Mr. Minister of Culture, Mr. Lacombe, since I began my career, all the politicians and ministers of Culture were from another generation, the age of my parents. I always had a certain feeling of being looked down on or not really being taken seriously. To be in front of my severe teachers who demanded that I keep quiet, rolling my eyes.
But life does what it does and I am now a man in my forties. And I have, for the first time, the impression that my political interlocutor is part of the same team as me. That finally I will be able to be heard from the place and age where I am. However, I am not going to address you personally, Mr. Lacombe, I do not know you personally and your title requires consideration.
Despite the time that has passed, one thing has not changed, and that is my fatigue. That of hearing the same recriminations from my environment repeated and, above all, that of having this eternal perception of not being listened to, or even respected.
A naive question: does the title inevitably create a wall that cuts you off from the expertise of those who know, know, experience and understand the directions to take?
On Sunday, April 14, more than 100 young performing arts artists gathered to share their fears and concerns, and see together what measures to take to claim their rights. The latest budget cuts for the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), as for the rest of the sector, worry them. I attended as director of the French section of the National Theater School of Canada, in order to hear them and find out how I could support them. And after 10 minutes of listening to them, I was catapulted 20 years earlier. Everything was the same, everything expressed there had changed in no way.
Maybe I suddenly thought it was worse. And that’s why I decided to write to you. Not to repeat to you the demands of the field or tell you about the imbalance created by the multiplication of distribution platforms which harms us. Not to tell you that the CALQ no longer has, in my eyes, the means to fulfill its mandate. Not to tell you about my situation as a creator, which is far from that which the generation before me had when they were my age.
Not to remind you that on the show In the media, you candidly admitted to having favored, for budgetary choices, TV producers with whom you sat down this winter. Not to point out to you that clearly, sitting with the Conseil québécois du théâtre, the results were not the same on this side.
No.
I am writing to you to tell you this: don’t you want to be the minister of our generation? The one who will not do things like our parents, for our children? Why not listen to them differently? I meet them every day, the young people who will make the theater of tomorrow, and I swear to you, they are exceptional.
We are, Mr. Minister, Mr. Lacombe, the momentum of identity that you need. We carry the identity of Quebec. We are the bodies, the faces, the words, the stories. Those who tell the story. We are here. Just there. So close. So present. So invested.
I think you are not realizing the full extent of our strength. The one that would advance so many things.
Matthew. It’s Frédéric who’s writing to you. I extend my hand to you. I swear, it could be crazy.