélène Loiselle and, finally, a section devoted to the companies and festivals that marked the era, La Maison Théâtre, Petits bonheurs, The ordinary Grand Circus in the lead.
Heartbreaking choices
As in any anthology work, the notion of choice is essential. It is thus, with regret, that he will notably exclude the Le Clou theater from his selection, a precursor of theater for adolescents here and in Europe, whose immense contribution he recognizes. “Le Clou literally launched an entire sector of French-speaking European theater activity […] Today, theater for teenagers in France plays an absolutely important, capital role, which did not even exist before Le Clou went there. So, I regret not talking about that. » Difficult and heartbreaking stage which imposed certain essentials: “Yes heartbreaking. Listen, we can’t miss Tremblay, Mouawad, Lepage. We can’t miss Brigitte Haentjens […] And I had a lot of papers, a lot of interviews with Denis Marleau, with Brigitte Haentjens, for whom I have really enormous respect. […] For the others, I tried to go to what seemed to me to be important markers. As much for directors as playwrights, actors or companies. For example, Les coups de théâtre. It’s an unspeakable sadness that it’s over, but it had a major impact here. Even though it’s no longer there, I couldn’t not talk about it,” he explains.
The greatness of youth theater
Like Jean-Rock Gaudreault, whom Bélair interviewed in 2009, and who admits “farts[r] when he sees how many people view youth theater (“It’s theater, yeah, but small…”), Michel Bélair makes no distinction between youth theater and that for adults. Since the mid-1990s, when he returned to Duty and where he discovered youth theater, until 2015, when he left theater criticism, he continued to recognize its richness and quality. The equally important presence of youth creators as of “adult” creators in his work bears witness to this. “I remember heated discussions with Alexis Martin, for example, on the possibility of the existence of theater for babies […] I saw things happen, I heard neurons clicking in babies’ heads during shows, especially in Reims, where I saw a lot of them, at the Méli’môme festival, but at other festivals too […] I quickly realized the nameless richness of what it can be when it’s done well, when it’s done well. […] These are not sessions or cultural activities. It’s theater. » He also remembers going to see, with his daughter who was four years old at the time, The good woman, by Jasmine Dubé. “It was about homelessness […] and that’s what I find fascinating about youth theater. It’s about succeeding in talking about fundamental problems in a language that thrills children based on things that they understand or at least that they are led to question at the end of the show. […] And it hit me when I came back to Duty. I was not expecting that at all. I went there because I was looking for something to do with the kids and I was as “flabergasted” as my daughter when I saw it. Afterwards, I devoted a lot of time to youth theater, yes. »
I remember heated discussions with Alexis Martin, for example, on the possibility of the existence of theater for babies
If he is not nostalgic for this intense period, Michel Bélair underlines the privilege of having been able to meet all these creators. It is also with great emotion, the timbre of the wavering voice, that he remembers André Brassard, this “exceptional being”. An emotion which testifies to the real happiness and sincerity with which the journalist and author covered Quebec theater so sensitively.