The DD Joanne Liu is not one of those who likes to be in the spotlight. The Quebecer accomplished her exploits in the mud and blood of countries ravaged by wars, population movements and epidemics. A moving play, freely inspired by his journey and his reflections, is dedicated to him.
Titled Our Cassandras, the play presented at Espace Libre is the result of exchanges between the former international president of Médecins sans frontières (MSF) and the playwright Anne-Marie Olivier. The latter also drew on certain public declarations made by Joanne Liu, notably to the United Nations Security Council, to write the framework of her show.
The play opens in an elementary school class in the Quebec region. A 10-year-old girl gives an oral presentation on green apples, her favorite fruit. She stopped eating this fruit when she learned that it came from South Africa, where apartheid was rife.
This acute awareness of social injustices and the suffering of people led the little girl with glasses to travel the world to do war medicine.
From Haiti to the prisons of Libya, via Liberia or Quebec grappling with a COVID-19 epidemic, the play traces the journey of this inspiring woman through her gestures, her righteousness and her uncompromising words. Those who saw her Everybody talks about it know it: the DD Liu has never held his tongue in his pocket.
Even Barack Obama tasted his cutting verve during a telephone call following an American strike on an MSF hospital in Afghanistan. “A mistake,” pleaded the president. Patients were burned to death in their beds; MSF has lost several employees. Joanne Liu had neither the time nor the inclination for diplomatic kowtowing, as we see in Our Cassandras.
This tense phone call between two Nobel Peace Prize winners (MSF won this distinction in 1999, Obama in 2009) constitutes one of the strong moments of this piece where we feel the indignation, the revolt, but also the impotence of this unstoppable woman, for whom “choosing life” is the only thing we can do.
With an economy of means (a canvas wall and a few hanging screens that slide on rails), the director Frédéric Dubois chose to emphasize the words and situations, without covering them with superfluous effects. The raw truth and the pain caused by the cruelty of men need no artifice.
PHOTO LUCILE PARRY-CANET, PROVIDED BY ESPACE LIBRE
Phara Thibault (left) and Jade Barshee play Annie and Joanne, friends since childhood.
In the role of Joanne Liu, Jade Barshee is luminous. She goes from a laughing child to a rebellious and impatient adult in an instant. She also knows how to brilliantly embody the very Cartesian side of Joanne Liu. No need for screams or tears to show us the interior landscapes of this woman who only finds solace in art.
Claudiane Ruelland is also very convincing when she plays Cassandra, this mythological figure who predicted the fall of Troy, but whom no one believes. These two aspects of the piece – the journey of Joanne Liu and the more mythological side of the subject – however lack a link. The transition from one to the other is sometimes abrupt, even destabilizing.
The two performers are undoubtedly the pillars of this show. Around them gravitates a gallery of more or less defined characters (with the exception of Annie, childhood friend of the DD Liu played by Phara Thibault).
After all, this show is not a fresco, but a dive into the life and deep convictions of one of our own. She is the only one we are talking about here and it is she who, when black covers the scene, reminds us of the importance of standing up for what really matters. It’s not nothing.
Our Cassandras
Text by Anne-Marie Olivier, directed by Frédéric Dubois. With Jade Barshee, Claudiane Ruelland, Eliot Laprise, Dayne Simard, Phara Thibault and Ismaïl Zourhlal
At Espace Libre until February 3, then at La Bordée from April 23.