With Paul at homethe Théâtre du Trident gives the work of the comic strip artist Michel Rabagliati its first performance on the stage. It is up to the theater woman Anne-Marie Olivier to adapt this well-known and beloved work.
THE Paul are now part of our cultural landscape, although they travel across borders, with eight languages currently taking up different titles. The author’s regularity, from the very beginning Paul in the countrysidewhich launched the series in 1999, has produced around ten titles rich in observations, rooted in everyday experiences.
In this sense, the choice of Anne-Marie Olivier to ensure this first theatrical adaptation seems obvious. It is that the sensitivity to detail of the one who gave us Mauritius And 15 Ways to Find Yourself particularly fits Rabagliati’s writing of ordinary life, its authenticity.
The main person concerned will nevertheless defend herself, when other pens could have also appropriated this universe: “The side that we can have in common, Michel and I, is above all the gathering of reality. And the fact of respecting that: of being close to it and of trusting that. Maybe, there, we have a kinship.”
In a production by Lorraine Côté which will revolve around the character’s relationship with his mother, whose death is one of the lines of this Paul at homeOlivier thus sought not to “get in the way”, opting instead for an “invisible adaptation”. “I didn’t want the fans to not recognize their Paul: “But what have they done to my Paul!””
She wanted to “take care” of the living matter that makes up this beloved work and stick as closely as possible to the attention to detail that runs through it: “Which means that sometimes, we’re down to the last comma, with Michel!” Over the course of the twenty versions of the text that accompanied the work process, numerous back-and-forths with the author allowed us to confirm the directions taken, the changes to this story of an alter ego – something that Rabagliati has never hidden. “It’s his life,” Olivier emphasizes: “so you have to take care of that.”
The popular work
“All the humanity and finesse in this work,” continues the author and actress, “it’s amazing! And it’s crazy to see how Quebecers, and elsewhere too, fans in fact, have made it their own. It’s part of the family, so to speak!” She doesn’t hesitate to talk about a “great popular work”: “that speaks to our heads, to our hearts, and that improves our lives.”
Rabagliati’s work is certainly popular in its quantitative sense – more than half a million albums sold since 1999. But “great popular works change us” too. And the Paul achieve this, among other things, with their different levels of reading, their culturally anchored references and the precision of detail for these ordinary characters – who go fishing and eat toast, as was already caricatured Paul at home. “It’s an almost Proustian precision about us!”
“It’s so close to the truth, close to life. So, we recognize ourselves in it. It’s this little detail, the choice of clothes, everything: it’s fine, fine, fine. And it’s pop in the noble sense of the term: what great works are and what I love so much. Well before working on it, I was surprised to what extent my guy and I were so into it; it reaches several generations, and that’s also typical of a great work.”
A Paul dark ?
The latest in the series, this “at home” version of Paul is strewn with health problems; and also with bereavements, experienced by the character that actor Hugues Frenette will play here: that of his mother, first and foremost, but also the aftermath of his separation from his partner, his daughter’s departure for England. So much so that this album published in 2019 has been presented as more loaded, sadder – an opinion that Anne-Marie Olivier does not share: “They say it’s the “dark chapter”. But for me, no: it’s still very, very funny. And super touching.”
Readers will keep in mind this image of a backyard left to rot, an abandoned landscape that illustrates a floating character, his life stumbling against knots. The woman of the theater nevertheless recalls how much the story brings a “transformation”: “There are hard bits… But the fact that they were shared makes us feel better — because we have them, too. In this sense, it is a truly beautiful Paul where we recognize each other.”
An observation that brings us back to Rabagliati’s work, to the way in which his sincerity and generosity have carved out a place for themselves in the hearts of the Quebec public, and beyond: “Shamelessness is a gift you give to others by talking about your dark areas.”