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Création Théâtre Le Clou, à Vancouver, 2 mai 1995 Traducteur(s) Deborah Cottreau (Auteur féminin) Bernard Lavoie (Auteur masculin) Nombre de personnages 3 Personnage(s), 2 Femme(s), 1 Homme(s), 3 Acteur(s) |  |
Résumé A teenage boy's parents are away, and he invites two girl friends to spend two months at his house. Together, they learn about tolerance and co-existence. While the boy tries to define the kind of man he
wants to become, one of the girls tries to overcome her insecurity and materialism, and the other,
adopted by a Québécois family as a child, wants to find and make peace with the parents who abandoned
her.
Plus d'informations »
- Décor: P L A C E
YOU's bedroom, which is, in fact, the basement of his parents' house. It is a very large space, very loft like. If it wasn't for the mattress, one would simply believe it was an installation for a performance. It is important to keep this ambiguity to favour the spectacular aspect of the text. But it is not a Black Label commercial. Through this contemporary art aesthetics and this alternative stage, this postmodernism, something has to signal that it is a teenager's bedroom. There is, of course, a home-video kit, some paint, a sound system and a progressive accumulation of frozen meal boxes.
TIME
Now, extended on several months of the 1993 school year.
ACTING
Despite unbelievable constraints confronting the theatre companies working in the school system, it is essential for the interpreters of this play to break away from the agitated overacting style that characterizes the acting in live shows and televised series destined for the adolescent consumption. The way in which the characters express themselves indicates only indirectly what really goes on inside. They talk about serious matters in a playful tone, have depressive moments without notice, seek a personal way to express themselves through the different discourses they loot, sometimes unconsciously, but they also try to establish a distance in face of the emotional charge carried by words. There are abrupt ruptures, gaps in which life hangs heavy, moments where one is satisfied to move props (as in a rock concert where one does not act the placing of a microphone on stage). There are also moments where the characters are performing for one another, and moments where they talk directly to the public, either by casting the spectators in the role of classmates, or by reminding them that they are in a theatre.
- Indication de production: Live video; Music by Sylvain Scott
- Caractéristiques des personnages: C h a r a c t e r s
All three are high school seniors. They are named I, YOU, SHE. I know it does not facilitate the reading, but it does not change anything in performance. Mainly, it constantly brings back a certain connection to the world. Since the evolution of this connection to the world is the play's theme, I prefer establishing it from the start and maintaining it vivid in the mind of the reader all throughout the text.
The theatre company LE CLOU asked me to write a play about teenage dispersion. But this dispersion is only apparent. After reading the text, a very serious friend of mine talked about an ¨involutive¨ structure. Indeed, by aiming at the centre of the target, the journey finds its meaning. Spiral, reversed pyramid, the structure tightens as the characters' consciousness develops.
I
She could start all her sentences by : ¨As for myself, I think that...¨. Do not be alarmed, she will not. But the character stands there. Obviously, she is not aware. She is the spoiled brat of the play; somewhat like Bette Midler in a Woody Allen movie. She often talks alone. She can be dealt with as if she was a stand up comic. Contrary to what she thinks, for she is very harsh on herself, she is very pretty, graceful, even unconsciously sexy, brilliant, extremely sympathetic and mysterious. She is a talking machine that does not reveal the essential and she truly suffers. What she is saying about her parents is very accurate. There lies the tragedy. She lives the lot of intelligent people in a society levelling everything down. She needs to escape.
YOU
A body. With it's urges, it's dynamism, it's vibrating and sensuous mass. Outside of himself, there are the others whom he meets one by one with a: "You..¨ There is something feline in the way he observes and enjoys the simple fact of having a body. HE IS NOT MACHO OR A SEX MANIAC. He is a very healthy adolescent. He could advertise milk on television. But his internal life is not so simple. He, too, suffers very severely for lack of model. When the play begins, he is in an emotional state that could lead him toward self-destruction. Despite his apparent inertia, he is the starting engine. He keeps a very strong contact with palpable matters. The actor interpreting him should develop a particular way to touch. One should hope for the contact of his hand. It may, perhaps, be why his parents are absent. He represents the assumed needs, which is extremely unusual and generates fear in a conformist society. He needs to escape.
SHE
The one we talk about without knowing. I wanted to create a character genuinely happy. But since it is boring, I have also shown some of her dreams. She has no problem functioning in a compartmentalized society, although she knows that her determination is without a doubt terribly powerful and frightening. The interpretation has to connect the mystery of her origins (her natural parents are unknown) and her subconscious. She is not passively happy, she is actively involved in a translation of the world so she can find happiness. The video camera represents this look toward the external and, later, toward the internal. She knows it is necessary to break the statues, to destroy the images. She is a woman of action and composure. She knows who she is and she knows her body. This knowledge gives her an exceptional serenity in a neurotic and unsatisfied society. She, somewhat, needs to escape.
- Chansons: 3 songs
Extrait « I : […] Forgive me, but getting excited or upset, jumping up and down and telling the world to piss off, showing that I'm free are not the only things I like to do. It's not that I'm too serious. I like to laugh. But I like plenty of other things and I don't have time to waste. At twenty, Rimbaud had already finished writing, Nelligan was insane, Picasso was a genius, and I, I don't know what I'm going to be, but… […] » Revue de presse "Alain Fournier's incisive text... allows the spectator to enter into the agitated private life of three adolescents who cheerfully confront the contradictions of our era, somewhere between cynicism and humanism." Gilbert David, Le Devoir, May 30, 1994.&r
"In Alain Fournier's Jusqu'aux os! three young people meet in a basement to discuss fears about the future, the rise of neo-nazism and their struggle for independence in a world with no jobs. (...) a fine example of a new wave of unpreachy theatre for teens." Kathryn Greenaway, The Gazette, May 24, 1994.
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