After four years of research and interviews, residencies conducted from Baie-Comeau to Outremont, via Gaspé, Le Bic, Rivière-du-Loup, Repentigny, Saguenay, Rouyn-Noranda and Trois-Rivières, the PàP is about to unveil While the fields burnThe play, which revolves around a slightly Chekhovian family – it is inspired by that of The cherry orchard —, allows its creators to address some of the most pressing current issues related to nature and regional development. The show will visit eight Quebec cities before being presented at the Outremont Theatre on November 13 and 14.
Right from the start, Patrice Dubois, co-author and director of the show, pronounces words like “connect”, “open up” and “decentralize”. “The PàP has always been interested in the Quebec territory, the issues it carries, the way it sculpts our dramaturgy”, recalls the man who has been directing the company founded in 1978 for ten years.
“It is with this objective of decentralizing our approach that we created L’Ensemble five years ago.” The group, which “draws on the knowledge of others to create and fuel an ongoing conversation,” includes Zoé Boudou, Dany Boudreault, Laurence Dauphinais, Patrice Dubois, Harry Standjofski and Marie-Hélène Thibault.
In 2020, Dubois sent his researchers to the trail of resource regions, those whose economy is based on the exploitation and marketing of natural resources. Exploring the historical, cultural, economic, regional, political and ecological aspects, the investigators tackled the Gaspé and fishing, Abitibi-Témiscamingue and the mining industry, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean and water, the Côte-Nord and pulp and paper, Bas-Saint-Laurent and food sovereignty, Mauricie and the forest.
“We wanted to know what was behind the expression “resource region,” explains Dubois. “What is the region far from? For whom is the region a resource? We asked these questions to 80 people across the territory: a newcomer who works in Baie-James, an Indigenous woman on the Côte-Nord, a forestry engineer who works with caribou in Abitibi, artists whose practice is rooted in the territory… They told us about their struggle, their activism, their profession, their difficulties and challenges, their hopes and fears. These people, their stories, the conversation we had with them, the relationship we developed with them, that’s what allowed us to write the play. They were the inspiration for this show, its raw material.”
Among those whose testimonies we hear during the show, we can mention Sylvain Gaudreault, former member of the Parti Québécois in Jonquière, Kim Picard, cultural agent for the Innu council, and Colombe St-Pierre, chief.
Eternal Cherry orchard
Let’s remember that the show is not entirely documentary. Sarya Bazin, Zoé Boudou, Ariel Ifergan, Emmanuelle Lussier-Martinez, Mathieu Richard, Harry Standjofski and Marie-Hélène Thibault are on stage to play the members of a contemporary Quebec family, characters who find their origins in The cherry orcharda text that was published in 1904, but sheds a bright light on the present.
“Chekhov’s play was the perfect structure for the show we wanted to create,” says Dany Boudreault, who co-wrote the text with Dubois. “Because of the way it addresses dispossession, blindness and denial, but also because we can project a lot of things onto this cherry orchard. The cherry orchard is a neutral place, a resource that evokes all the other resources.”
The heart of the play, according to Boudreault, is the clash between two systems: “Like the characters in The cherry orchardwe live in a system that is falling apart, that no longer works. We are caught between job creation and wealth preservation, in what Dalie Giroux, a political science teacher, calls the insoluble problem. But in this delicate position, we must continue to live together, maintain the discussion, because there is a golden opportunity here, a model to invent.
The title of the piece, a nod to the famous song by the band Niagara, underlines the urgency of the situation: while the fields are burning, what do we do? “This title describes the reality, the one that we have to face, what is indeed happening, but it also encourages us to take action,” explains Boudreault.
In the play, the one through whom change could come is Ania, a 20-year-old woman who will ultimately not inherit the cherry orchard. In search of solutions, particularly in terms of knowledge and understanding, she believes in a different future. “No one ever asked her what she thought about the future,” explains Dubois. “She was always told that the world she was born into would continue. Before our eyes, she will understand that this is false, she will have to mobilize, invent new ways of doing things, find her own way of committing to the future of the world.”