” This is my show playboy! It seems that I reconnect with the old me, pre-Conservatory, which was really crazy and very free. ” With SnubMathieu Quesnel creates at Zoofest a “ melting pot of funny numbers. The author of trip and of I am mixed, who writes a lot and in “several styles”, has long wanted to bring together his unpublished works on stage. “I often put aside ideas to work on others with a more serious background. But I always come back to those texts. »
In his (humorous) presentation text on the festival website, the actor says he was inspired to rummage through his “old hard drives” by the process of Dear Chekhov, the recent play by Michel Tremblay where an author comments on an unfinished work sleeping in his drawers… “It’s a bit of a joke, he admits, laughing. But when I saw the play at TNM, it reminded me that I could do something with all my stuff that I never found meaning in. This gave me the impetus to say: what if I commented on some of my texts? »
Taken together, these “parentheses” make up a show “Absurd, but with a lot of meaning, surprisingly, because it’s very impressionistic. There are a lot of ditties in my show. I tried to make music, when I was younger, and I wrote very serious, even melancholic, emo “songs”, but I didn’t want to play them in front of an audience. But I’ve also always made joke songs. »
By bringing together his “most absurd ideas” in this “crazy” theatrical performance, given at 10:30 p.m., the versatile artist has the impression of launching a creation “much funnier and more advanced” than his previous one at Zoofest (Me me me, in 2016). “I feel like I’m doing something that really represents me. »
He also sees this type of event as a staging laboratory allowing him to test elements that he then sometimes uses for his shows in institutional theatres. “And I play with the public, sometimes I go into the crowd. It’s unbridled, but it’s still research work. »
White-Beige
On the eclectic menu of this collage: physical comedy, dance, costumes, ribald jokes, videos, use of a drone… Among the texts, few in Snubwe will count extracts from Being at Home With Claude Poirier (!). And a number written for the show, where Mathieu Quesnel revisits the tale of the not very feminist Snow White in light of the recent controversy around the kiss without consent. The actor disguises himself there as Blanche-Beige, the “vulgar, drugged, dilapidated” sister of the princess. “It’s the left behind. But in the end, it is she who perhaps has the most common sense. »
On a more political note, he snubs Vladimir Putin’s regime with a rewrite of the Russian national anthem. Laid several years ago, on the occasion of the “demonstrations [en Russie] against homosexuals”, this text has proved to be still very topical, given the war in Ukraine.
The show, says the creator to explain its title, makes a Snub to everybody [lui compris] who takes himself too seriously. For me, it’s a leitmotif in my life. When I get too serious, when I want to perform too much, I see that it serves me less well. This is to remind us that we have the right to fool around. Of course, you have to be serious in your approach [artistique], rigorous, to go further. But there’s a part of me that wants to keep this mad delinquency going. »
Mathieu Quesnel claims to be from the lineage of Robert Gravel, his idol. “In the theater that I want to found, there is this desire to leave a lot of room for improvisation. What I do with Snub, precisely, it could have been for The Pirate, if it existed. »
New decorum
Let’s talk, then, about his new theater project, which he revealed in the spring. He dreams of a room dedicated to comedy, to serve the pool of creators exploring this register, and with more spontaneity in the operation, a program made “only one or two months in advance, to talk about ultra- fresh. And I’m thinking about a new theatrical decorum. Why shouldn’t this theater try to do what is not done elsewhere? That’s why I was talking about a cooperative, that it belongs to everyone. »
A room that would be the theatrical equivalent of Brothel, betting on the unexpected, where “you never really know what you’re going to see”. And a “really permissive” place, which would serve as a test bed in the middle.
Launched impulsively, his idea has already garnered a lot of support. “Several even said that they would be ready to invest. Quesnel first wants to make sure the need is real. The creator intends to look into the concrete aspects of his project this fall and plans to test its viability possibly in the fall of 2023, by renting a room.
In short, it’s serious.