For many artists, the post-pandemic period instills a sense of urgency, a need to create without waiting for deadlines, and a greater social conscience. Contact with the public of festivals and venues across Quebec resumed with a certain frenzy this summer, but the pandemic has made it possible to learn the hard way that nothing should be taken for granted, particularly for the arts of stage.
While it is difficult to already identify the impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic will have had on the artistic field, certain lines seem to be drawn.
All isolated at home, the artists, like other citizens, had their eyes riveted on the same issues.
“A paradox was that of greater social awareness, even though people were more physically isolated than ever. Because the pandemic stopped everything, we were all watching the same news. Everyone was plugged in at the same time. It put the “focus” back on several issues,” says comedian, author and director Mathieu Quesnel, referring in particular to the “Black Lives Matter” movement with the death of George Floyd in May 2020 and the pursuit of #MeToo.
Comedian Emna Achour, at the heart of the female humor collective “Les Allumettières”, says she sees practically a “point of no return” with everything that has happened during these two years of pandemic.
“The fact that we had a lot of time, that we couldn’t go out, it was a time when a lot of people started reading about subjects like social injustices, like racism, feminism,” said she said recently in an interview when she presented the collective show “Quebecoises” at Zoofest, the public’s favorite of the 2022 edition.
“I was already a little committed, politicized before the pandemic, but I allowed myself in my comedy numbers really absurd and not at all committed stuff. But here it seems that I am unable to go on stage and do an “uncommitted” number. In my head, there are so many topics to discuss, things to denounce and injustices to highlight, ”she said.
Allana Lindgren, associate professor and dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Victoria, goes so far as to say of the next generation that “the percentage of students who are highly motivated by questions of identity, or the crisis climate change, or politically engaged, socially conscious, it’s almost 100%.
“Content-wise, (students) are trying to figure out who they are, what’s important to them, where they want to go, and even before the pandemic it wasn’t not always only cheerful, young people can also be quite gloomy. And that darkness has found a nest through different types of work. So what does isolation mean? It is about exploring the themes of alienation, isolation, with a certain pessimism about the future. But from my perspective, the very act of creating is an act of hope,” Lindgren says.
“Coming out of the pandemic, artists will be the ones, as they always have been, who help us start to understand ‘what was it, what we just went through, what was what this means for us individually and collectively”, argues the professor.
Last May, Mathieu Quesnel launched a call for a kind of “Bordel” of the theatrical world – in reference to the bar on Ontario Street in Montreal with its evenings where the next generation and more established comedians rub shoulders. On social networks, he speaks of a theatrical place in co-ownership “where the booking would never be done more than a month in advance”, with “shows fresh out of the oven”.
“With the pandemic, I realized even more that I do theater to work as a team, to see people,” said the actor and author who launched this project, provisionally called The Pirate or the Pirate Theater.
In an interview, he describes this sense of urgency in creation in a period when the news gives little respite.
“Hey, maybe there’s going to be another pandemic, maybe it’s all going to shut down, maybe there’s going to be a world war, maybe global warming is going to flood every city, it’s not There will be more theatre, so we have to create as quickly as possible. Because at some point, maybe it won’t exist anymore. I am a little delirious, but there is still something that is of this order, ”he maintains.
Practicing your art during the pandemic
With repeated confinements, performing artists had no choice but to turn to social networks. Already a business card used by many before the pandemic, it has proven to be almost essential during the pandemic.
“I told myself that I should not lose the small gains that I had made in humor in six months before the pandemic”, confided Emna Achour, who in 2019 swapped her notebook and her microphone as a sports journalist to embark on the medium of humor.
“So I started writing video capsules, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to put them on YouTube. There are maybe three people who will see them, but it will mean that if someone one day wants to know more about me, and Google my name, at least there will be something that exists”. That’s how I ensured myself a certain presence, and I’m convinced that it allowed me to have contracts, otherwise who would have come to pick me up at home in my pajamas at the I-don’t-know-how-th wave. , she added.
Although she had had time to “write three books” at the start of the pandemic, the mindset was no longer there to write jokes. Especially in a context where she was afraid of not having the money to pay her rent.
“Then the stress dropped. Except that writing when you don’t have a show (in sight), I’m not capable. It may be my past as a journalist that terrifies me of the white pages, but I need a certain mandate with a ‘deadline’”, she underlined.
Online shows started on Zoom. “I was lucky to have friends who had the energy to put it in place, to get money, and partners. I organized just one, with a GoFundMe. We were trying things, ”she says, also referring to these invitations on Facebook to shows in parks with several comedians.
Young comedian Lucas Boucher, co-founder and host of the first comedy night in a park in the summer of 2020, which eventually created the group “Picnic & Humor”, believes there is a future for the initiative founded in the emergency of the pandemic.
“Even though the pandemic is almost over, there are still people coming, 100 or 150 people every week. We’re really glad it’s so popular. It would be stupid to miss it. I hope it will continue (next summer). In any case, I will push for it to continue, ”he said.
For his part, Mathieu Quesnel says he has felt lately “the renewed pleasure of meeting people, spectators”.
“I try to work on the things that speak to me the most, that are the most important to me. It’s somewhat in line with my idea of creating pirate theatre, of making theater that allows this kind of expression to exist quickly. Because me in any case, I feel the need to create and not always wait for deadlines, not to wait two or three years before creating a show”, he explained.