Pompières et Pyromanes addresses the climate crisis from an eco-feminist perspective. How is that reflected in your stage work?

Julie C. Delorme: What struck us in particular about Martine Delvaux’s essay was the mother-daughter relationship, which conveys a multi-generational feminist vision. Delvaux is writing to her daughter while also addressing younger generations. This plays a central role in our staging: a young girl is picking up the ruined pieces of a world that has burned in order to build her house. It’s a metaphorical action that expresses the ideas of inheritance, struggle, and hope, despite the fragile foundations on which future generations will have to build.

Laurence Brunelle-Côté: We represent the feminist perspective through the diversity of voices and bodies on stage, as well as by reanimating the figures of the “burned witches.” We should also note that the Bureau de l’APA is now a collective made up almost entirely of women. Naturally, that informs our artistic process and creative approach. Working together as women in a spirit of sisterhood allows us to reassert struggles and bonds of solidarity that resonate powerfully in an eco-feminist context.

The show plays with chaos and collecting objects. Where did this specific aesthetic come from?

J.C.D.: Our approach is based on the idea of “making do.” Making do with what you have at hand and making do with what already exists, whether that’s recovered objects, fragments of works, or imperfect realities. It allows us to embrace vulnerability rather than covering it up. We assemble recovered fragments and objects, like the giant slide created by the former BGL collective, to create visual tableaus that are almost like artworks. Chaos means accepting that everything will not be smooth, that accidents will happen on stage and take us by surprise. It’s a way of paying tribute to vulnerability and error. By bringing the audience face to face with this unabashed chaos, we’re trying to unsettle them and make them open to receiving it. It’s a way of leading them into a space where the unpredictable and the incomplete enable us to think differently about the world.

L.B.C.: Disorder causes a shift in spectators. We want them to lose their balance and feel the world differently. Making do also means accepting your limits: making do with your body, your restrictions, your blunders, even your disabilities, such as mine. On stage, we don’t hide what could be seen as imperfections: on the contrary, we make space for them, and sometimes cause them to happen, because they open the door to moments of surprise and truth.

You also reject the idea of “faking it.” What does that mean for your artistic process?

J.C.D.: We work with a director and performers who are not trained actors. There’s no artificial scenery or characters in the traditional sense. We like authenticity: things that are awkward, that happen spontaneously. It’s a live DIY performance, and that involves accepting what is raw and real.

L.B.C.: It’s both an artistic and ethical stance. Including languages such as QSL (Quebec Sign Language) contributes to this truthfulness. It makes the work more accessible while adding a poetry of gestures and bodies that goes beyond words.

How is fire, which is a central element of the work, present in the staging?

L.B.C.: Martine Delvaux recognizes that the world is burning but emphasizes that some fires need to be fanned: the flames of solidarity, revolution, and communication. In our staging of the work, fire is both a threat and an engine, a destroyer and a regenerator. It drives us to action while symbolizing our collective struggle. Fire is everywhere: there’s burning toast, alarms going off, a slide leading to a wall. That suggests the collective denial in the face of the climate emergency. We turn off the alarm and keep going as if nothing was wrong. But fire is also an everyday, intimate thing: it recalls ancestral traditions, particularly those of Indigenous peoples, which control fire in order to protect nature.

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