Jean-Marc Dalphond and Marie-Joanne Boucher agree: the theater project they have been working on for four years is the most demanding, the most important of their careers.
In November 2023, the two actors will present Polytechnic project, a documentary theater play on the Polytechnique massacre. And who says documentary theater says interviews, says confrontations, says reflections, says analysis. This approach, Marie-Joanne Boucher and Jean-Marc Dalphond document it in the podcast show Polytechnic Project: Facingavailable for a few days on Radio-Canada Ohdio.
In six twenty-minute episodes, listeners accompany the two actors in the interviews they conduct to shed light on the social problems behind the tragedy at Polytechnique, which remain topical 33 years later. Gun control. Violence against women. Anti-feminist discourses. The two accomplices meet police officer Jacques Duchesneau, a psychiatrist, researchers, but also people who have visions diametrically opposed to theirs. To try to understand, to establish a beginning of dialogue. They spoke to pro-gun activists, but also to men who have been violent towards women, in their gestures or in their writings.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Marie Joanne Boucher
“It’s not just an art project; it’s a life project, says Marie-Joanne Boucher. It made us question ourselves, but also make a lot of progress. »
The podcast’s piece de resistance is undoubtedly this meeting (as rambling as it is surreal) with an admirer of Marc Lépine found guilty of fomenting hatred against women. This man generated an emotion in Marie-Joanne that she swears she has never felt before. “It was real pity,” she said. Not like “poor kid, he’s pitiful”; nope. It was a pity of disgust, a pity of aversion. “If she still does not understand that a human being comes to glorify a gesture as horrible as that of Marc Lépine, she now understands that there is real suffering behind all that. A pain of the soul. “And that, I didn’t see coming,” she said.
For Jean-Marc Dalphond, who lost his cousin Anne-Marie to the bullets of Marc Lépine on December 6, 1989, the project was trying. He even felt the need to take a break of several months, at the heart of the pandemic, shaken by this mourning which was not settled and by his readings on misogynistic subcultures. “Sitting with these people, I also felt like I was spitting in the face of my aunt, my cousin and my uncle, who went through something unspeakable,” he says. But this quest, for him, has a cathartic effect (and his aunt Suzanne told them that he really liked their podcast and his reading of the upcoming play).
Questions and Thoughts
To better understand the “multi-headed hydra” represented by Poly’s drama, the duo conducted more than a hundred interviews, in Quebec, but also elsewhere in the world. These encounters sparked questions and reflections that are at the heart of the podcast and will also be at the heart of the play. Is it more comfortable to have a debate on gun control than to speak frankly about misogyny, radicalization and access to mental health care? Is it easier to call Marc Lépine crazy than to put the spotlight on this desire of some men to control women?
Today, in the darkest corners of the internet, Marc Lépine is considered a rockstar, laments Marie-Joanne Boucher.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Jean-Marc Dalphond
“And there are people across the planet who pay tribute to him by reproducing his gesture, underlines Jean-Marc Dalphond. Our claim is that it is partly our responsibility. Because we didn’t want to face what really happened at that time. If we had, maybe we would have cut off that monster’s legs. »
The objective of the project, he says, is to raise awareness, without being moralizing. “It’s time for us to reflect and be aware that it’s this whole panoply of questions that go beyond Polytechnique. »
Despite all the darkness he approaches, Polytechnic project is also a bright look into the future. Mother of two children, including a teenage boy, Marie-Joanne Boucher feared losing some of her light and her good humor by going to find out what was happening on the internet. “But in the end, it had the opposite effect: my light is even stronger, my feminism is even more inflated. And I have the certainty of having a place and of being entitled to it. »
The podcast show Polytechnic Project: Facing is directed by Myriam Berthelet and produced by Picbois Productions and Productions Porte Parole.