Taking the pretext of new appointments to the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec, The duty invites you into the imagination of artists whose exemplary work promotes culture.
In front of the photographer To have to, Louise Forestier is at ease, all smiles, joy, incandescent. It occupies the entire space of the studio. His movements are lively, controlled. Here she goes up the collar of her raincoat to strike a pose. She turns her head, reverses it, brings it back again to the side of the photographer’s lens. She laughs. And she continues to talk to me, to explain herself, to tell her story.
Where does his love of the stage come from? Probably nuns, she said without hesitation. “I wanted to go to Collège Marguerite-Bourgeoys. This was the first higher education school for girls in Montreal. In 8e year, learning the job of secretary depresses her as much as possible. “I went to see my father and told him that I was going to do my Latin Elements during the summer. I wanted him to negotiate, during this time, with the nuns so that they would take me to college. He listened to me. »
Louise Forestier in the middle of the nuns? “The uniform, for me, was wonderful! The veils, the long skirts, the noise it all made as we walked. The noise of the long rosaries along the skirts, that noise! The way we talk, how we walk, the way we stand when we’re dressed like that, with big dresses, it was very theatrical. »
She needed this straitjacket. “It allowed me to learn how to outsmart the system, to discover how not to get caught, not to be just a buma dissident, to play with it, to learn, to know how far to go, to the border, to the edge…”
His luck? It was to meet Marcel Sabourin and Jean-Pierre Ronfard at the National Theater School. “Sabourin, it’s a madman who arrived among us! He made us improvise. He freed us. We had among us actors who were very bad at playing French classics. All of a sudden, when they were asked to play in Québécois, they became extraordinary actors! And then Ronfard, a Frenchman, can you imagine anything better on earth to introduce you to this profession of actor with rigor? Its entire culture was at our service. His intelligence too. »
Oh yes. The party is over ! “I’m out of the game”, as Leonard Cohen said.
“When we played Racine, at the theatre, we had to work so as not to look stupid! It had to ring, you understand? Words must have meaning. You have to wear them. They must be heard. They must make sense. She feels the importance of words has been lost a bit today.
The human voice
“People ask me if I mind not singing anymore. Slippery! Can you hear me ? Pan-tou-te! I write ! I am well ! I take care of my alley. I love Montreal. I love this city. But you have to learn to look around, she says, to ask questions about our world. Housing prices are skyrocketing. Misery continues to make its nest while we speak of national pride with empty words, she regrets. “Behind my house, not far, just after the rain, I found cushions in a corner, a large sheet, socks with holes in them… Someone had slept there, before the heavy rains… How can you still explain such a thing in our society? »
No, she does not want to go back on stage. But she goes there anyway! “To create a surprise, in Robert’s last show [Charlebois]I agreed to take over Lindberg. Imagine that I had to repeat vocalizations for two months to prepare! It’s no small matter, singing! We have no idea what this job requires. »
Text messages, answering machines, everyone dematerialized by predigested music does not interest him at all. “It’s the human voice that I love!” I do not support dematerialized business. A voice, I want to know “where it is, what has it done”, as one of our great poets, Plume Latraverse, says! »
Writing
During the pandemic, she wrote a lot. “I really like crows. I had a couple of crows that often came down the alley. I imagined a crow walking around, above the pandemic… And I wrote seven or eight texts, on all sorts of subjects, around the crow. “What does it give in the end? “Poetry, sung on a beat electroacoustics for a bit. It’s medieval folk, if that makes any sense! It takes some money to record this. I applied for funding myself. It can be summed up in a few lines: “Hello, my name is Louise Forestier. I will be 80 years old. I would like to record what I have just written…”
Over time, she talked a lot about herself. Should we go back again to L’Osstidcho, on the importance that this extraordinary spectacle had, on the shock represented by this incarnation of a new time? “There was excitement at that time. It was a special moment, a release. But with our songs, we arrived 20 years after the Global denial by Borduas. We have always been behind the painters! »
To read and see in video
What has been too little said about it so far? “Writing, precisely! We haven’t talked so much about my relationship to writing. We weren’t discussing that. Never. As if it weren’t important! Why ? I do not know. However, it is fundamental! But it is true that if I had wanted us to talk about it more, I would have talked about it more myself…”
To write ? It always proceeds in the same way, since the time of L’Osstidcho. “I started writing at that time. I sat down. And I wrote when you’re not here. »
Everyone has their own way of writing, of course. “Me, I first do 10 or 15 pages, without controlling myself too much. We develop from that. Then we leave the text aside. We look at what is good. We think of other things… When the flashes don’t come, we take one from what is already there. We work it. […] Sometimes nothing comes. I stop. I leave. I go elsewhere. I look outside, through the window. And then it starts again… Provided you work! »
Accessible
Posterity, glory, fame? “I never wanted to be really famous,” she says. “I wanted to have fun, “triper” “, she launches in a burst of laughter. “When I saw glory seize Robert [Charlebois], all of a sudden, in six months, I understood that I was not tempted, at least not in this way. It imprisoned me. And then, the glory, it was not the same thing for a woman. It scares men when you’re very famous, you know… There aren’t any men who will devote themselves to your career, like you find women who do for a singer. No, I like the kind of popularity I had with the public. I was approachable. The girl next door, as they say. »
Finished the song, really? ” Oh yes. The party is over ! I’m out of the game, as Leonard Cohen said. And don’t count on me to criticize what young people are doing. It’s not the same job anymore. I wouldn’t want to be in their place! They didn’t have it easy. »