Plateau hero
Richard Burnett
rburnett@hour.ca
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Tremblay: Has enough friends, thank you
photo: Courtesy Centaur Theatre
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The rainbow colours of bougainvillea, royal Poinciana and hibiscus blooms and the turquoise waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico have made Key West a gay paradise for decades.Nearly a third of Key West's year-round residents are queer, including Quebec gay and literary icon Michel Tremblay, who divides his time between Montreal and Key West. But even here, in the Southernmost City, Tremblay hardly ever speaks English.
"I live in a big house and last year I had 22 friends come visit me," Tremblay tells me over the phone from his big house in Key West. "I live in French. I haven't made friends in Key West in over 19 years because I'm not the friendly man I am in interviews. I always say, 'The worst thing that can happen to me is that I meet somebody new.'"
Clearly Tremblay doesn't get out much, and this on an island famed for its notorious nightlife, where many of its bars are as legendary as some of the locals - folks like, well, Michel Tremblay.
But I understand Michel's reticence when it comes to language. After all, in 2006, when he expressed doubts about Quebec separation, the crap hit the proverbial fan. Basically, separatists advised him to shut up or keep out of the province.
So here he is in Key West graciously answering my questions in English on the eve of Michel & ti-Jean, a new English play about the fictional 1969 meeting of a 27-year-old Tremblay and then-47-year-old famed Beat writer Jack Kerouac. It began a month-long run on Feb. 2 at the Centaur,
the venerable Old Montreal theatre that has produced many English translations of Tremblay's works over the years.Tremblay's plays have also been translated into over 20 other languages around the world, including Yiddish, Haitian creole, Hindi and Japanese. But he agrees his translated plays have not had as much impact as they've had in French, including English translations by Linda Gaboriau, mother of rock star Melissa Auf der Maur, and ex-wife of one of my mentors, the late Montreal boulevardier Nick Auf der Maur. ("Nick died of the same throat cancer that I had," Michel notes.)
"If you ask anybody in the world who is translated, they will have the same reply: It should be better in its own language," Tremblay explains. "Chekhov was an even greater genius in Russian. I'm not taking myself for Chekhov, but Molière is less good in English than French."
That said, Tremblay is not just a Quebec icon, but is, to quote former Hour theatre critic Gaetan Charlebois on Canadiantheatre.com, "arguably the most important playwright in the history of [Canada]."
So much so that Stratford will produce Tremblay's play For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again in 2010, his fourth play at the famed Shakespeare festival.
"The last time was Les Belles-soeurs 15 years ago, and I had problems with Stratford," Tremblay recalls. "They just pay a [flat] fee and not 10 per cent of everything. Well, Les Belles-soeurs was a runaway hit and I would have made more money. But it's Stratford. So I shut up."
Just like he helped launch Montreal playwright Steve Galluccio into the stratosphere by translating Mambo Italiano into French, Tremblay, now 68, helped playwright George Rideout sell Michel & ti-Jean to the Centaur.
"I'm really not that generous, but when you see an exceptional talent, why not bow to it and help them? I've never been threatened by talent."
Tremblay especially likes Michel & ti-Jean because "it did something that I would never do in real life - that's take the bus to Florida! But it's a very good play about writing."
Tremblay was a proud out gay man when I was still a kid reading my first Tremblay novel, The Fat Lady Next Door Is Pregnant. So he also became something of a role model.
"We were doing a revival of Hosanna at Place des Arts in 1975 and this English CBC reporter surprised me by asking me, 'By the way, are you gay?' So, just to brag, I replied, 'Yes, by the way, I am!' It was on TV that night. The next morning I got phone calls saying, 'If you said it in English, then you have to say it on French TV tonight! So I went on live TV.
"You know, if I was a singer, I'd ask myself, 'Should I come out?' Seducing [audiences] is not part of my life, my job. But it is for actors and singers. Less now, but in the 1970s I would never have come out. But I did. Strange thing was [after I came out] everybody on the streets, it didn't matter to them. They kept on waving and saying hello to me."
Just whatever you do, don't call Tremblay a living legend.
"When I read that I laugh."
But it's true, Mr Tremblay. Read it and weep.
ooo
Essential buttplugs Michel & ti-Jean runs at the Centaur from Feb. 2 to March 7. Surf to www.centaurtheatre.com.
Meanwhile, across town at the Segal Theatre, fab out actor Damien Atkins stars as Henry James in the Montreal English premiere of the acclaimed play Geometry in Venice (adapted from James' novella The Pupil). "When I was in college, I was scared to come out," Atkins, 34, told me this week. "But then I said, 'Fuck it. This is who I am.' And I've refused to let it affect my career."
Geometry in Venice at the Segal Theatre until Feb. 14. Surf to www.segalcentre.org.
