I come from fiction”, François Archambault immediately announces in order to explain the reasons which prompted him to join his new play, Oil, the label of “documented fiction” rather than “documentary theatre”. “As a spectator, I appreciate documentary theatre, but my pleasure as an author resides in the fact of inventing a story, creating characters, using my imagination to fill in the gray areas, which are often the more interesting. »
The one who gave us The leisure society and you will remember me is back with a play about the climate emergency, which brings together eleven actresses and actors at Duceppe under the direction of Edith Patenaude. The writing was triggered by a hard-hitting dossier by Nathaniel Rich that appeared in the New York TimesMagazine in 2018: “ Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change “. “We learn in this file how the problem of global warming could have been solved 40 years ago, explains Archambault. I immediately knew that I wanted to make theater from the fact that American scientists had launched the alert at the end of the 1970s.
The action therefore takes place in the United States between 1979 and 1981, when Jarvis Larsen (Simon Lacroix), a young idealist, is recruited by an oil company to give his opinion on the pollution caused by the combustion of oil, but also in 2018, as the now-disillusioned Larsen is accused of starting a California wildfire. “I briefly thought about setting the play in the future, but it quickly became hopeless,” explains the author. I preferred to take a step back and meet this group of scientists from 40 years ago, these motivated, active men and women who predicted the current catastrophe, but did not yet experience it. »
Tense negotiations
Why didn’t we act then? Was a crime against humanity then committed by multinationals and governments? These are the kinds of questions that the piece raises, while providing some answers. “What particularly interested me,” explains Archambault, “is following the path of a scientist who is hired by an oil company thinking that he will be able to change things from the inside. Gradually, we realize that Larsen is caught in the gears, that his point of view is altered, that his convictions are twisted. We then witness tense negotiations between militant scientists, oil lobbyists and representatives of the White House.
No question for François Archambault to approach vast questions without relating them to the personal life of his protagonists, to their intimacy. We will therefore also discuss love, sexuality, motherhood, fidelity, friendship, money…: “It was important for me to create this little story in the big story. The environmental situation, I wanted to give it to see and understand through a couple, to present thanks to them the two paths that it is possible to take to embody change. In a way, I wanted ideas and emotions to be inseparable. If the play so skilfully avoids cynicism, it is because it focuses on human contradictions, that it highlights the weakness and courage of individuals, while giving rise to a suspense skilfully mixed with humor.
What we think of An enemy of the people at the TNM, at The injury at Espace libre, or in a good part of the programming of the next FTA, the environmental question is omnipresent on our stages today. In Oil, the paradoxes of the characters strongly resemble ours. “Jarvis’ dilemma, for example, is a metaphor for what we are going through,” explains the author. We want to change things, take care of the planet, that of our children and our grandchildren, but without ever giving up our way of life. Like many of the characters in the play, we have convictions, deep concerns, but that doesn’t prevent us from constantly making compromises. »
Feeling of helplessness
Let’s be clear, François Archambault is not there to give lessons to anyone, nor there to provide ready-made solutions. “I don’t claim to have the key,” he explains. The piece simply allows me to expose the situation, to approach the subject, to bring it back to the public square. To reflect, I resort to dialogues, to characters towards whom I feel empathy. When I write about Alzheimer’s disease, it’s the same thing, I have no cure, I just describe what it can create as a shock wave in a family, in a society. The main subject of Oil, that’s probably it: the immense feeling of helplessness that the situation arouses in human beings. »
On March 26, colleague Alexandre Shields wrote: “With the commitments made by the various States at the present time, global GHG emissions should increase by 14% over the course of the decade, when they should be imposed a decline of 45% in the hope of preserving a viable planetary climate. “With the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine, the issue of the environment has been relegated to the background,” explains Archambault. Whereas it should be the subject which passes in front of all the others. Indeed, as one scientist in the play puts it: “If there are no humans on earth, there are no markets. There’s no economy, there’s no war, there’s nothing! »
At the rate at which global warming is progressing, 2035 would be the point of no return, the moment when it would have become impossible to reverse the tide. Despite the seriousness of the situation, François Archambault finds hope in observing his children: “Young people are very lucid about all that. I realize this by talking with my daughter and my son. The state of the planet is constantly present in their minds, it colors their vision of the world and of the future. Their revolt is legitimate, even necessary, but as a father, I can’t help wishing that they come together around the common good without letting themselves be devoured by the fight. »