With his immaculate style and quirky humour, he can boast of being unlike any other comedian in Quebec. Who else but Philippe-Audrey Larrue-St-Jacques would have the erudition to refer to Alfred de Musset in the title of a show? Two centuries separate the two men, but Philippe-Audrey Larrue-St-Jacques also claims to be a victim of the “evil of the century”. This malaise that gnaws at him is not so much the impression of being born at the wrong time. No, everything was not better before. It is rather this feeling of having grown up between two eras and of not belonging to either of them. The starting point of a quest for identity that he exorcises on stage.
” In Confession of a child of the centuryMusset talks about the fact that romantics like him have their asses between two chairs and no longer quite know where to place themselves between the Napoleonic era and modernity. I think it may look like what I live today. I was born before the arrival of the Internet, and when I talk to young people, I don’t understand everything. I’m trying somehow to follow, but I realize that I’m really not the target audience anymore, ”summarizes the 35-year-old comedian with the vintage elegance that we know him.
In his suit, Philippe-Audrey Larrue-St-Jacques blends in perfectly with the Victorian decor of the chic Mount Stephen hotel in the city center, where he has arranged to meet us. An anachronistic place and a bit stuffy that was ideal for those who play on their bourgeois origins.
A little bourgeois, certainly, but not snobbish for all that. Having read Alfred de Musset and George Sand has never stopped him from venting about his sex life at the microphone of influencer Lysandre Nadeau, or from appearing tipsy on Mike Ward’s podcast. We can just as well be invited to Hi hello ! to pay homage to Queen Elisabeth than to quote Albert Camus, pied-noir besides like his father.
The decline of the French empire
Philippe-Audrey’s father grew up in French Algeria until he was 10 years old, before his family, like thousands of others, packing for the metropolis after independence. A family tragedy that has always inhabited the comedian, aware of coming from a line of both colonizers and victims of war. Something to relativize the Manichaeism of history books and feed this perpetual quest for identity.
“There is a paradox in coming from both Algeria and Quebec. On the one hand, we have a people who fought for their independence, who waged war, and who won it. On the other, a people who fought for independence in their own way, but who never succeeded, who even refused it. It’s a duality that I’ve always had in me,” confides this great history buff.
His father later immigrated to Quebec, where he met his mother. He is a theater historian, she teaches art history. Intellectual family, therefore, for whom literature is essential. As a child, Philippe-Audrey was steeped in French culture. When he started school, he was mocked by his classmates for his French accent. It will take time before soaking up real Quebec references.
“The first time I had the impression of seeing my reality on TV in Quebec was when I watched The Decline of the American Empire by Denys Arcand. It really felt like our family dinners. Not so much because of the holding of the conversations, which are very erotic in The decline. My parents were still embarrassed! But in the repartee, in the very intellectual references, it looked a lot like it on the other hand, ”he recalls.
From theater to comedy
Unlike almost all comedians of his age, Philippe-Audrey did not grow up with the Just for Laughs galas at TVA. The humor will come later in his life. Initially, it was the theater that first attracted him. At 19, he even entered the prestigious Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. “Too young”, “not mature enough”, he concludes with hindsight. When he leaves school, he is also the only one of his cohort not to be approached by an agent. A humiliation from which he will take a long time to recover.
It is somewhat by accident that he falls back on humor. The real trigger will take place in an evening of somewhat experimental theater in the early 2010s. There he presents a monologue in which he slips into the skin of a candidate of loft story a bit silly. For the first time, he realizes how enjoyable it can be to have a hilarious audience in front of you. All those hours spent listening to TQS in the evening, in a somewhat ironic way, will not have been in vain. And this very second degree look that he takes on the emptiness of our time continues to make him successful today.
Since leaving the National School of Humor in 2014, Philippe-Audrey has not been idle. After being part of the distribution of like mehe returned to acting in comedy The Barbarians of La Malbaie and stars in the web series Teodore no H, whose third and final season was filmed this summer. With his friend Thomas Levac, he hosts one of the most listened to podcasts in Quebec, Two princes.
Through his thousand projects, he found time to write a second one man show, child of the century, whose staging is signed by his great friend Adib Alkhalidey. A show in which he once again embodies “a caricature of himself, like any comedian”, but which he still describes as more personal than his previous one. “With this show, I try to provoke all kinds of laughter. The fat fat laugh, that’s for sure, but also the uneasy laugh, the little smile, the yellow laugh, even the laugh of compassion. There are lots of kinds of laughs and I’m having a lot of fun navigating through that. It’s so beautiful, hearing someone laugh,” he adds with obvious pride.
When asked if humor will have been a consolation prize, Philippe-Audrey stops. He thought, looking serious, as if he saw his life suddenly pass by, before confiding: “No, it’s not a consolation prize. Like any good, somewhat elitist theater guy, at first I looked down on humor. I thought it was easy. But in the end, it’s much more successful than I thought. There is a rhythm, a tone, a linguistic precision. Humor is an alchemy of words, it is the art form that comes closest to poetry. »