MIDNIGHT
(Translated from MINUIT)
By Marie-Hélène Larose-Truchon
Translated by Alexis Diamond
With Presence Theatre (London UK)
Special thanks to: Layla Jalaei, Kevin McMonagle, Anthony Ofoegbu, Susan Raasay, Sakuntala Ramanee, Ami Sayers, Zara Tomkinson, Adam Tyler, Hemi Yeroham.
In an act of resistance against a despotic government that hunts down seniors and sucks their memories dry, the irrepressible Midnight keeps her mother in hiding, to protect her and her daughter and their secret world. They swap knowing smiles and lost words while braving a lack of food and light, driven mad with love, anger, fear. This homage to a fading civilization stirs up snow and subversion, ancestral culture and instinct: craved, warped, misused, a past re-animated and electrified, just like new.
This translation was commissioned by Talisman Theatre, artistic director Lyne Paquette. Translation dramaturgy was provided by Linda Gaboriau. Dramaturgical support for the translation was provided by Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal (PWM), artistic and executive director Emma Tibaldo.
Marie-Hélène Larose-Truchon (Playwright)
A year after graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada’s francophone playwriting program, Marie Hélène Larose Truchon won the Le théâtre pour les jeunes publics et la relève playwriting award for her play Reviens!, and received special mentions at the Prix Gratien-Gélinas for Minuit (2013) and Un biseau m’attend (2015). The latter two plays were given staged readings (in 2014 and 2015 respectively) at the Centre de auteurs dramatique’s Dramaturgies en dialogue festival in Montreal. A coproduction of Minuit by the Théâtre Double Signe and the Petit Théâtre de Sherbrooke was presented in Sherbrooke (2017) and Montreal (2018). Marie Hélène teaches playwriting at the National Theatre School of Canada French language program and is working on several writing projects for all-ages audiences. Her play Crème-Glacée was produced by Théâtre La Seizième (Vancouver, Canada)
Alexis Diamond (Translator)
Alexis is an anglophone theatre artist, opera and musical librettist, translator and theatre curator working on both sides of Montréal’s linguistic divide. Her award-winning plays, operas and translations have been presented across Canada, in the U.S. and in Europe. She also collaborates internationally with artists on performance-installations involving text, movement and sound. In 2018, Alexis began a multiyear collaboration with professor Erin Hurley (McGill University) and Emma Tibaldo (Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal) researching the history of English-language theatre in Québec. In May 2019, Alexis Diamond served as co-artistic director of the famed Festival Jamais Lu, where she presented the mostly French-language Faux-amis with co-author Hubert Lemire, supported by CALQ. Her theatre translations are also in wide circulation: upcoming tours include The Problem with Pink by Érika Tremblay-Roy, published by Lansman (Le Petit Théâtre de Sherbrooke), and Pascal Brullemans’ The Nonexistant (DynamO Théâtre). Three translations were presented in the 2018-19 season (for Geordie Productions 2Play-Tour, Talisman Theatre and Le Petit Théâtre de Sherbrooke). Her translation of Pascal Brullemans’ plays for young audiences, Amaryllis and Little Witch, was just published by Playwrights Canada Press. Currently the Quebec Caucus representative for the Playwrights Guild of Canada, she is co-founder of Composite Theatre Co. and a long-standing member of Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal. She has a B.A. in Creative Writing (Concordia University) and an M.A. in English Studies (Université de Montréal).
About Francophone Canadian Theatre
Quebecois and francophone Canadian playwrighting is on forefront of international playwriting – their work is translated and presented all over the world. Like much European writing, Quebecois texts are written to engage the artists involved as well as their audience. Textual presentation does not define production but engages in theatrical imagination and expression, embracing metaphor as much as much as English Language writing often embraces the well-made play. In short, the text is often only the beginning of the theatrical conversation.
It’s particularly hard to describe the unique “Langue D’Auteur” created by Francophone Canadian artists as there’s nothing quite like it in Western English Language theatre. Imagine Shakespeare, Moliere, Sarah Kane and Martin Crimp smashed together. It was developed in part to allow Quebecois artists to write for French language touring without sacrificing their own cultural and linguistic identity, and in part as a textual equivalent to the remarkable physical theatre and literature of the culture. It is a textual place where there are no rules or the rules are meant to be smashed. The poetic or expressionistic are side by side with gritty realism and the mundane often becomes the fantastical.
