After a first notable visit to the Center du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui last season, the multidisciplinary show Pissing while standing without lifting your skirt is back to highlight with sometimes fine, sometimes coarser strokes the hazards of a quest for identity far from diktats and clichés.
At the beginning, there are the labels. Those that we lean against each other or in which we wrap ourselves to try to find our place, our community. Olivier Arteau, conductor of this eight-voice collective work, abhors these reductive shortcuts. So he decided to attack them head on with a good dose of self-deprecation.
It is under a host of crazy labels – polyfurious, pandepressive or even biradical – that the performers appear on stage at the start of the show. For an hour and a half, all these beautiful people will question these short descriptions in order to better try to deconstruct them.
Thus, in the first part, a group of friends with diverse sexual and gender identities meet for the bachelorette party of one of their own. The evening is going to go badly. And a question will emerge from the criticisms that will be thrown: how can you truly be yourself in a world where everyone feels forced to follow the strict rules of their community? Should you necessarily (and exclusively) be this or that? Above all, should we always act accordingly?
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE CENTER DU THÉÂTRE D’AUTJOURI D’HUI
Laurence Gagné-Frégeau
In the second part, the show takes a more intimate turn, as certain performers come to the microphone to confess a shame that has been gnawing at them for a long time, in the hope of seeing it metamorphose into something softer. In this autofictional segment, the shadow prevails over the light. Some testimonies are very touching, others shake our self-righteousness. Some use words, others use dancing or singing. However, all of them are imbued with a great (and sometimes wavering) humanity.
And it is in hope, with a luminous and moving musical number – carried by the captivating voice of Laurence Gagné-Frégeau – that the show ends.
Luminous performers
Olivier Arteau, the new darling of directing, wished with Pissing while standing without lifting your skirt provoke reflection on the difficult construction of identity and on a possible way of freeing oneself from the gaze of others to truly be oneself. He half succeeds with this text where immodesty unfortunately prevails over depth.
The performances are certainly often masterful – the dancer Fabien Piché is magnetic and Vincent Roy shines with his charisma, just like Ariel Charest, “straight ally » with a strong tongue – but the whole is uneven. As if Arteau and his gang had wanted to pull in all directions with this protean spectacle, without finding its true voice.
But perhaps in the urgency to say, to denounce, to express oneself and to ax the clichés in order to breathe a little easier, this somewhat messy proliferation was inevitable. The disconcerted spectator will always be able to cling to the vivid emotions which will sometimes grip him and to the few strong images which will stick to his retina. It’s already a great gift.
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Pissing while standing without lifting your skirt
Text and direction by Olivier Arteau, with Ariel Charest, Laurence Gagné-Frégeau, Lucie M. Constantineau, Jorie Pedneault, Fabien Piché, Vincent Roy, Zoé Tremblay Bianco and Sarah Villeneuve-Desjardins.
Today’s Theater CenterUntil May 6.