Rehearsing outside of Montreal is a luxury that Dave Jenniss is used to affording himself, but the pandemic has allowed the artistic director of Productions Ondinnok and his collaborators to take even more time than usual . “I brought the team with me to Trois-Pistoles, where I was born,” explains the author and director of Wolastoqey (Maliseet) and Quebec origin, who is working on the creation of the play. Nmihtaqs Sqotewamqol / The ash of his bones.
“It was an extraordinary experience,” he continues, “very nourishing on the human and artistic levels. I already had lines, situations, I knew a little what I wanted, but the actors were able to improvise for a long time, and what is more in highly significant places, such as the cemetery where my father is buried. “
With parts like Wulustek (2008), Ktahkomiq (2017) and Mokatek and the missing star (2018), Dave Jenniss has been working for more than ten years to make the Wolastoqiyik language resonate on stages in Quebec. You should know that it was not until 1989 that those called the Maliseet of Viger were finally recognized as a nation by the government of Quebec and as registered Indians by the government of Canada. “When you don’t have a territory,” Jenniss told colleague Caroline Montpetit in 2017, “you have no connection with yourself. You don’t have a culture. You don’t have a meeting place. How do you want to preserve a language? “
Fortunately, the natives wishing to reclaim their language seem to be more and more numerous. “I don’t have time to really learn the language,” explains the man who went to New Brunswick to receive teachings from Allen Tremblay, one of the few speakers of Wolastoqey. “My way of keeping it alive is to transpose it into my writings, to make it visible and to be heard, to inscribe it in space and on paper. “
While Dave Jenniss’ dramaturgy has always been inseparable from its history, from its Aboriginal origins, it must be recognized that Nmihtaqs Sqotewamqol / The ash of his bones, the play he is about to create at the Unicorn, is more autobiographical, more personal than ever, in particular because it frankly echoes the death of his father.
“This piece is a cry from the heart to my father,” he reveals. Six or seven years after his death, I felt the time had come. It is all very fragile, I cried a lot in the process, but writing has allowed me to grieve, to say things to my father that I did not have the time or the courage to say to him. alive, much the same way I feel I speak to my daughter when I write children’s theater. “
Death fascinates the creator: “I think that often, even if they are very ill, that they are ready to leave, we sometimes hold back the people we love because we don’t want them to help us. leave. Death is part of the cycle of life, a stage that leads to another state, you should not be afraid of it. As Martin says in the play: “There is something else after life, there is the animal.” “
Self-recovery
Three years after the death of his father, Martin Kaktanish (Nicolas Gendron), Dave Jenniss’ alter ego, is back in the territory of his ancestors. A series of clashes ensued with his brother François (Charles Bender), his former lover Sophie Pelletier (Marilyn Provost) and his eternal adversary Sébastien Tienis (Nicolas Desfossés).
Interweaving the real and the dreamlike, the past and the present, the play features a rivalry strongly inspired by that which opposes two clans from the Cacouna region, two families, one of which considers itself more legitimately indigenous than the other. If the antagonism is political, ideological and territorial, its violence also has impacts on the intimate and collective relations of the members of the community.
“The rivalry is present on stage, recognizes Jenniss, but the play goes well beyond. It is a story of reconciliation, of reclaiming oneself and of solidarity. I believe that it is essential to be able to debate, to be able to approach frankly and all together the most delicate subjects, whether it be the aging of the population, environmental damage, social disparities or even cultural appropriation. . Let’s say that it is not the quests for justice and the battles to be waged that are currently lacking. “
In everything he writes, Dave Jenniss considers that “the territory, the identity and the language are one”: “I see this show as a bubble, a microcosm which has its own logic, its own spirituality, its unique relationship to time and space. I have neither more nor less than the wish to bring people to my bottom of the river, to the territory as I see it, as I feel it. It is a luminous representation, with several openings at the end. “