On April 3, 1968, the day before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his unforgettable speech I’ve Been to the Mountaintop in Memphis. From this final evening, the American playwright Katori Hall imagined a tete-a-tete between the great civil rights leader and an employee of his motel, Camae, who intrigues him. An astonishing dialogue, between flirtation, humor and, above all, deep debates.
Created in London in 2009, the piece At the top of the mountain includes an unexpected twist, which tilts this story to historical bases. It is among other things this “magical realism” that seduced Catherine Vidal: “It celebrates the theater, where everything is possible. The piece composes a rich score for performers. “It’s Olympic, what they have to do, and we really started from them”, says the director, praising Didier Lucien, who had imposed himself from the start, and Sharon James, who s is revealed in audition capable of holding its own against the flamboyant actor.
The duo will play this behind closed doors in a recreation of room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, embedded in the cramped stage of Duceppe.
For Edith Kabuya, who translated At the top of the mountain, this “extraordinary piece, very well written” deals above all with the “weight of carrying humanity on one’s shoulders, the pressure of being a standard bearer, an extraordinary public figure, but while being an ordinary person. For me, these two characters reflect our duality, or our relationship to the social problems we experience: how our actions can have an influence, positive or negative, on what is happening around us, what is the best way to to hire. They are two characters, but also two points of view”.
Camae confronts the pastor. “As it’s his last night, he’s questioning himself. He could have had this conversation with himself. But the play gives him an opposite, which is anything that tests his faith in what he does, his beliefs. »
His interlocutor thus questions the methods of the apostle of non-violence. “It’s as if the author had recreated the conversation, which they may not have had quite”, between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the activist also killed at 39, believes Catherine Vidal . “Camae says: ‘you and your steps; What’s the point ?” But Katori Hall does not take a stand. »
“This is a question that still arises today,” adds the translator, referring to the Black Lives Matter movement. “Should we demonstrate peacefully, or the question of the breakage, should we be a little more violent to be heard? What’s better to get things done? »
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For Edith Kabuya, screenwriter (the award-winning web series Utukku), author of six books, including the celebrated fantasy trilogy The cursed, At the top of the mountain marks a first foray into the theatre. A “very nice experience” although demanding. “My first challenge was that I wanted to honor the text so much that I didn’t dare take any liberties at the start: it was perfect! There was also a big language challenge. The two characters are not of the same social class, so they have a different level of English language. In French, it was lost, you had to find this difference in another way — but it happened more than through translation, also through acting. »
“We do not translate a color,” notes the writer of Congolese descent born here, recalling that black Quebecers do not have a common language. “There are different slangs. So it was to find which way to go. What expressions to use, with what accent will they speak? »
At the same time, the translator had to beware of the ” coded-switching », this chameleonic tendency to « attenuate a little his way of speaking to better integrate somewhere », which she practices without realizing it in « everything [son] work,” when she knows her readers will be white. “Sometimes it’s really unconscious. But it’s also a kind of survival instinct. […] I will speak to you with such an accent, but with my friends I have another. There, I had to come back to these two black people, who talk to each other and are not aware of having an audience, so to come back to the characters, who are played here. If Martin Luther King had been a Québécois, how would he speak? And also to keep their American side. »
In order to stage this play written by an African-American (a second after Heritage), the Jean Duceppe company launched a “translation audition” with many black authors – according to Catherine Vidal, for whom it was important to surround themselves with an inclusive team. An essential criterion? Edith Kabuya believes that this aspect is “case by case” and depends on the degree of anchoring of the work in a specific culture.
For At the top of the mountain, she thinks it was very important to have an Afro-descendant translator. “On the other hand, I would like to specify that I am not translating a black language, but from English to French. So I can translate anything. But for this piece, it wouldn’t have given the same result at all. [avec un Blanc]. It’s nobody’s fault. There are cultural referents there that I understand. Like, I know what it’s like to go to a black church,” she says, alluding to one particular scene. “I think it would have been lost, because in Quebec, most people grew up in the Catholic Church. It’s not the same thing at all! says the friendly translator, laughing. Add that this opening makes it possible to widen the field of artists who have access to the stages.
Demythologize the hero
By exposing his doubts, his fatigue, his vulnerability, his flaws, At the top of the mountain humanizes the mythical King. “Without removing its exceptional character”, it thus shows that it is not necessary “to be an iconic figure to carry a cause”, that it is within everyone’s reach, explains Vidal.
This intimate, even sometimes prosaic look (we approach the smell of his feet), on the courageous activist sowed controversy during the American production. “But the playwright never backed down,” notes Edith Kabuya. It was his goal, to bring him down from his pedestal, so that we could recognize ourselves in him. And that we can say to ourselves: I too can make things change. We all have the opportunity to speak out and have an impact, small or large, but accumulated, it changes a lot of things. »
The play says it’s up to us to take over in order to make the world a better place? The translator nods. “And I believe it opens up a conversation to have. Us, what can we do? Because it still resonates. For me, in any case, it seems that the piece speaks to me of today. Yes, the story is in 1968. But these are challenges that I live with on a daily basis all the time. »
It is a question of facing these questions from which we tend to turn away, say the creators in essence. Like that of racism. Hence the desire, for Catherine Vidal, to find a way to open up the show a little here at the end, in order to avoid “we [en se disant] : ah, it happens in the United States”.
Asked about Martin Luther King’s legacy, the two artists call his “radical” love for each other. ” One can [contester] hatred, violence, says Edith Kabuya. But I think that presenting yourself in front of the other with love, reaching out your hand, opens up more to collective unity than being in confrontation all the time. It’s the greatest weapon you can have in your hands, love. “Our era still needs it…