Philippe-Audrey Larrue-St-Jacques | Who’s cool, who’s not?

December 2021. In the small box at the Terminal Comédie Club, a few hours before the third performance of her new show, Philippe-Audrey Larrue-St-Jacques flickers from one subject to another like a kind of dictionary of proper names which we frantically flipping through the pages.

Dominic Late
The Press

In a 40-minute interview, the best-dressed comedian in his community evokes the philosopher of science Étienne Klein, the novelist Michel Houellebecq, whom he read during the pandemic (“a dangerous game if you want to continue to have hope in humanity”), rapper OrelSan, Albert Camus (whom he quotes as frequently as Boucar Diouf, his grandfather) and actor Michael Fassbender. “Did I ever tell you the story about Fassbender?” he asks his author friend, Thomas Levac, who is sipping a rum and coke. Answer: “It may be, but I probably forgot it. »

Let’s sum up: Michael Fassbender’s cohort at the Drama Center London had, it seems, only three guys: Fassbender, Tom Hardy (!) and… another poor fellow, who no one remembers, because he happened to be constantly in the shadow of… Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy! Why does Philippe-Audrey Larrue-St-Jacques say this? Because he often felt, he confides, like number three in a group including Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy.

Musset of the XXI^and century

This is the heart of katehis second solo show, which he recently resumed performing. kate as in Kate Moss. Because the British top model has taken the world of modeling into her own hands by refusing to be anything other than herself. Because it embodies the fine flower of cool, “this currency of exchange which directs many things in our lives”, but which nevertheless seems so difficult to define, explains Philippe-Audrey.

True to his thoughts, knowing no respite, the thirty-year-old is already thinking of swapping this title for another: child of the centuryas in The confession of a child of the century (1836) by Alfred de Musset. A necessarily ironic title, like a nod to his own reputation as a dandy out of step with his time, not at all in tune with his century. A nod also to the eternal second position of de Musset himself, “one of the most underestimated writings of the romantic language, even if it does not have the finesse of that of Victor Hugo”.

“In my head, I still see myself as an outsider “, says the comedian by training, to whom we reply that his comic work has made many followers among those who do not find their account among his colleagues, often more flush with the daisies. “When I started, I clashed in the evenings of humor. Imagine arriving at a bar in Cap-de-la-Madeleine in a three-piece suit! It’s easy to train in that environment. You fall into a survival instinct, because you want to be invited back. “Resisting this formatting, we understand, will not have been without anguish.

It is little by little, at the cost of long hours of introspection, that the comedian will have made his own the key idea of ​​his second solo: everything we try to hide elevates us. No, he will never have the same ease as some of his former comrades from the National School of Humor. No, he will never be a cursed poet, “his dream”. Philippe-Audrey Larrue-St-Jacques will remain an intellectual among comedians and a jester among intellectuals. Like Kate Moss or Alfred de Musset, it is this singularity that is the crucible of its richness.

Be up to it

Graduated from the Montreal Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in 2010, then from the National School of Humor in 2014, son of two literature and art history teachers. Philippe-Audrey Larrue-St-Jacques was revealed in 2015 thanks to the series like me. “It was my first post-school year and inevitably, my humorous performances were not up to the comic genius of Marc Brunet”, he remembers with this implacable self-mockery in which he constantly takes refuge.

But in 2017, with his first show, Alas, it’s just a comedy show, the young man gathered, to his great astonishment, an enthusiastic audience. The photo adorning the poster, on which he played Nelligan, will undoubtedly have acted as a foot call for all those who had ceased to hope for a different comedian. “The first evening, I realized that it was not the natural public of Zoofest, that it was not necessarily people who came regularly to see humor and I understood that there were people to listen to me, that it was up to me to be up to it. »

He is therefore no longer afraid to sprinkle his numbers with pointed literary references, as others punctuate them with swear words. “It’s probably one of the aspects of the show that resembles me the most”, thinks the one who evokes his masters with such joy, in life as on stage, that it would be dishonest to equate this pretty mania with something other than a desire to share his joy.

“I always try, anyway, to put myself in an inferior position, despite the prestige of the references. So that Philippe-Audrey looks less like someone who would lecture an audience because he doesn’t know Blaise Pascal than like someone who knows that he might gain by freeing himself from the thoughts of others.

Don’t camouflage yourself, embrace the totality of who you are. Inevitably, we come back to it. “What scares me the most is making bad choices, listening to my ego by participating in shows that would distort me. This is where I would be afraid of losing people, more than by quoting Blaise Pascal. Everything I’ve tried to hide in my life is what makes me different. I have to face the facts: I read Montaigne and I make Beach Club jokes. Now I know: the coolest thing is being yourself. »

Philippe-Audrey Larrue-St-Jacques resumes his show on March 29 at the Petit Champlain in Quebec.