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The Right to Speak Out We have had many debates since 1975. The first were serious, foundational debates on dramaturgy and the repertoire to build given a complete lack of tradition in the history of theatre: What to say? Our audience was children, and those doing, choosing, and critiquing theatre were adults. It was a unique situation in the history of the art. The reality of the filter raised necessary, disturbing, and always topical debates. What do we say, how do we say it, when, and why? Camps were formed according to personal experiences and perceptions of childhood. There was the debate on the fragility of childhood and the forcefulness of adulthood. This debate continues, even though we know that children do not live in an idyllic, protected world, that left and right cannot necessarily be summarized in the simple problem of which shoe to put on which foot. The hazards of childbirth are powerful factors in development, and little ones have intuition . . . We refuse to separate a lifetime into two hermetically sealed seasons in one of which the pains of childhood are cured by one stroke of a magic wand, while in the other the wounds of adult love, and love itself, are tragic, painful, and permanent. Gil, an adaptation of Howard Buten’s novel Quand j’avais cinq ans, je m’ai tué, presented in 1987, raised early waves and stirred up storms. Concerned, questioning, disturbed adults reacted. The media relayed the questions. Can we say that to children? Can we leave children without an answer after such disruption? Above all, do we have the right to cause such disruption to children in the theatre? To tell them about situations that they have not experienced? At the same time as this debate over what children experience was raging, we were following in the papers the story of a little girl living near us who was the victim of incest. The story was never-ending; every day a new and harsh light was shed on this girl’s childhood. She was eleven years old. Where is that girl, who is now a woman and perhaps has children of her own? There were passionate debates, such as those raised by Contes d’enfants réels about children’s immodesty, verbosity, informal form, and capacity to comprehend: would they be capable of decoding the deep meaning and the ethical questions implicit in the situations presented, or, on the contrary, were they impressionable and subjugated to the primary, obvious images? This debate is just as lively years later. There have been many other essential debates. There was one over comprehension: What is meant by comprehension? Is it measurable? Is it desirable? Is it necessary? Is it unequivocal? There was one over unanimity: Should theatre for children be condemned to unanimity? Must all children have the same pleasure at the same moment or is there a risk that they will forever turn their noses up at the theatre? Are children perfectly similar and audiences depressingly homogeneous? There was one over age and age groups that grew every day: What is the point of the age limits that artists and programmers set so carefully? Are they a gauge of understanding? What role does age play in possible identification, in interest or disinterest, in emotion? And there was the passionate debate over how to measure art against the inescapable reality of economic considerations. The beauty of these debates rested, and still rests, on the free circulation of ideas and the diversity of “divergent” and “contradictory” ideas. There are currents, of course, that follow the doubts and the courage of the companies that want to bring forth and expand this art. There are experiments that sometimes resemble journeys of thousands of kilometres. There are extreme cases that are shattering and shocking. There are incredible successes and there are failures that are just as revealing and stimulating. There is, in spite of everything, the building of a repertoire. We still have not spoken much about another reality that has imposed itself over the years and of touring productions as the background for these debates: culture shock. Our Ogrelet is a great example of this: it evoked fear and respect in Quebec and was very popular among audiences in France; it was the object of “devouring,” passionate love in Latin America, and of scandalized rejection among English-language audiences. How can a single show provoke such different reactions? What can we learn, from these reactions toward the show itself, about the relationship between child and art, and about the control exerted by adults who judge, love, or condemn? It would be interesting to pursue this thought further – to explore why, for example, Contes d’enfants reels, presented in Spanish in Brazil this year, provoked gales of laughter and great pleasure, while the French-language version presented in Ottawa a few weeks before had caused a sense of profound shock. Le Carrousel’s new production, Souliers de sable, also provokes divergent reactions. The program in Quebec for the coming season is proof of how much the show was appreciated here. And yet, during an exceptional premiere tour in France, we sensed reluctance among professionals about the subject matter of the show and how it was addressed to children – even though the children were at rapt attention at each performance. This was nothing compared to the unpleasant impressions evoked by Les Petits Pouvoirs in 1983, in which words, sentences, and images forged in a specific culture seemed to fall into a hole between the stage and the audience. The adults’ reaction became the children’s official words. How can we analyze the troubling dichotomy in a new situation, in which the professionals’ reaction diverges so much from the audiences’? What colours the reactions to a theatre offering when it is not fundamental incomprehension of the context? Will there be an English-language version of Souliers de sable? A Spanish-language version? What will the reactions be in cultures that have such different perceptions of the world and of childhood? We anticipate other, inevitable, debates. Our next production, Le bruit des os qui craquent, is not likely to lead to a consensual silence – far from it. Numerous questions will be asked, especially by the audience. The question immediately arises, If the text is of such direct interest to an audience of adults, as a public reading during the Semaine de la dramaturgie in Montreal in December 2006 persuaded us, is it still a text for children? Other questions naturally flow: Can we speak about the reality of child soldiers to children who have not experienced it? Does theatre, the art that has the power to turn children’s world upside down, have the right to do so? Why is there such an acute, almost hysterical surveillance when it comes to art, and total impunity for commerce? Can one hour of theatre, a visit to an exhibition, or a dance performance have such a big influence that they can completely overturn the world of our precious children? Should childhood be a site of intimacy charged with such explosive power that anyone who approaches it in a non-consensual way sets off the powder keg? We continue, and will continue, to seek answers and the hidden meaning at the bottom of things, in our way, visiting children who are developing their knowledge, their critical sense, their civic sense, in perpetual negotiation with the existential questions that inhabit us from birth to death. We visit, and will continue to visit, children, those who stumble as they climb the stairs, those who tumble down them to experience fear, and those who do so to understand the law of gravity. Gervais Gaudreault, Suzanne Lebeau, Odette Lavoie
HUMANIDAD Miki Gingras and Patrick Dionne founded Diasol, a not-for-profit organization that produces and presents cultural projects in Quebec and in Latin American countries. www.diasol.org
SOULIERS DE SABLE in Québec and Ontario October 17, 2007, to June 1, 2008 Les Gros becs/Centre de diffusion du théâtre jeunesse/Quebec City Théâtre de la Rubrique/Salle Pierrette Gaudreault/Jonquière Maison Théâtre/Montréal L’Arrière Scène/Centre culturel/Beloeil Corporation de développement culturel/Salle Anaïs Allard Rousseau/Trois-Rivières Initiascène, Théâtre Lionel-Groulx/Sainte-Thérèse SPEC/Théâtre des Deux Rives/Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu Théâtre Français du Centre National des Arts/Ottawa
SOULIERS DE SABLE in Europe Les Tréteaux de Haute-Alsace/Théâtre de la Sinne/Mulhouse/France Am Stram Gram Le Théâtre /Geneva/Switzerland
PETIT PIERRE in Mexico
Universal Forum of Cultures/National Arts Centre /Monterrey Escenario 2007/Teatro Juárez/Guanajuato Centro cultural del Bosque - INBA/Teatro Julio Castillo/Mexico City
CUENTOS DE NINOS REALES in Venezuela
Festival de las Artes/Valencia Legend: (sc) school performance
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