L’HOMME ATLANTIQUE (et La maladie de la mort)
How does one drag Duras out of her writing? Christian Lapointe puts her – and us – in the spotlight on a film set in order to hear once again what she was like in the beginning.
How to rescue Marguerite Duras from herself? How to sandblast the heavy varnish employed to freeze dry her work and give voice to the radical indecency of her words? In the dizzying density of Duras, something appeals directly to the uncompromising theatre of Christian Lapointe. Both constantly probe the depths between real life and the imagination, between men and women, between what is said and what can be said.
Christian Lapointe pursues his atypical approach in a work where reality destabilizes the theatrical, leading us onto a film set where a disturbing Durassic movie is being improvised. Combining his art with the caustic voice of the celebrated French writer, he places the audience at the centre of a fascinating tale where the howling seas intensify heartrending sexual distress magnified by an impossible love.
CAST CHANGE: ANNE-MARIE CADIEUX IN L’HOMME ATLANTIQUE
The role that was initially to be played by Monia Chokri will be performed by Anne-Marie Cadieux.
PRODUCED BY THÉÂTRE PÉRIL
WRITTEN BY MARGUERITE DURAS
DIRECTED BY CHRISTIAN LAPOINTE
PERFORMED BY JEAN ALIBERT + ANNE-MARIE CADIEUX + MARIE-THÉRÈSE FORTIN
SET DESIGN JEAN-FRANÇOIS LABBÉ
VIDEO LIONEL ARNOULD
LIGHTING DESIGN MARTIN SIROIS
MUSIC AND SOUND AMBIENCEMATHIEU CAMPAGNA
ASSISTANT DIRECTORALEXANDRA SUTTO
COSTUME DESIGN MYLÈNE CHABROL
DRAMATURGY SOPHIE DEVIRIEUX
VIDEO PROGRAMMING PIERRE-OLIVIER FRÉCHET-MARTIN
TECHNICAL MANAGER MATHIEU THÉBAUDEAU
PRODUCTION MANAGERCATHERINE DESJARDINS-JOLIN
PHOTO AND PROMOTIONAL VIDEOSYLVIO ARRIOLA
PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION WITH CINQUIÈME SALLE
COPRODUCTION FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES + RECTO-VERSO (QUEBEC) + NATIONAL ART CENTER’S FRENCH THEATER (OTTAWA)
RÉSIDENCE DE CRÉATION / CREATIVE RESIDENCY PLACE DES ARTS
WRITTEN BY PAUL LEFEBVRE
TRANSLATED BY NEIL KROETSCH
PREMIERED IN QUEBEC CITY, MAY 31, 2013
CHRISTIAN LAPOINTE (QUÉBEC)
THÉÂTRE PÉRIL
Between Doing and Portraying
Since founding Théâtre Péril in Quebec City in 2000, the writer and director Christian Lapointe has pursued a singular career, creating theatrical objects of demanding density where poetry, death and reality combine to question the existential emptiness of contemporary life. Inspired by the symbolism of William Butler Yeats – his first play was a trilogy consisting of Chien de Culann, Le Seuil du palais du roi (2003) and the triptych Calvaire / Résurrection / Purgatoire under the title Limbes (2009) – and by the textual density and relation to reality found in the work of Samuel Beckett, Lapointe gradually focused his research on the pressures of reality that any form of representation in the theatre demands.
