“I am always in the same palette of colors”, immediately recognizes the playwright, whose many works radiate throughout the world. In his most recent play, Kiss, about to take the poster at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in a staging by Eda Holmes, director of the Centaur Theater, where the show will be presented in January, Michel Marc Bouchard takes us once again to a territory where the violence operates slowly … but surely.
“I had the impression that I had not exhausted the theme of domestic violence, that my reflection on the subject was not over,” explains the author. It was discussed in The history of the goose, in 1991, but it seemed to me that there was still a door to open, a dark corner to search. The victim of this violence is Hugo (Théodore Pellerin), the only son of Béatrice Lessard (Anne-Marie Cadieux), a boy like no other who kisses people for no reason and dreams of becoming a fashion designer.
The main theme of this new play is actually that which runs through the entire work of the playwright, Feluettes To The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up. A constant that the author formulates thus: “Can art, can creation heal from the violence suffered?” Can he bring the creator a balm, a redemption, a forgiveness, a reconciliation? I especially did not intend to rewrite Aurora, the martyred child. What I wanted was to understand how violence can somehow bring about light. Right now, I think we are in dire need of love and pacification. “
Marginal like everyone else
Hugo’s character is certainly different. Different from the people who frequent her mother’s cloth store in a corner of a suburban mall. Different from the teacher (Alice Pascual). Different from the police officer (Anglesh Major). “Hugo is marginal, recognizes Bouchard, but I dare to believe that his marginality echoes that of all the people who are in the room. Marginal, lonely, misunderstood or rejected characters are essential, because they allow life to be illuminated in different ways. “
It is all the same a lifeline in the life of young Hugo, a salutary identification, a saving recognition: this immense breath of oxygen that Yves Saint Laurent brings him. “What saves him,” explains Bouchard, “what allows him to breathe is Saint Laurent. It is thanks to his research on the couturier, thanks to his insatiable curiosity, almost academic, not to say evangelical, that Hugo survives. All this feeds his instincts as a creator, his overflowing imagination, his need for escape, for reinvention. Her inner world is certainly as shimmering as her everyday life is gray. “
In any case, we are doomed to eternal dissatisfaction. A frustration which is most likely the very driving force behind creation. The perfect work is unattainable, inaccessible, as certainly are the notions of the perfect mother or the perfect son.
From there to inviting on stage the French couturier who died in 2008, there was only one step that the playwright dared to take. The role, not trivial, was entrusted to none other than Yves Jacques. “It is a fantasized vision of the great creator that appears to Hugo,” says Bouchard. I worked a lot to make it present without being too much, without being overly realistic, or interventionist, and without ever falling into the puppet. Yves Jacques, with whom I had not collaborated since The feluettes, is an extraordinary personifier, attentive to the smallest detail, skilfully knowing how to avoid caricature. He was the ideal actor for such a role. “
According to the playwright, the quest for the perfect work, whether it is a painting, as in The painter of Madonnas, of a play, as in The feluettes, or a dress, as is the case here, is actually the metaphor for our thirst for a perfect romantic, parental or filial relationship. “In any case, we are doomed to eternal dissatisfaction,” says Bouchard. A frustration which is most likely the very driving force behind creation. The perfect work is unattainable, inaccessible, as certainly are the notions of the perfect mother or the perfect son. “
On the witness stand
Less verbose than those which preceded it, leaving more room for the unspoken, for evocation, and consequently for the staging, the play is largely made up of testimonies. “I never gave at this point in the story, admits the author. The characters offer their version of the facts, a bit like in a trial, often by soliloquies, by addresses to the public. There is this initial event, the slap given by Beatrice, the mother, to Maryse, the teacher, who utters a loud cry. Everything else flows from that, like shock waves. “
When Hugo runs out of arguments, that he is unable to fully express what he is feeling, he embraces. “These are kisses of despair,” explains Bouchard, “calls for help. What he says without saying it is: “Take me away from here! Protect me from me! Save me from me! ” This title is also a way for me to give a nod to what many of us have felt and even still feel in times of a pandemic: a mad desire to kiss the people we love. . “
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