4 December 2021
SPAZIO MET-BO
In January 1980, Jean-Claude Germain, playwriter and actor at the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, presented Les nuits de l’Indiva. Apparently, the play was the sequel to Les hauts et les bas de la vie d’une diva; however, the text reveals inedited reflections on the personality of Canadians, especially Québécois. Indeed, the protagonist of the play is Sarah Ménard, a caricature of the theater French star Sarah Bernard. The latter made a great career in Paris in the second half of the XIX century and it is still considered as a great French icon. In opposition to the image of Sarah Bernard, skinny and with a nervous temperament, Germain decided to portrait Sarah Ménard as a good-natured, decadent singer, who celebrates the great moments of her career through songs and monologues. This woman had to represent a Québec version of the diva and because of this it couldn’t be as glamourous and austere as the French one, contrariwise she had to mark the gross features which characterize, in people’s common opinion, the Québec spirit. Irony and allegory are Germain’s favourite weapons in theatre to attract the audience and start a reflection about contemporary society, tradition, and colonial heritance. In fact, the playwriter provokes his public through comic mascapade: he wants Sarah to claim immortality with ridicule, not austerity or tragic performances. In this way, the play is an antithesis to the French cultural influence, but also a re-evaluation and interpretation of what is considered, in Europe, tradition. It is necessary to study Québec’s roots, but also to understand what makes Québec colony unique and independent from its colony. Québec culture and artistic production has often been considered subordinated and inferior compared to the French one, which is the reason Germain uses his plays as a claiming French-Canadian culture manifesto.
