Forty-eight hours. This is the time it took Phara Thibault to write his first text, Chocolate. Since then, the life of the young woman of 22 years is no longer the same.
Born in Haiti and adopted by a Quebec family at the age of two and a half, she grew up in Sainte-Germaine-du-Lac-Etchemin, a village in Beauce where ethnocultural diversity was limited to her alone.
“As a child, I thought I was going to turn white as I got older,” says the playwright and actress. I had never seen black adults. My Barbies were white, all my books featured white characters… I didn’t have a narrative that suited me, neither at home, nor at school, nor on television. »
To explain her difference, her adoptive mother told her that she had fallen into a pot of chocolate when she was little. A clumsy explanation, although full of love, which in no way satisfied the young woman’s quest for identity.
“In 2020, during the pandemic, I felt an urgency to say, to name what I had experienced. We were in the middle of a wave of Black Lives Matter. It was a period of intense reflection for me. I reflected on the ordinary racism that colored my daily life and on the reality of adoption. I wanted to confront my adoptive parents, but I was poorly received. I said to myself that if I couldn’t reach them with my words, I was going to go there with poetry. »
The one who didn’t even know she liked to write took up the pen for the first time.
I wrote Chocolate in two days. I didn’t even stop to eat or sleep. It was a real impulse. I was convinced that no one was going to read me. Basically, it was a strength for me: I didn’t censor myself.
Phara Thibault
“I was struck by the immensity of Phara’s talent when I read this text,” says stage director and dramatic advisor Marie-Ève Milot. It’s an important narrative, with immense social significance, which is done in a sensitive way. This way that Phara has of recounting his trajectory is very powerful. His text is a quest, a crossing, told in the form of strong and evocative paintings. Each of his paintings is a dramatic poem. »
A text that changes a life
This text completely changed the life of its author. From a personal point of view first. ” From Chocolate, I have never been so close to my adoptive parents. The exercise was very restorative. Everyone can have biases. My adoptive mother, who is the person who loves me the most in the world, was awkward with me. No one is immune. »
On the professional level, the text has opened doors that Phara Thibault did not even imagine.
It enabled him to win the Égrégore Intercollegiate Dramatic Writing Competition, it was presented for reading at the Never Lu Festival, was published by Fides and comes to La Petite Licorne in its theatrical form pushed by a wind ( very) favorable. The KO24 production box is even working on a film adaptation.
” Chocolate allowed me to fly with my own wings before the end of my studies at the Saint-Hyacinthe theater school”, says the young girl with a smile. Since then, we have seen her on television in All the life And Kilucru Island. She will also be in the series IXE-13, encamped shortly after the end of World War II. “I play a spy who defuses atomic bombs! It’s the fun to play a strong black woman, who is not a victim, in a period series. »
In the theatre, we saw her on the stage of the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier in If you ever listen to us, as well as in the room you are animal presented at the Quat’Sous. His next challenge will be to speak his own words on stage night after night. “It’s dizzying, because it’s a real exposure for me. I will have to dive back into my old wounds. I will have to surround myself with a bubble of love after each performance. At the same time, Chocolate remains a story with a lot of light, which allows me to see the journey I have gone through in my life. »
The path that awaits her will, she hopes, be marked by the writing of a second text. “Right now, I have second-book syndrome; I feel a pressure to do better than the first. But I still feel a great need to write. I have other things to say. But I wonder: do I have the right to talk about anything other than racism? I like to carry this word on stage, but I don’t want to be compartmentalized…”
Chocolate is presented at La Petite Licorne until April 14th. Note that a mediation activity with adoptees and adoptive parents is organized by the organization L’Hybridé on March 31st.
Also on display
Beware of sleeping waters
PHOTO F. CLEMENTE PHOTOGRAPHY, PROVIDED BY COMPAGNIE YVANN ALEXANDRE
Compagnie Yvann Alexandre will tour in Quebec with Beware of sleeping waters.
The French choreographer Yvann Alexandre offers with this creation a reinterpretation that is said to be audacious of the Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky. In place of the swans, it is the white and black waters of the Amazon that oppose each other here, while the eight performers will embody the symbolic figures of the bewitched woman, the jealous sister, the deceitful sorcerer or the illusory essence of the prince, in a creation that emancipates itself from dramaturgy in favor of a contemporary aesthetic and a “calligraphic” gesture. The contemporary dance company will offer Quebecers the largest foreign dance tour since 2020, when the piece will be presented in six cities in the province.
From March 7 to 25, in Sherbrooke, Sorel-Tracy, Gaspé, Quebec, Sainte-Geneviève and Victoriaville
Iris Gagnon-Paradise, The Press
Colossus
PHOTO BY BRYONY JACKSON, PROVIDED BY DANSE DANSE
Colossus by Stephanie Lake Company
Danse Danse welcomes the Stephanie Lake Company for the first time with Colossus. For this large-scale piece, the choreographer Stephanie Lake, figurehead of Australian dance, joins forces with the dance schools of the cities where she is visiting in order to constitute the wide distribution of this creation which will include 64 performers on stage. in Montreal, including some fifty students from the Montreal School of Contemporary Dance and the Superior Ballet School of Quebec. Building on the joy and excitement of the collective experience, Colossus stages bodies that move in unison, each retaining its wild individuality, taking up certain patterns observable in nature, such as the dance of schools of fish or the flight of starlings, exploring at the same time the relationship between individual and community.
From March 8 to 11 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts
Iris Gagnon-Paradise, The Press
Never wipe tears without gloves
PHOTO YAN DOUBLET, LE SOLEIL ARCHIVES
Olivier Arteau
Le Trident presents Véronique Côté’s stage adaptation of the Swedish novel Never wipe away tears without gloves, on the topic of AIDS. The staging is by Alexandre Fecteau, who directs an imposing cast of 12 performers, with four musicians. The new artistic director of the company, Olivier Arteau, plays the leading role of Rasmus. At the beginning of the 1980s, Rasmus fled his village and the suffocating family nest to live his homosexuality openly in Stockholm. He will meet, among others, Benjamin (Maxime Beauregard-Martin), son of a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Paul (Maxime Robin), “mad rallying point and mother hen for lost gays”. A poignant story that reminds us of the path traveled by a tried community.
From March 7 to 1er April, at the Grand Théâtre de Québec
Luc Baker, The Press
Good looking guy
PHOTO VALÉRIE SUBMITTED, PROVIDED BY THE CTD’A
Marie Bernier, Cynthia Wu-Maheux and Oumy Dembele in rehearsal at the CTD’A
The Center du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui offers a feminist and committed satire written by Canadian author Erin Shields (Handsome Man) and translated by Olivier Sylvestre. “A show that demystifies, with humor, everything that is toxic in our popular culture”, they say. The women of Good looking guy shamelessly assume all roles of power. By taking up themes dear to the author: ordinary sexism, mansplaining, gender stereotypes… Gabriel Lemire plays the handsome guy in question, alongside Marie Bernier, Cynthia Wu-Maheux and Oumy Dembele.
From March 14 to April 5, at the Jean-Claude-Germain hall of the Center du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui
Luc Baker, The Press
Cut
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE PRODUCTION/THE COMPANIONS BAROQUES
Cut invites us to an experience where a feminine archetype is undone and recreated before us.
Cut invites us to an experience where a feminine archetype is undone and recreated in front of us, in an intimate and slightly destabilizing space for the public. The press release speaks to us of this proposal as “a powerful performative object”, with a device at the height of this text which has “the potential to open new angles of discussion and to propel our respective practices”. Nice program!
In the intimate room of the Théâtre Prospero, from March 14 to 1er april
Luc Baker, The Press
Sportriarchy
PHOTO PROVIDED BY PRODUCTION/THE PRECIOUS CRACKS
Sportriarchya creation of Précieuses fissures, an interdisciplinary theater company
Exploring the links between sport, entertainment and society, Sportriarchy is “an exploded and humorous work that invites the public to take a fresh look at our political, sporting and media institutions, to better rewrite the narratives of female power”. This is the proposal to which the dance and theater artists agree for us in this creation by Claire Renaud, scenographer, author and theater director. This one signs the first show of the Precious cracks, an interdisciplinary theater company whose “mission is to create works of social and philosophical significance”. A collage of textual, sound, video and performative materials.
From March 14 to 1er April, at Espace Libre
Luc Baker, The Press