They experienced real friendly love at first sight on the set of the film From father to cop 2. There was an immediate connection between the two actors, who relaxed between takes while having fun imitating Jean Chrétien and Claude Ryan. Mathieu Quesnel knew the hilarious parody that Yves Jacques had composed of this last politician, Bye-bye 1989, the recording of which he had watched many times in his youth. “We were commenting on the filming and we had to [le réalisateur] Émile Gaudreault shuts us down because we were too stupid, he says. We both like to laugh and go crazy. But we agree a lot in what is true, too, in the theater and in life. We confide very personal things to each other. »
Yves Jacques, for his part, has admired Quesnel’s work since he saw Love is a dumpling. “I love his way of writing everyday life: its truth, and how everyday life can become funny, but without the actors having to do anything to provoke laughter. I say that he is Claude Meunier’s little brother, in the sense of his outlook on life. On the ordinary world, that Meunier [décrivait] in his pieces, Neighbors, Above all. »
The performer played in previous plays written and directed by Mathieu Quesnel, I am mixedwhose success stretched over three years on tour, and Trip. It is his desire to share the stage with his friend which is at the origin of the Sister donkeys. The comedy describes the daily life of two men who find themselves sharing a cramped studio. Kicked out by his wife, septuagenarian Jean-Yves came to buy his sofa from Jean-Mathieu, an unemployed thirty-year-old who can no longer pay his exorbitant rent. Having become roommates to survive, they form a seemingly mismatched pair, but will discover over time that they are strangely very similar…
A play written by Quesnel, with the participation of Yves Jacques. “Actually I’m asking questions,” said the latter. It’s minimal [ma contribution]. » “No, it’s an essential dialogue!” » retorts the other.
It is not insignificant for the playwright to create the play at Espace libre, he who considers himself a “distant child” of co-founder Robert Gravel. The author of Durocher the billionaire had dared to start from a “very thin scenario”, then let his characters live. “In a way, I wanted to do that too,” explains Mathieu Quesnel. At the moment, in the theater, it seems that everyone is looking for the subject that will bring people down, that will resonate with themes that we hear about in the media. Sometimes I think that theater shouldn’t start doing what newspapers and television documentaries do very well. » “I am more capable of documentary theater,” says Yves Jacques. It’s not theater for me. »
Quesnel therefore wanted to leave “all the space” for his two characters. If they are very far from their interpreters – “we are less naive than them. But sometimes, it’s still funny…” —, the play is inspired by the dynamic linking the two actors. Like theirs, it is an intergenerational friendship. “But I don’t have the feeling that Yves is older. So yesterday, by performing in Live from the universe, he didn’t seem to have the energy of his age…” “I don’t find it important”, this age difference, adds his sidekick.
Full of openness, the tandem of Sister donkeys also transcends sexual orientation: the straight Jean-Yves and the gay Jean-Mathieu sleep in the same sofa bed.
Melancholy
With these characters who are struggling, financially and psychologically, doing small jobs that they struggle to keep and each going through a heartbreak, Mathieu Quesnel wanted to write a “timeless score” which could be taken up by actors other than his two creators. “For me, it happens everywhere, this story, this dynamic. I want the spectators to recognize themselves and be touched. »
A comedy, but with an “offbeat level” and a dreamlike aspect. As well as a dose of seriousness. “I really wanted to pull the elastic between the tragic and the comic,” continues the creator. And leave room for the kind of melancholy of everyday life, of time passing. Time and the apartment are the third character in the play. »
And with its funny couple stuck together, its figures full of contradictions, the show “can obviously refer to pieces like Waiting for Godot, by Beckett. It could be a clown score. Except we’re both the white clown and the red clown, at times.” The two actors therefore exchange the roles of the serious character and the zany character.
Yves Jacques is delighted to play this 70-year-old man who, after suffering a major depression, resolved to always try to see the bright side of life and finds in every day an opportunity to celebrate. “Usually, I will play the protagonist who suffers,” notes the actor. And there, I camp the one who proposes [l’action]. To wake the other up, put them back on the right track. »
“The show talks about mental health, all the same,” adds his accomplice. Many people of my generation have already had depression and anxiety. That’s what’s beautiful: it’s your character, who is older, who shakes mine. Ultimately, destiny linked them so that he bequeathed something to him: his strength to live. »
Musical duet
In what the actors share, there is also the practice of music. And in the show, Quesnel and Jacques will play guitar and drums respectively — an instrument that the former member of the parody group Slick and the Outlags has mastered since the age of 10. A common passion which plays an important role in the play, smoothing out the differences between the tandem. “The songs act as buffer zones where time stops and the characters have a different communion,” explains Quesnel.
As for the real duo, they are enjoying this first gaming experience together. “It’s reassuring,” says Jacques. I like it a lot, because it always brings us back to a truth. ” ” It’s the fun because Yves makes me laugh, adds Mathieu Quesnel. Above all, we tell each other everything. »
Even though he stars in it, the author wanted to direct the show himself. “I wanted us to touch on a truth, and above all on something that we invent together. It is not a third person who comes to invent the energy that passes between us. I wanted it to arise from us, from within. So that we really believe in our dynamic, that there is nothing stuck. »