I can’t listen to Nicole Perrier’s voice in A delay by Claude Léveillée without nostalgia barring my stomach. This music, which marked the start of the show THE world of Marcel Dubébrings back to my memory the stories of the one who reigned over our dramaturgy for more than 20 years.
Florence, Virginia, Medea, Manual, Bilan, The time of lilacs, Beautiful Sundays, The cell… So many plays and tele-theaters which bear witness to the inestimable contribution of the man who is finally entitled to a biography worthy of the name from the pen of Serge Bergeron.
In this reference work, the author paints a fair, thorough and rigorous portrait of Dubé while making us aware of the capital role he played in moving our culture into the modern era.
Born in 1930, Marcel Dubé grew up in a modest home on Logan Street, in Montreal, which did not prevent him from studying at the legendary Sainte-Marie College, rue De Bleury, where Émile Nelligan, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau, Charles Gill and many others.
The young student displays a certain talent for writing. These will be the first tests, the first shocks. On May 22, 1948, the play Tit-Coq, by Gratien Gélinas, is presented at the Gesù where the young Marcel works as an usher. He saw the work several times.
His path is set: he will be a man of the theater!
PHOTO ARCHIVES THE PRESS
Guy Godin, Robert Rivard and Monique Miller in a scene from Areaby Marcel Dubé, February 21, 1953
While Radio-Canada television was in its infancy, in 1952, Marcel Dubé imagined the play that would catapult it into orbit. It will be Area, a work which features young thugs who engage in cigarette smuggling. The author wrote the play in three days, writing the lines in ballpoint pen, a practice to which he remained faithful throughout his life.
Area was created on January 23, 1953 and stars Robert Rivard, Raymond Lévesque, Guy Godin, Monique Miller, Hubert Loiselle, Jean-Louis Paris, Yves Létourneau and Jean Duceppe. Several of these actors remained loyal to Marcel Dubé. With Andrée Lachapelle, Marjolaine Hébert, Louise Marleau and others, they will constitute “his” family.
From there, Marcel Dubé established himself as the most prominent theater and television author in Quebec. The requests keep coming. He responds each time with enthusiasm, even if he tends to submit his texts late and make changes until the last minute.
Marcel Dubé earns a lot of money, but he also spends a lot. Cicada and generous party animal, he lived his entire life beyond his means.
Marcel Dubé knows consecration with A simple soldier, work which premiered on Radio-Canada television in December 1957. This piece revolves around Joseph Latour, played by Gilles Pelletier, who returns home after three years of training in the army. Hurt by his father’s remarriage to a woman he does not love, Joseph tears his soul apart in a monumental scene which is played in front of the closed door of the bedroom where his father and fat Bertha sleep.
PHOTO ARCHIVES THE PRESS
Gilles Pelletier and Paul Guèvremont in a scene from the play by Marcel Dubé A simple soldierin 1958
The television version ofA simple soldier is the subject of a chapter in Twelve theatrical twists, by Michel Tremblay. This will be one of the finest tributes of his career for Marcel Dubé.
Then, there will be a series of soap operas like The sandy coast, with Louise Marleau and Clémence DesRochers, and numerous plays. A fervent separatist, Marcel Dubé developed political ideas in Balance sheet And Beautiful Sundayswhich is sure to cause him some trouble.
For the room When the white geese return, which he wrote in 1966 for Louise Marleau (with whom he was madly in love), he set himself the objective of composing a tragedy as in the time of Greek theater. He doesn’t miss his shot!
The 1968-1969 season, during which the Montreal public could see three plays by Dubé, was the one in which the The Sisters-in-Law, by Michel Tremblay. Critics like to contrast Dubé with Tremblay, the first using polished language, the second exploiting the joual to the fullest. This invented opposition annoys Dubé who, after a “playful” version ofA simple soldieradopts normative French for his subsequent pieces.
If Tremblay’s theater focuses the magnifying glass on the lower middle class, Dubé’s does the same thing with a bourgeoisie stuffed with tranquilizers and drowned in scotch. In both cases, the feathers are scalpels.
In the mid-1970s, certain observers, including Jean-Claude Germain, made Marcel Dubé feel that he had completed “the inventory of his dramatic world” and that his time was over. The author, who is in his forties, suffers greatly.
Marcel Dubé had multiple hospital stays and surgical interventions to resolve problems related to an intestinal disease that he would carry with him throughout his life. His heavy dependence on alcohol doesn’t help matters. In the 1980s, he experienced a cruel slump.
PHOTO ARCHIVES THE PRESS
Marcel Dubé in 1990
But after a long purgatory, directors had the idea of reproducing his plays in the 1990s. René Richard Cyr took overA simple soldierwhile Lorraine Pintal and André Brassard do the same with Beautiful Sundays And Lilac time.
To make a living, Marcel Dubé accepts small correction contracts from a publishing house. The one who made Quebec spectators and viewers dream for many years with his plays is reduced to rewriting the texts of others.
At the start of 2016, man turned in on himself. He even refuses to answer calls from his friends. On April 7, Marcel Dubé died at the age of 86. Two weeks later, some personalities paid tribute to him.
His three muses are present: Andrée Lachapelle, Monique Miller and Louise Marleau. The latter reads an extract from her collection Sand poems. “You were just an omen that would continue through billions of images and unfathomable dreams. »
Claude Léveillée’s piano is heard. With crushed hearts, those present think of Ciboulette’s words to her beautiful Tarzan in the final scene of Area.
“Sleep, my handsome leader, street runner, roof jumper, sleep, I’m watching over you. »
Marcel Dubé – Write to be spoken
Leméac
424 pages