Actress and former senator Viola Léger died on Saturday at the age of 92. Acadia, the village of Bouctouche and the theater world are mourning the death of the irreplaceable performer of La Sagouine, a character created by Antonine Maillet.
His death was confirmed at the end of the evening by his press secretary, Carol Doucet. Victim of a stroke at the end of January 2017, Viola Léger (pronounced Légère) announced on February 23 that she was retiring from public life.
“The Academy is losing a monument,” said Monique Poirier, co-director general of the Pays de la Sagouine, in an interview. “This is shocking news, even though we knew the end was near. She was an authentic artist, close to the world, with extraordinary talent, ”she said.
As a young artist, she met her at the famous Bouctouche attraction in the mid-1990s. “She was very generous. She loved spending time with young artists. It was a privilege to be able to rub shoulders with her,” said Ms.me Pear tree.
At the end of a busy career spanning more than 45 years, Viola Léger will have played not only the character of La Sagouine 2,000 to 3,000 times, but also several other characters in theater and on television.
She also created her own theater company, was a senator from 2001 to 2005 in Ottawa and set up a foundation in her name to promote theater in Acadie.
“Viola was a national treasure, nothing less,” summed up director Phil Comeau, who had the chance to work with her on three productions, including the fiction series The Sagouine.
“She was a very focused woman when she was working. She put herself in an absolutely incredible state of mind. You said action, and you didn’t need to do a second take, ”he testified.
In 2017, a tribute evening was organized for the great actress at the Capitol Theater in Moncton, New Brunswick. Despite her fragile health, Ms.me Léger had attended the show, remembers Monique Poirier. “His reaction had been so moving. You could feel that she really felt the love of the public, ”she said.
In an interview with Radio-Canada, the novelist and playwright Antonine Maillet underlined the one who gave life to her character for decades. “She delivered it with such conviction and talent that now La Sagouine is known across the world,” she said.
“La Sagouine came alive because of this actress who embodied more than a character, who embodied a people,” added Ms.me Mallet.
Always associated with Acadia, it is nevertheless in the United States that the actress was born. His parents and grandparents were Franco-Americans, these Canadians who left to find a better life by going to work in the textile factories of New England. The second of seven children, she was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts on June 29, 1930.
Later, her family returned to settle in New Brunswick where she studied, notably at the Notre-Dame d’Acadie institution. It was there that she met and befriended Antonine Maillet.
At 18, Mr.me Léger entered the nuns of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart under the name of Sister Andréa-Marie. She taught theater and literature for several years in the province.
After the death of her father in 1968, she went to study at Boston University where she obtained a master’s degree in theater education. Then, we find her in Paris where she perfected her training with the famous director, actor and choreographer Jacques Lecoq. It was there, in 1970, that she received a text from Antonine Maillet: The Sagouine.
A year later, Viola Léger’s life changes forever. On February 20, 1971, Antonine Maillet presented her new play for public reading at the National Library of Quebec in Montreal as part of an activity of the Center desauteurspratiques. The author offers M.me Light to embody the character. The latter also leaves her religious community.
The play premiered at the Les Feux chalins theater in Moncton on November 24, 1971. Based on another text by Antonine Maillet, The Dirtymounted in 1968, The Sagouine, 72, is the daughter and wife of fishermen who became a floor washer. Through her monologues, her soliloquies, she evokes with color and warmth the beauty of her country but also the misery and suffering of its inhabitants.
With her character, she “has touched the collective memory of an entire people”, they say of her on the website of the organization Le pays de la Sagouine (sagouine.com). “Through aged, rare and poetic words, she brings us back to one primordial thing: human dignity,” we add.
On Monday, October 9, 1972, the play was performed for the first time at the Théâtre du Rideau Vert in Montreal. The next day in The Pressthe columnist Martial Dassylva signs a text filled with praise, both with regard to the character and his interpreter.
“La Sagouine is not beautiful, but she is fine, with that finesse that neither diplomas nor good manners give,” wrote our former colleague at the time. He called Viola Léger’s performance “simply stunning” with a character composition “remarkable in every way”.
In subsequent years, the play was performed throughout Canada, the United States and French-speaking Europe.
Since 1993, it has been performed every summer in the Pays de la Sagouine, a tourist destination in Bouctouche, New Brunswick, where the fishing village from the imagination of Antonine Maillet is reproduced.
When Viola Léger received the Governor General’s Award for Artistic Achievement (Theatre) in 2013, her biography indicates that she performed it more than 2,500 times. The play has been adapted twice for television; in 1976 by Jean-Paul Fugère and in 2006 by Phil Comeau.
Despite this almost daily contact between the performer and her character, Viola Léger has always worked seriously in rehearsals, as can be seen in the excellent documentary Simply Viola by Rodolphe Charon.
” I know The Sagouine from the inside but not from the outside”, she says, not very interested in seeing herself on stage.
Other roles
Of course, La Sagouine will have been the character of a lifetime for Mme Light. To the point where, in July 2013, the actress confessed, in an interview with the newspaper New Acadia, to have felt a slight shock after learning that the administrators of the Pays de la Sagouine were conducting a call for applications to find new actresses who could embody her character. But she recognized that it was necessary to take over.
“Three actresses had been selected, but the experience was not considered conclusive and Viola Léger returned alone, last summer, in this role,” said a report by Radio-Canada Acadie on January 22, 2016. .
That said, Viola Léger has championed several other roles in her career. On television, we have seen her in the sitcom Free exchange (Aline Robichaud) by Christian Fournier, Ginette Tremblay, Bernard Dansereau and Annie Piérard and in Bouscotte (Gabrielle Lévesque) by Victor-Lévy Beaulieu.
In the theatre, she has performed in plays by Michel Tremblay, Tennessee Williams, Frederico Garcia Lorca and many others.
In 2001, she obtained the Masque for best actress (tied with her play partner Linda Sorgini) for her role as Grace in Grace and Gloria by Tom Ziegler.
This great career has been studded with numerous awards and distinctions, including four honorary doctorates, the Order of Canada, the Order of New Brunswick, the Order of Arts and Letters of France, the Order of Francophones of America and the Order of the Pleiades.