One summer day, more or less five years ago, Gabrielle Côté and Laurence Régnier, inseparable since they met at the National Theater School, remade the world while drinking a glass of white wine in the sun. “We were talking about our first contact with the theater,” explains Côté. One thing leading to another, the two creators realize everything that crystallizes in adolescence, generally during a school outing, in front of a show that we did not choose. “Presenting theater to fourth-grade students is not trivial,” says Régnier. If it’s outdated or boring, it can easily be a huge turn off. »
Determined to offer teenage audiences an experience that will definitely give them the theater bug, the founders of the Théâtre du Fol Espoir have imagined The sex of the pigeons, a theatrical and digital wandering, that is to say, which takes place both in real life and on a telephone. “Rather than imposing conventions and restrictions on teenagers, we wanted to grant them freedoms,” explains Régnier. Rather than diverting them from their cell phones, we decided to use them to get in touch with young people. Rather than sitting them in a seat, they are asked to stand up, visit the different spaces and adopt the point of view of their choice. »
“It’s an experience that is both individual and collective,” says Côté. As in Sleep No More, the immersive show presented in New York since 2011, no one has the same vision of history. Since everything is happening simultaneously, we inevitably miss bits, which echoes social networks, where everything is fragmented, fragmented, where the truth is always multiple. Our avowed objective is that the show triggers discussions, that it somehow forces teenagers to talk about it together to share information, to fill in the gaps. »
real and virtual
With the help of Marc-Antoine Jacques, David Mongeau-Petitpas and Nicolas Roy, from the Folklore digital studio, the creators imagined the Social Network, an interactive platform that Lorie Gilbert and Tamara Manny-D’Astous filled with photos, videos, statuses, conversations, emojis and memes. To follow the story of the four protagonists — roles played by Sabri Attalah (Khaled), Alice Dorval (Léo), Guillaume Gauthier (Derek) and Evelyne Laferrière (Billy) — the public will not only have to move from place to the other, but also to remain attentive to what is happening on the Social Network.
“The device gives access to what happens in the intimacy of the characters, in other words to their interior monologues, but also to their public image, explains Régnier. There is often a chasm between what we experience and what we share on social networks. During the creation residencies, several young people collaborated with us. We wanted to know what it was like to be 15 in 2022. Above all, from the height of our thirties, we shouldn’t awkwardly imagine what it was like. We wanted to adopt their way of seeing the world, of understanding it and of criticizing it, to be as close as possible to their rhythm, their words and their images. »
countless birds
Once the form found, the device developed and the technology calibrated, the dialogues, signed Frédéric Blanchette, Véronique Côté and Marianne Dansereau, seem to have followed quite naturally. “The only constraint we gave them, specifies Régnier, is that our three young people were not to be in class that day, so that they could meet on the Social Network. They came to us with an unusual crisis, a colony of pigeons particularly rich in symbols. »
Indeed, the metaphor of the pigeons – which would have reproduced uncontrollably in the attic of the School! — makes it possible to address a host of subjects including racism and the environment, intimidation and isolation, the proliferation of lies and the thirst for truth, the dilapidation of buildings and the withdrawal of adults, plastic surgery and gender identity. In fact, these young people are courageously seeking an answer to the question: how to live?
“They are lucid, summarizes Côté. They feel abandoned by institutions, by adults, by the media, by big companies, by the authorities… but at the same time, they are strongly inspired by those who marched for the climate in September 2019. with the future left to them, these young people are torn between hope and disappointment. »
Faced with all that has been hidden from them, with all the “pigeons” that have been hidden from them and which falls on their heads today, the protagonists sometimes feel discouraged. But rest assured, our four young people will not opt for resignation. A very moving epilogue gives us news of the adults they will become, very inspiring people to whom we would entrust the helm without hesitation.