In the first few minutes of the show, a character says, “It seems like it was yesterday. » Then, reflecting the full extent of the collective trauma, the choir asks: “But can we get over it? ” With Polytechnic Project, the Porte Parole company gives birth to what is very probably the first theatrical attempt to embrace all of the causes and repercussions of the anti-feminist attack that occurred on December 6, 1989 at the École Polytechnique. A vast and noble mission, unfortunately half-fulfilled.
Under the banner of the documentary theater company which notably offered us I like Hydro, Marie-Joanne Boucher and Jean-Marc Dalphond lead the investigation. For four years, eager to understand, to somehow give meaning to the horror, the tandem interviewed dozens of people played on stage by Stéphan Allard, Mustapha Aramis, Lamia Benhacine, Estelle Esse, Julie McInnes, Jules Ronfard and Cynthia Wu-Maheux. By giving voice to relatives, police officers, activists, masculinists, academics and gunsmiths, the show addresses a host of subjects ranging from the carrying of weapons to feminicides, from mass killings to the distress of men, from racism to mental illness.
Adopting the air of Greek tragedy, Marie-Josée Bastien’s staging hesitates between investigation and commemoration, the factual and the ritual, the critical and the lyrical. Songs, music, lighting and accessories nourish an atmosphere of contemplation, which detracts from the effectiveness of a show which totals almost three hours (including a 20-minute intermission). We clumsily seek to stir emotions, in particular by focusing without restraint on the personal involvement of Boucher (victim of sexual assault in childhood) and Dalphond (whose cousin was one of the 14 victims of the attack), a tandem to which, despite everything, we are not very attached.
Engaging in all avenues without favoring any, the show deprives itself of a coherent structure. Without a unifying objective, without fundamental motivation, without what Alex Ivanovici and Annabel Soutar, the co-directors of Porte Parole, call “the burning issue”, representation casts its net too wide. Apart from its undeniably historical, even educational, value, Polytechnic Project contributes little to advancing the debate regarding the systemic nature of men’s violence against women. It remains to explore the essential, that is to say the way in which sexism will be eradicated in all spheres of our society, how the anger of men will be defused everywhere, so that history, finally, stops repeating itself. .