Artsculture

Pardon My French

A satirical play about a sovereign Quebec tries to engage Canada's 'third solitude.'

By Megan Stewart, 28 May 2010, TheTyee.ca

Actors from play Plan B

Adam Henderson (right) and Jacques Lalonde of 'Plan B.'

Text size:

Rate this:

Login/Register

Related

Plan B, a political satire by Toronto playwright Michael Healey, mocks Canada's two solitudes. Out here, however, B.C. watches aloof and from afar. If that makes us a third solitude, then what does it make a theatre company in North Vancouver that has decided to mount a play with French and English subtitles all about the Quebec separatist movement today -- and maybe tomorrow?

Production House Theatre is staging all the angst and absurdities of a fractured Canadian state. Written and performed in Canada's two languages with a title that means the same in French as it does in English, you know the show isn't about birth control. But is it relevant to a B.C. audience? The director thinks so, but only because Plan B is like getting a dispatch from the other side of the continent, which it is.

The play imagines a future where Quebec has separated from Canada. Set in a boardroom in Hull, Quebec, the audience witnesses four politicians as they negotiate currency, water rights and national debt. Sounds like Constitutional Poli Sci 101, but Plan B is a comedy. The play lets us see what we're most afraid of (at least if you're a federalist) and is set in the weeks following a referendum wherein 53 per cent of Quebec voters say yes to sovereignty. It's funny because it hurts.

Is BC even listening?

In the opening scene, a Trudeau-era, socialist-leaning Saskatchewan senator tells the Quebec Premier -- who is now the leader of an independent Quebec -- that he's a big, fat jerk. (You can trust me when I say his words are decidedly more profane.) As the senator is red-faced and shouting, a French translation of his verbal vitriol is flashed on a screen to the audience's left. If you speak French, the translated subtitles will make you laugh. If you don't -- oh well, you understood the English insult in the first place.

The question driving Plan B -- and there are only questions, no answers provided here -- has to do with how well Canadians understand each other. Yet, not all of us are part of the conversation. Plan B shows us only two kinds of Canadian: the Quebecois sovereignist and the federalist Parliamentarian. If we're asking how well these people understand what the other has to say, we should ask if B.C. is even listening.

Count the play's director, Bill Devine, among those who think British Columbians are not paying attention to the conversation about Quebec's separatist sentiment. "I don't think they're engaged at all," he said. "I think we live a world away." For Devine, who grew up in Burnaby and does not speak a lick of French beyond, "I can say, 'Bonjour,'" Plan B is like checking out the politics of a foreign nation -- albeit one that governs over him from afar.

"The political situation [in Canada] has always been very much focused in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec," he said. "As someone from British Columbia, the play does resonate with me because it gives me a better idea what the political climate is 3,000 miles away."

French and British colonial histories are a defining point of present-day Canadian politics if you're campaigning for office in Montreal. If your interests are drawn elsewhere, Plan B is less likely to grip you.

Naïvité is a French word

Devine has cast France Perras in the role of Lise. A sovereignist Quebecois bureaucrat and the script's only woman, Lise is an intelligent and beguiling flirt who stands as a metaphor for the province she's guiding to independence. The stereotype of la belle province as a demanding woman ruled by passion over logic is insulting at best, but Plan B gets interesting when Lise and Michael Fraser, the prime minister in waiting, move from the bilingual bureaucracy of the boardroom to a more intimate place where they can practice other kinds of French tongue-twisters. While her feelings slowly warm towards him, Michael quickly professes his love for her (and by extension, Quebec society, language and culture). He comes on hard like puberty has just struck, and she rebuffs him each time he tells her -- emphatically -- "I think you’re just fantastic!" He finds a better word and begins to describe Lise and her state's qualities as ébouillante.

Flipping through your pocked French-English dictionary? That's the point. Watching Plan B, not everyone is privy to the joke although sometimes you're left to feel you are the joke. In this country of regions and nations, we do not share a mother tongue and will not always understand each other, says Perras, who plays Lise with flawless Quebecois and English. A bi-cultural, bilingual Ontario Francophone living in Vancouver, Perras says the nuanced comedy and heightened sensitivities of the script will not resonate with a unilingual theatre-goer in Western Canada as it would a bilingual spectator in Montreal or Ottawa.

Why?

"Because B.C. doesn't know," she said. "We are on the other side of the country. A lot of Vancouver -- I should be careful how I say this and I'm generalizing -- but it's one thing to read or hear about it, but is another to live it." Plan B is "absolutely" a different play depending on where it's staged, said Perras. "It is such a delicate topic back east, whereas for B.C., a lot of people don't really know the meaning of the weight that the subject can carry."

Separatism 'written in our genes'

Perras said a Quebecois friend of hers had to leave the theatre immediately after having seen a performance. Following a rant about "the stupid French," the sovereignist responds that Quebec is distinct from English Canada and while it shares a common history and a language, "France does not set our moral compass."

This statement also stuck with Perras. "I'm not separatist at all but it's something that has been instilled within us that is almost written in our genes. It's bizarre and is only my point of view, but it's something [that] stems so far back, I've often said that the Plains of Abraham are almost coursing through my veins. It's something I can't explain and I might react and I don't know why."

Perras said the play served as some kind of catharsis, allowing her to revisit the moment 15 years ago when Canada nearly fractured. In her role as a sovereignist civil servant, she tapped into a memory of dozens of busses leaving Ottawa loaded with federalists hell-bent on urging Quebecois to vote No and stay.

"Sometimes I see a pattern of some people having come out here to get away because it was such an ugly battle," she said, adding that she's noticed there is a community of exiles throughout B.C. that don't self-impose any pressure to declare themselves Yes or No for an independent Quebec. "You could get earmarked as either or -- and you may not always be able to find your place."

In one scene at the boardroom table, the PM-to-be Michael Fraser shows how quickly an allegiance can be betrayed. After begging the sovereignists to defy the mandate of Quebec voters and remain part of Canada, Michael accepts that his Dominion is being rejected and instead of courting their favour, suddenly seeks to punish the independent Quebec through hard politics penalties like sanctions and border control. He pleads with them, "Don't go," and then betrays his own gesture to spit, essentially, get lost and good riddance. His infatuation with Lise crumbles in a similar fashion.

Like a Panama-born hockey-player trapping fur in Lebanon

Devine says he was driven to direct Plan B because it would be a challenge to stage a play in two languages and because the playwright is Canadian. He first saw a Canadian play on a Canadian stage as a teenager in 1967 when he took in a production written by his uncle, George Ryga who wrote The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. Experimental in structure, the play broached the highly charged story of a young aboriginal woman who leaves her reserve for a life under big city lights. ("Ecstasy" alludes to a martyr's enlightened euphoria when she meets her god, foretelling the tragedy of Ryga's protagonist and a social justice system that is neither just nor in service of all of society.) In 1984, a New York Times critic wrote, "Just when it seems as though every conceivable subject has been explored in depth on the New York stage, along comes The Ecstasy of Rita Joe to prove us wrong."

It would be another 20 years before Devine saw a second Canadian play on a provincial stage. "They just didn't do Canadian," he said. "Nobody would take the chance to do a Canadian play. They just didn't feel that an audience was there." Indeed, stated one prestigious U.S. theatre writer, "'Canadian Playwright.' The words seem a little incongruous together, like 'Panamanian hockey-player,' almost or 'Lebanese fur-trapper.'"

Devine, it would seem, is showing his commitment to Canadian theatre but not necessarily to all B.C. spectators. As Colin Thomas lamented in the Georgia Straight, "If you're like me, and you're sick to death of discussing what feels like a dead issue, then Plan B will mostly annoy you despite the strengths in [the] production."

Bye bye, mon cowboy

Although a bilingual audience may catch more nuance and humour between the spoken language and written text, the actors cast in Plan B are charged with making sure the audience knows what the hell is going on. The intentions of a character can still be made clear to the spectator whose French education culminated with a 1980s pop song played on MuchMusic. A pair of season ticket holders at a production on a Saturday night had no idea the play was partly in French. They say it didn't pose a problem but they confessed to working with "just what I picked up in high school." Language did not hinder the politics, according to another anglophone in the audience, who said the subject will resonate with any Canadian who is politically engaged.

Jacques Lalonde plays the premier of Quebec -- rather, former premier, now the leader of an independent Quebec -- a character who cannot push out the sound made at the front of the words "hostile" and "hurtful." Said Lalonde, "Putting two languages on stage, is at the heart of what the play is about," he said. "Do we really understand each other?"

That aspects of the bilingual production will fly over the heads of some Vancouver and B.C. audiences alludes to the very national bifurcation addressed in the play. This is part of the charm and challenge of Canada's two (or more) solitudes. "I think that's what [playwright] Michael Healey is trying to do," surmised Devine. "He's not trying to bring us into a world of political ideology. He's trying to bring us into a world where a relationship is falling apart."

Plan B is produced by Sea Theatre and continues at Presentation House Theatre until Saturday, May 29. [Tyee]

Megan Stewart is completing a practicum at The Tyee.

20 Comments:

Login or register to post comments

  • martagon

    1 year ago

    A matter of respect...

    Making an attempt to learn the other official language or at least reaching out to learn the culture shows respect for Canada's linguistic duality. The lack of comments here is particularly telling in the BC context vis-a-vis Quebec, although I am not at all surprised by it.

  • Amy Fox

    1 year ago

    It's not Western Apathy

    From this review and their website, it *sounds* like this play sees Canada as "Two Solitudes:" baby-England and baby-France. Such a frame implies that because those two empires colonized this chunk of the Earth's crust, that those are the two and only two morally sanctioned cultures. Thus, around Franco-Quebec and Anglo-Ontario our country will revolve.

    Before paying to see this play, I would like to know whether it is set in contemporary multicultural Canada, or in a fantasy land where Ottawa/Gatineau is the axis of the world. Does it's humour include the awkward situation of Aboriginal folk and land with regards to sovereignty? Or how immigrant minorities in Quebec get stomped on in the name of preserving heritage? Does it ask what effect separation would have past Saskatchewan? Will it acknowledge Francophones outside of Quebec? Or is it just another tired grudge-match/ego-trip between Franco-Quebec and Anglo-Ontario?

    Could anyone who has seen this play please respond? If they address these topics, I would love to see it. If they don't, then this play is counterproductive to real dialogue.

    In the meantime, I will follow the above advice and learn a language that will let me reach out to my Canadian neighbours. So will it be 日本語 or 官話?

    (Speaking of cultural understanding, if that last sentence got mangled, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Multilingual_support_%28East_Asian%29)

  • realisticman

    1 year ago

    Toronto Angst.

    Ontarians are those most concerned by the possibility of Québec leaving because of the huge volume of trade, the rest of Canada is increasingly less interested. The warnings and threats from both federalists and Québec nationalist have worn thin. Some said that a Prime Minister from Calgary would be the final straw and Québec would go quickly but the latest poll from last month still has the separatists at 39%. Only a few worry about it and the worry is often sentimental in origin.

    One solitude that does worry but even they less now that their ranks have become seriously dimished to Toronto's benefit, are the English speakers of Québec. They would be the most affected solitude, along with Québec Francophone federalists, that would be most affected were separation to happen. English speakers in Québec number almost a million, about the same number of French speakers in all the rest of Canada. The root of French speakers outside Québec would be wrenched away and the likelihood that Federal Canadian services for them in the French language continuing would be considerably reduced.

    It is ironic that successive Québec politicians have sought and obtained more powers and decentralization from Ottawa; which concurrently causes the federal civil service and the federal presence to be less prominent, not only in Québec but also in the rest of Canada, thereby diminishing the use and requirement of, and the exposure to the French language by all Canadians. Even if one wants to speak French in western Canada one hardly ever encounters it and many never do. Other languages are encountered regularly.

    Other solitudes in contemporary Canada are multiple now. No matter how vociferously federal and Québec politicians attempt to insist on their being just two solitudes, the general population has moved on from this increasingly archaic concept. Are the native Indians not a solitude? Then we have the Acadians in the Maritimes. Canadian multiculturalism defines itself by creating degrees of a solitude in any community that wishes to hang on to it. For western Canadians the solitude of French Québecers, that unfortunately gains prominence and is broadcast when someone is complaining about Canada and/or Ottawa, is just one of many.

    A play about politician arguing over arcane issues such as federal debt and water rights is unlikely to attract a substantial audience. What the writer should, perhaps, have considered was casting a French Québecer in both leading rôles, the leader of Québec and the Prime Minister of Canada, thereby mirroring the ridiculous situation we had in 1995 at the last referendum. This would now become a real and complete comedy since we would have two French Québecers arguing over the future of the Rest of Canada.

  • G West

    1 year ago

    Mais Non

    The decentralization process in this nation is NOT lead by Quebec - it is led by PEE WEE Rambo who, those not hampered by a lack of effective memory, stated, not all that long ago, that it was a perfectly acceptable policy for Alberta.

    Canada and its future is in much more danger from Flanagan/Harper "Alberta style" separatists than it is from Quebec's desire for cultural autonomy

    Perhaps you've forgotten some of the Dear Leader's earlier musings on the subject.

    Here's a reminder:

    ...It is to take the bricks and begin building another home -- a stronger and much more autonomous Alberta. It is time to look at Quebec and to learn. What Albertans should take from this example is to become "maitres chez nous."

    In one policy area after another, the province of Quebec, with much less financial independence than Alberta, has taken initiatives to ensure it is controlled by its own culture and its own majority. Such a strategy across a range of policy areas will quickly put Alberta on the cutting edge of a world where the region, the continent and the globe are becoming more important than the nation-state. ...

    Westerners, but especially Albertans, founded the Reform/Alliance to get "in" to Canada. The rest of the country has responded by telling us in no uncertain terms that we do not share their "Canadian values." Fine. Let us build a society on Alberta values.

  • G West

    1 year ago

    Whoops!

    That's "...is not LED by Quebec..."

  • realisticman

    1 year ago

    Short Sighted

    Québec's desire for decentralization has been there for a long, long time - before Stephen Harper was even born. Any suggestion that this is something that came from Alberta is real stretch. Québec nationalists constantly complained over Trudeau's policy of a strong central government and their anger resulted in the Parti Québecois.

    Here's an abstract from an academic paper describing the situation in 1944:

    Beland, D. and Lecours, A. , 2006-08-11 "Political Divides and Territorial Boundaries: Federalism, Nationalism, and Social Policy Decentralization in Canada and Belgium"

    "The Union Nationale, elected in 1944, voiced concern about the expansion of the federal welfare state perceived as part of a centralizing and nation building process spearheaded by federal government. For French-Canadian nationalists, welfare state centralization constituted a major threat to the institutional autonomy of Québec and, consequently, to the survival of the French culture and language..."

    http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/9/4/5/3/pages94532/p94532-1.php

    There are many other examples. Claude Bélanger of Marianopolis College (http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/federal/decentra.htm) writes:

    "...The supporters of decentralization are now found in all parts of Canada although they have especially been prominent in Quebec.

    The fundamental basis for the argument of decentralizing powers in Canada is that Ottawa adopts policies which may do some good for the nation as a whole (many have argued that, in practice, this has too often meant Ontario) ..."

  • G West

    1 year ago

    Québec's colonial history

    Québec's colonial history and its desire for cultural and linguistic self-expression are well known; that and a history and tradition of economic servitude to Anglo imperialism.

    All of this is well-known by people who were born and actually educated in this country...and those whose experience of Canada and its history is somewhat deeper and more intellectually sophisticated than the pages of ALBERTA REPORT.

    People who come here as adults frequently fail to understand both the French fact and the dynamics of the tensions between Québec and the rest of Canada.

    Québec has had its own pension plan and, administers L'assurance-emploi et de maternité, parentales et de maladie for quite some time; without in any way diminishing the rest of Canada.

    Alberta and Pee Wee (cannot be understood without appreciating the connection between the two and the reliance upon the foreign academic gloss of Tom Flanagan) do not share the values of the rest of Canada. Furthermore, they can't understand enough French to have a clue about the important role of Québec in a united Canada.

    If this were not the case Albertans and other crackpot western separatists would not make the kinds of idiotic statements which have formed the 'intellectual' underpinning of virtually everything Pee Wee and his little band of fundamentalists believe.

    This future of this country has been, at least since the last quarter of the last century, in much more danger from ignorant westerners than it ever has been from Québec.

  • realisticman

    1 year ago

    History should be studied

    With the creation of the the Québec Pension Plan in 1965 the decentralization of Canada developed substantially. Stephen Harper was 6 years old. Tom Flanagan was at University in Durham, North Carolina. René Lévesque was Minister of Natural Resources in Québec where he played an important role in the nationalisation of hydroelectric companies, greatly expanding Hydro-Québec, that was part of the Quiet Revolution. Jacques Parizueau was especially instrumental in the nationalization of Hydro-Québec, the nationalization of the Asbestos Corporation Limited mines, and the creation the Quebec Pension Plan.

    It's always amusing to read the 'wise' thoughts of some talking-head Anglo-Canadians that have never learned French to a point where they can understand and converse proficiently and never lived for any extended time in Québec, yet think that they know the psyche of the province.

    The Professor Jacques Bourgault discusses the federal centralizing agenda extensively in his translated discussion here:

    http://tiny.cc/91rz5

    " ... The fact is that since 1968, these centralizing agendas have been accompanied by a constant rise in support for sovereignty in Quebec. "

    Remember Mario Dumont of the ADQ?

    " So what does Mario Dumont mean by autonomy? The answer lies in his history. In 1991, the Quebec Liberal Party, in which Dumont was youth leader, voted for a radically devolved Canada. Under that plan, proposed by lawyer Jean Allaire, Quebec would have full and exclusive jurisdiction over 22 areas in the cultural and social fields, including health, employment insurance, communications and public security.

    In return, the federal government would maintain exclusive responsibility in just five areas, including defence and payment of the national debt. Ottawa would also continue to be responsible for funding equalization, a program designed to help so-called have-not provinces like Quebec. "

    Alberta certainly may agree with a more decentralized Canada but without much power in Ottawa due to Alberta's small size it was Québec that drove the agenda.

  • G West

    1 year ago

    The real separtatists

    The real separatists ARE Albertans - many of whom, like Flanagan, are also expats from the US or, in some cases, the UK who have little or no knowledge or real connection to Canada.

    I'd suggest that you've dealt your own argument a persuasively fatal blow in your earlier post when you wrote this: "...the latest poll from last month still has the separatists at 39%. Only a few worry about it and the worry is often sentimental in origin.

    Perhaps you've forgotten? Support for separatism in the PQ is NOT on the rise.

    However, as long as PeeWee holds the reins of power in Ottawa the threat of Albertan independence will continue to grow because of his, and Albertans, incomplete and erroneous understanding of Canadian history. Coupled with his inability to actually work within a parliamentary democracy.

    Disappointed that their small pink effete hero isn't delivering what they'd hoped - more control to a region where most CANADIANS don't want to live - they'll continue to pretend that money can buy them love and experience angst and unhappiness when they discover, as they increasingly will - that that isn't the case.

  • realisticman

    1 year ago

    You just confirmed it

    As I wrote before, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not increased the probability of the separation of Québec even though pundits and academics cried out that doom was at hand when Harper came to power. Clearly, the Alberta factor (solitude) is moot!

  • G West

    1 year ago

    Now you're catching on - you've caught the plot again.

    Harper is increasing the possibility of Alberta separation...which is the point I was making all along.

  • realisticman

    1 year ago

    Alberta?

    May 17, 2010

    "On the Separatism Party of Alberta website even the interim leader Bruce Hutton admitted in 2008 that the movement has lost momentum.

    "Our initial objective was to form a Separatist Party to protect Albertans from central Canada by becoming a separate nation. We received a lukewarm response at best. This is hard to understand when you realize that previous polls have indicated that over 50 percent of Albertans were willing to discuss separation," Hutton noted in 2008.

    While Hutton maintained that separation was the "only viable alternative" I have to wonder if that's true, and if, based on the fact he hasn't posted in two years, he still feels that way? "

    The Hanna Herald, Article ID# 2579921

  • gaulois

    1 year ago

    Covering Québec separation in BC

    The fatigue seems to go on...

    A suggestion: why not cover instead on The Tyee what's left of French in western Canada?

    I will remind you that BC would today be part of the US if it would not have been of the Hudson Bay Company having been profitable due to their francophone métis workers acting as guides and intercultural&language interpreters way back. The 49 degree was then negotiated under the Oregon Treaty instead of the 54th parallel sought by the Americans and the Manifest Destiny.

    These Métis people have all disappeared, we are told. I do wonder what happened to the next waves of francophone intercultural&language interpreters&adventurers. Although perhaps a tabou topic in and out of Québec?

  • gaulois

    1 year ago

    Just like if was relevant in a world full of crisis

    Perhaps the experience of these francophone Métis is indeed relevant in a world where we are getting constantly beaten up. Food for thoughts anyhow.

  • G West

    1 year ago

    Hanna Alberta

    The only thing I know that ever came out of Hanna has been Nickelback - and God knows it would have been better if they had never happened.

    Apart from framers and drywallers, who'd miss 'em?

    The Separatists FROM Alberta are your good friends and allies in PEE WEE's cabinet and at the University of Calgary...they don't read the Hanna Herald, and neither should anyone else.

  • realisticman

    1 year ago

    G West

    This is an article about a Toronto written play about Eastern Canada's supposed preoccupation with their perception that Canada has two solitudes, that may one day lead to a fractured federation. You suggested that the present Prime Minister is/has been fomenting a separatist movement in Alberta. Do you have any information that shows this Republic of Alberta concept worthy of discussion in a 21st Century context? Is there any press on it? Are there any polls showing support numbers on it? Otherwise, it looks as though the subject at hand is being dismissed!

  • G West

    1 year ago

    I know that.

    I truly believe that Canada and its future is far more threatened from the kind of economic freebooters who run the show in Alberta (and, sadly, in British Columbia too) than it is from the two solitudes of the French/English fact.

    There is plenty of press on it and there are plenty of references to the kind of thing that bothers me about Pee Wee and his handlers.

    As for Polls, maybe you should look around at a recent one which indicates that a coalition led by the current NDP leader would defeat Stephen Harper's government by a considerable margin.

    Polls are most useful as a target for urinating dogs - in the real world they mean almost nothing.

  • realisticman

    1 year ago

    What a Relief

    As long as it's just those that 'truly believe', no polls to cite and no recent commentary, then we can relax and get back to discussing Eastern Canada's perceived and preoccupying solitudes.

  • G West

    1 year ago

    That's not the case at all

    As you well know.

    Perhaps you missed this:There is plenty of press on it and there are plenty of references to the kind of thing that bothers me about Pee Wee and his handlers.

    I've already posted some of it on this thread - Pee Wee's own words in fact.

    And I've point out reams of it heretofore as well.

    Again, as you well know.

    However, some Albertans and especially immigrant expats seem to have trouble actually assimilating facts which don't accord with their personal prejudices and attitudes of ethnic and linguistic superiority.

    Now, that's a real solitude.

  • realisticman

    1 year ago

    G West

    " especially immigrant expats "
    Are you allowed to generalize like that in this forum? Are you mimicking Jacques Parizeau when he lost and then said it was the fault of the ethnics? Are you referring to Carole James just because she was born in Manchester, England?

    • The discussion for this story is closed. No more comments can be added.