Remember Marcel Dube | Journalism

I can’t listen to Nicole Perrier’s voice delay Written by Claude Lévilliers Without being overshadowed by nostalgia. This is the music that served as the beginning of the show the The world of Marcel Dubebrings back to my memory stories from our dramaturgy’s reign for more than 20 years.

Florence, Virginia, Medea, Evidence, Bilan, Lilac Time, Beautiful Sundays, The Dungeon… Numerous plays and teletheatres attest to the invaluable contribution of the man who is finally entitled to a biography worthy of the name from the pen of Serge Bergeron.

In this reference work, the author paints a fair, comprehensive and accurate picture of Dubey while making us aware of the major role he played in bringing our culture into the modern era.

Marcel Dube was born in 1930 and grew up in a modest house on Logan Street, in Montreal, which did not prevent him from studying at the legendary College of Saint Mary, Rue de Pluri, where Emile Nelligan, Hector de Saint-Denis Garneau, Charles Gille and many others attended.

The young student shows a certain talent for writing. These will be the first tests, the first shocks. On May 22, 1948, the play Tate Cook, by Gratien Gélinas, is presented in Gesù where young Marcel serves as a guide. He has seen the work many times.

His path is set: he will be a man of the stage!

While Radio-Canada television was in its infancy, in 1952, Marcel Duby conceived the play that would launch it into orbit. Will be region, a work in which young thugs working in cigarette smuggling appear. The author wrote the play in three days, writing the lines with a ballpoint pen, a practice to which he remained faithful throughout his life.

region Produced on January 23, 1953, it stars Robert Rivard, Raymond Levesque, Guy Godin, Monique Miller, Hubert Loisel, Jean-Louis Paris, Yves Letourneau, and Jean Duceppe. Many of these actors remained loyal to Marcel Dubé. With André LaChapelle, Marjolaine Hébert, Louise Marlowe and others, they would form his family.

From there, Marcel Dubé established himself as Quebec’s most prominent playwright and television composer. Requests keep coming. He responds enthusiastically every time, even if he tends to submit his scripts late and make changes until the last minute.

Marcel Dube earns a lot of money, but he also spends a lot. Cicada, a generous party animal, lived his entire life beyond his means.

Marcel Dube knows dedication Simple soldier The work premiered on Radio-Canada television in December 1957. This piece is about Joseph Latour, played by Gilles Pelletier, who returns to his home country after three years of training in the army. Tormented by his father’s remarriage to a woman he does not love, Joseph tears his soul apart in a huge scene played out in front of the closed door of the bedroom where his father and fat Bertha sleep.

TV version ofSimple soldier It is the subject of a chapter in Twelve theatrical transformationsWritten by Michel Tremblay. This will be one of the best honors of his career for Marcel Dube.

And after that, there will be a series of series like Sandy coastWith Louise Marlowe, Clémence Derocher and many plays. Marcel Duby, an ardent separatist, developed political ideas in balance sheet And Beautiful SundaysWhich is sure to cause him some problems.

For the room When the white geese returnWritten in 1966 for Louise Marlowe (with whom he was madly in love), he set himself the goal of composing a tragedy like in the time of Greek theater. He never misses his shot!

The 1968-1969 season, during which Montreal audiences were able to see three plays by Dube, was the season that Sisters in lawWritten by Michel Tremblay. Critics like to compare Dube with Tremblay, the former using polished language, the latter making full use of the joules. This invented opposition upsets Dobby, who is after a “playful” version ofSimple soldierhe adopts standard French in his later works.

If Tremblay’s theater focuses a magnifying glass on the lower middle class, Duby’s does the same thing with a bourgeoisie stuffed with tranquilizers and drowned in whisky. Either way, the feathers are scalpels.

In the mid-1970s, some observers, including Jean-Claude Germain, made Marcel Duby feel that he had completed “the inventory of his dramatic world” and that his time had come to an end. The author, who is in his forties, is suffering greatly.

Marcel Dube spent several hospital stays and underwent surgical interventions to solve problems related to an intestinal disease that he would carry with him throughout his life. His heavy dependence on alcohol doesn’t help matters. In the 1980s, it experienced a severe recession.

But after a long struggle, directors came up with the idea of ​​reproducing his plays in the 1990s, and René Richard Cyr took up the task.Simple soldierwhile Loren Bental and Andre Brassard do the same with Beautiful Sundays And Purple time.

To earn a living, Marcel Dubé accepts small proofreading contracts from a publishing house. The person who for many years made spectators and viewers in Quebec dream of his plays limited himself to rewriting other people’s texts.

At the beginning of 2016, the man turned on himself. He even refuses to answer his friends’ calls. On April 7, Marcel Dube died at the age of 86. Two weeks later, some figures praised him.

His three muses are present: André LaChapelle, Monique Miller and Louise Marlowe. The latter reads an excerpt from her collection Sand poems. “You were just an omen that would carry through billions of incomprehensible images and dreams.”

Claude Livelier’s piano is heard. With broken hearts, those present remember Cipolite’s words to her beautiful Tarzan in the final scene of the film region.

“Sleep, my handsome leader, street runner, roof jumper, sleep, I’m watching over you.”

Marcel Dube – Write to talk

Serge Bergeron

Limiac

424 pages