Posted at 9:00 a.m.
Marc Cassivi: Things are going well ?
Magalie Lepine-Blondeau: Yes, I’m fine ! This is the first time I can say that in two years, without pretending. [Rires] I think it’s going well.
M.C.: Playing the theater again makes you feel good?
M. L.-B. : It forces me to think a lot, because I don’t want to be defined by my work. But it’s an extension of myself. It is the expression of what I am. It’s like putting my neuroses at the service of something positive! [Rires] There has to be a reason for all this hypersensitivity. Otherwise it just becomes a defect.
M.C.: Going back to the theater did me good…
M. L.-B. : Me too. It’s not just my job that I missed. I also missed it as a spectator. We were there the same evening at Espace Go lately [pour Les dix commandements de Dorothy Dix]. I really had a strong emotion as a spectator. It was palpable in the air, the happiness of returning to the theater. This intangible is very difficult to name, but it is concrete all the same.
M.C.: It surprises me less to hear you say it, because it’s your job. But the pandemic made me realize that I took this accessibility to art for granted. When it is taken away from us, all of a sudden we take full measure of its importance in our lives.
M. L.-B. : I don’t know if you have seen the series Station 11. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, after a pandemic. It is especially the reflection on the place that art takes when all the rest crumbles that is fascinating. The characters are inhabited by this quest, because creating or sublimating the real together starts from a vital impulse. I think, more than ever, we realized how gregarious we were. Even those who prided themselves on being solitary like me. It is a chosen solitude. I like it, taking leave of people, but I don’t want people taking leave of me! [Rires] Not from a narcissistic point of view! I don’t want to take a break from life.
M.C.: Many think that art is a bit superfluous, that it’s the extra you give yourself when you have the time to afford it. I understand that if you’re in Ukraine today, maybe you’re thinking about something else. But for me, art is part of life.
M. L.-B. : I do not really agree. That’s a bit of what the government has been hammering for two years: that hospitals are overcrowded, so now is not the time for entertainment. But art is not just recreation. It is both a refuge and an escape. You traveled like me. The concept of “tomorrow” here is taken for granted. But for most humans on Earth, the future is extremely precarious. What the younger generations are going through with the climate crisis, the future, for them, is not certain. But do you think we’ve stopped singing, dancing, telling stories, doing rituals? On the contrary !
PHOTO PROVIDED BY LE RIDEAU GREEN
David Boutin and Magalie Lépine-Blondeau during the dress rehearsal of Miss Juliein March 2020, just before the start of the pandemic
M.C.: I had the chance to see a unique representation of Miss Julie, two years ago, when everything was canceled on the eve of the premiere. It was really heartbreaking. I wrote that there was something bittersweet about the fact that no one would see the play for a long time. You said that you experienced it as a “heartache”…
M. L.-B. : Everything crystallized a bit for me that day. Miss Julie has become the symbol of many things for me. First, it was a dream to play a character like that. The content of the role, its complexity, its density. Me, I’m too old for the character, but I could never have played him at 24. Mademoiselle Julie has become, therefore, even beyond the role, the symbol for me of this high point in our lives. We didn’t all experience it the same way, but I really felt like I was holding my breath. I’m actually expiring for the first time in two years. When we entered the room, I knew that I would have a strong emotion to find my job, but I did not expect my body to react like that. I opened the doors to the theater – again, I’m really moved when I think about it – and it was so absurd, because obviously the theater has lived for two years, but I found it exactly where we left it.
M.C.: As if it had all been a parenthesis…
M. L.-B. : The decor was in the same place, the room was empty as when we left it without knowing when we would come back or if we would come back one day. The seats haven’t taken a bend, the floor hasn’t got a scratch anymore, while we wrinkled. It’s so strange. We became aware of a lot of things that we did not expect to experience during these two years. My parents were in the room when you came. The threat was invisible, we didn’t really understand it.
M.C.: We were particularly worried about not knowing anything, at the beginning…
M. L.-B. : My parents were told they were old, for the first time in their lives, because suddenly they were at risk. We didn’t know if we should hug each other. Finally, we did it with modesty, then it took at least a year before I took my parents back in my arms. The value of touch, its importance to integrate our own body, to feel its limits, but also the shivers, all of this was oddly delighted us. Especially since I live alone. It was really special. Miss Julie became the symbol of that for me. At the same time, of course, I’m so grateful that we can resume the show. But I think, in all humility, it’s going to be really better than two years ago, because I see a lot of meanings in it that I hadn’t thought of before.
M.C.: Did you add layers to the character?
M. L.-B. : Without looking for them. It occurred to me. The characters are prisoners. That’s kind of what I’ve been feeling for two years. Prisoner of my rib cage not being able to express all that is happening inside these little ribs. Prisoner of our borders. I had never become so aware of this.
Europe is at war and the land borders, we accept them as if they were a law of nature whereas they are a human construction. There are plenty of these borders and the pandemic has exacerbated them. The divide between social classes, racial inequalities, violence against women, all this abuse that we inflict on ourselves. The pandemic has revealed all of this. That’s also what the play is about. I saw it, but I don’t know how much. Now it seems so obvious to me. It finds a lot more echoes in me than two years ago.
Magalie Lepine-Blondeau
M.C.: You were talking about what the government has been hammering for two years. How do you view the place that our leaders have given to culture?
M. L.-B. : It was a huge mourning. I particularly experienced it last December when everything was closed. I think theaters were probably the safest places to go. Everyone is masked, vaccinated, looking in the same direction, not talking and standing still for an hour and a half, reduced-gauge distance, and most theaters have been renovated and have new ventilation systems. They adapted to sanitary measures at lightning speed. The organizational headache so that there is no crowd outside. These spaces were safe and necessary. We were told about something other than the pandemic for an hour and a half. Even without any outbreaks, while outbreaks were in workplaces and schools, the government closed performance halls. How does that unclog hospitals? I felt like we were being sacrificed. The message we were sending was not only that it’s not important, but also that collectively, we can’t afford to dream.
M.C.: It’s superfluous…
M. L.-B. : It is superfluous. If there’s one thing you can’t do, it’s clipping people’s wings and preventing them from having an inner or mental space to escape to. Art also serves that purpose, serves above all that! That’s why I don’t agree when you say they don’t think about that in Kyiv right now. On the contrary ! What do you think people are going to do tonight? They’re going to sit on their couch waiting for the end of the world? No ! They will watch TV, they will listen to music, they will play the violin…
M.C.: They will escape.
M. L.-B. : They will escape. Because that space is necessary. It is vital. It was Beckett who said: “When you’re in deep shit, all you have to do is sing. When things go wrong, that’s when art takes on its full meaning.