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Gord loves Michel >> The Centaur opens its doors to Michel Tremblay with For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again by AMY BARRATT
Hot on the heels of its French-language premiere at Theatre du Rideau Vert, Michel Tremblay's latest play makes its English-language debut at the Centaur next week under the title For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again. The English production stars Nicola Cavendish as Nana, the flamboyant, hilarious, heart-rending character based on Tremblay's mother, and Dennis O'Connor as the son/narrator. I spoke with Tremblay and artistic director Gordon McCall at the Centaur Theatre, which is under heavy construction as it prepares to celebrate its 30th anniversary season. Anglo Tremblay Mirror: How did this Centaur production come about? Gordon McCall: Nathalie [Goodwin, Tremblay's agent] contacted me, and she indicated that Michel was writing--which was very exciting--and she asked if we'd be interested in doing the English-language premiere. And I said, "Give me about three seconds!" All she had to say was, "Do you want to do it?" and I said, "Yeah...What's the play about?" It didn't matter. M: Michel, you didn't have much of a relationship at all with Centaur in the old days, did you? Michel Trembaly: I don't think that the director [Maurice Podbrey] was very interested in Québécois plays in general, or mine in particular... M: Obviously, you and your agent believed Gordon would be more interested. MT: Well, I knew that because already in his first season he had done the Michel Marc Bouchard. [Last season, McCall's first as artistic director, opened with Bouchard's The Orphan Muses]. GM: It's a big first in Canadian theatre for this to be here in Montreal. The moment that I heard that we could do the two world premieres back to back, I jumped at that, too. Nathalie said, "Where would you put it in the season?" And I said, "Right off the top." Because there's a wonderful energy around this creative process right now. And Michel's here with us now--you know, he spends time out of town during the year, so we knew it was a great time. I think it's wonderful that we're going to get two first creations of Nana, a French creation and an English one, back to back, in Montreal. Absurd adaptations M: When a Tremblay play is done in another language, are the characters still French-Canadian Montréalais? MT: Of course. I mean, Chekhov's plays are still about Russians, no matter what language they're performed in. And you can still cry at Masha and Irina crying about Moscow at the end of The Three Sisters. GM: The way that we talk about it is that they are Québécois people who we hear in English. They never change being Québécois people. MT: And anyway, if you tried to make Nana an English Canadian or make her nearer you, then the audience would stop at what was not right. Whereas if she is French Canadian, they will be surprised at how much she is like them. They will identify much more with what's the same than what's different. When I saw Les Belles Soeurs in Yiddish at the Saidye Bronfman, it was incredible to see six Jewish women kneeling on the floor and reciting the rosary. It was absolutely absurd--and we loved it. Whereas, if they had done an adaptation... It's in the differences, sometimes, that we can see that we're not that far apart. M: It's popular in Quebec now, though, to take plays from elsewhere and adapt them to a Quebec setting. MT: I've stopped doing that. I did it a lot in the '70s. I even did it to Tennessee Williams... can you imagine? In a show at the Quat'Sous, Le Pays du dragon, we took four one-act plays by Tennessee Williams and we put them on the Main. Last year I reread it and I was appalled by what I had done. How could I do that to Tennessee Williams? So I rewrote them. Avoiding accents M: What was it like for you to see this play come to life? MT: Well, I wrote it for Rita [Lafontaine]. She has been my inspiration since Marie-Lou in '71. When I write a character for her I can hear her, but she's always better than I had imagined. M: Gordon, did it ever occur to you to ask Rita Lafontaine to do the role in English? GM: No. Because, for one thing, the time-frame was too tight. The play [at Rideau Vert] is extended into our rehearsal period... MT: Then it could seem folklore-ish. Having an actress saying things she doesn't really understand because she doesn't speak English so well. We did that when we did a tour of Europe with Forever Yours, Marie Lou, with Rita. In the U.K. we did it in English and the actors hated it. They did it in Paris in French and then two days later they were in London trying to read it in English. I hope my plays don't need a Québécois accent to be understood. I remember out west in Vancouver and Calgary, in the first productions of my plays, you had English-Canadian actors doing my accent. I felt that I must not be that good a writer if my plays needed an accent to be understood. Scary subconcious M: When you see the play, do you see your mother? MT: No. And I hoped I wouldn't see her. I think it was important that it was my mother when I wrote it, but it's not important anymore when it's on stage. It's a magnification, or a transposition, of what the memory of my mother suggested to me but, like she says herself in the play, nothing is interesting if we repeat it exactly. Life is boring, and art is supposed to be more interesting than life. Your memories are always shaped by your sensibilities. M: You've said that your mother has always been present in your work, and yet this is the first time that she's centre stage. Why now? MT: I killed her twice last year! In a novel, A Thing of Beauty, and then in the play. I don't know why, but I must have needed to do that... M: On the other hand, you brought her back to life... GM: That's the way we look at it. MT: There are things a writer shouldn't know about his work. I never, ever read all the papers and theses that are written about my work. We get maybe 25 theses every year, from all over the world. If I read them... M: You'd never write again. MT: Yes! I would become self-conscious. I am very in control when I write. I am a very controlled man even in my personal life, which sometimes gives me problems... But there are things in the subconscious that I shouldn't know.
For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again previews Sept. 29 & 30, opens October 1 and runs 'til Oct. 25 at the Centaur Theatre. 288-3161 for reservations
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What happens when the work of Montreal's best-known French-language playwright is performed in English--in Montreal?