First published by Atelier 10, the piece women’s peace, around prostitution, returns to the stage after two postponements due to the pandemic. Except this time the try body, written with legal researcher Martine B. Côté, completes the process by attempting to deepen the issue, in a more reflective context than fiction alone allows.
The very possibility of the commodification of women’s bodies, and the unease it causes in the playwright, will ultimately cross women’s peaceone of the divisions between a professor, a respected feminist intellectual, defending the right of women to decide for themselves, to the sister of a former student who will reproach her for having normalized this activity in her teaching.
The irony here is that strong opposition came from a former Côté student who, in an online letter, said she did not find herself in the portrait of prostitution sketched by the play. Far from social networks and the virtual, the playwright exchanged with her critic and agreed on a addendum at the show, in the hall of La Bordée: “We should always consider our political adversaries with this deep respect – with friendship, even. But of course in the context of this debate, it’s difficult because it gets very emotional, very quickly. »
Indeed, the camps are divided, often clearly, between “pro-sex worker” positions, which aim to decriminalize prostitution, and “abolitionist” positions, which rather seek to eliminate it. On the causes of such a cleavage, Côté reflects for a while: “I think it comes from the fact that we are talking about women’s bodies. And when it comes to your body, the reaction is immediate, and visceral. I feel like that’s part of the answer. Another thing is that the political positions around this issue are so opposed… The meeting space is really hard to find. »
Choose your side
This investigative theme, first commissioned by artistic director Michel Nadeau, grabbed Côté, who describes the subsequent work as a “big crash” in his life: “I didn’t expect to be so moved. I knew nothing about it, and what I learned shocked me. It made me immerse myself in research much more intensely than I expected. »
Hence the idea of splitting the subsequent work into two distinct parts, fiction and essay. The impact, however, remains undiminished, linked in particular to certain statistics that will have marked out the research: those, for example, indicating that in Quebec, between a third and a little more than half of the women who enter in prostitution would be minors.
For a progressive discourse that places individual freedom at the highest level, the so-called abolitionist position may nevertheless appear conservative. Côté, by letting her reservations about prostitution speak, was she not afraid of placing herself on the wrong side of history? ” Completely. It’s all part of my shock. When I realized how I felt, and that finally I was at odds with my whole environment, with feminists that I admire, with people that I love, it deeply affected me. shaken. »
“But I think you have to keep thinking, even when you get to that place… and that’s what I tried to do,” continues the theater woman, who only hopes that her work will provoke conversation on this thorny subject of society, which goes beyond the restricted environment of prostitution: “In the play, we are at the heart of a group of friends who, like me, have the impression that this subject does not concern their life, do not touch them. And there, each in their trajectory, the idea of the monetization of the body explodes in their face… when they had the impression of being very far from it. »
“With regard strictly to the theatrical, concludes the playwright, there is in this project, despite the dangerous side of its material, something like a space for healing or repair. There is a lot of pain and a lot of love in this piece. For the future, he still has this wish that the show, beyond its polemical nature, will know how to find its audience and become a matter of debate.