La Sagouine is A One Woman Show
A collection of stories that brings Acadia to life
Photo by montreal.tv
Down in Louisiana they call ‘em Cajun, a southern bastardization of the word Acadian, or Acadien in French. They came from France in the 17th century, settled in Canada’s Maritime Provinces, especially New Brunswick, and some eventually migrated south to Louisiana. They have a rich and proud history in Canada filled with stories and song.
La Sagouine is one such story. Or rather, a collection of stories that brings Acadia to life.
Playwright Antonine Maillet and actress Viola Léger are both Acadian. Maillet was born in New Brunswick, but makes her home just outside of Montreal. She claims to be the first woman, if not the most important, to bring the Acadian oral tradition out of the Maritimes and onto paper. It is interesting to note, with a federal election just weeks away, that Maillet had once hosted the federal leaders debate during the 1988 election campaign.
Photo by montrealgazette.com
Viola Léger, considered by many to be the Grande Dame of French-Canadian theatre, and a former senator under Prime Minister Jean Chretien, was born in Massachusetts, but spent time in New Brunswick.
La Sagouine is an Acadian washerwoman who lives “down by the warf”, immortalized in Maillet’s classic of the Acadian-French dialect. Léger is currently reprising the defining role of her career 40 years after she brought La Sagouine to life in the original production. She’s played the role countless times over the years and across the country. This new one is an English production that brings these two women together at Montreal’s Segal Centre Theatre.
La Sagouine is a one woman show, a set of monologues through which “La Sagouine” tells a heart-warming story that encompasses Acadian history. “I came to La Sagouine,” Maillet explains in a promotional video, “because La Sagouine came to me”. It is a story that demanded to be written and told. The script is a translation that smoothly trades Acadian colloquialism for its English equivalent. Léger easily inhabits a character who was an old woman when Léger was a young woman. Now Léger is older than “La Sagouine” is in the play. Indeed, the actress and the character have grown together.
The play opened the day before the Vernal Equinox and runs through to April 10, a fitting time for La Sagouine to be on stage in Montreal. After all, as she says herself, “Spring is the best of times I sez.” And as Léger says in an interview, “who doesn’t want to see a play?”
The Segal Centre Theatre box office can be reached at 514-739-2301.
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ziggy101 said:
On Apr 2, 2011 - 19:18
I hear you well, but even in the article's subtitle is mention that ''short stories that bring back to life Acadia'' but you say that its not about Acadiens; I must be missing something for sure; I never saw the play in its entirety, but I know Mme Maillet a little and I would bet that in the background lingering, is some reminiscence of the ''Deportation'' which to me, was always intertwine intrinsically with anything to do about the Acadiens; some could disagree and say ''there is more to us than that particular time in our history'' but all of their destiny and establishment further on were shaped by this infamous tragedy; again, I never saw nor read the play, but I think that and with some subtleties, it's all about Acadia, thus Acadiens.maybe I should have taken a second deep breath before writing my little idiosyncrasy about the excerpts of
their History, but they didn't settle here and there by freedom of choice, they were kicked
out inhumanly from their land and I think that it as to be mentioned always. The Acadiens that settled in Louisania, went there, thinking
that Louisania still belonged to France; but it had been sold already. I am not a preponant
of using the Holocaust with sparisity for an analogy, and it could have been the wrong choice
in order to make a point, but
I care about the past, I think it's what defines us, like Sartre said '' Man'' is what he does'' and
maybe what he has done.....Good man.
ziggy101 said:
On Mar 31, 2011 - 16:48
You can't, when you talked about the Acadiens, mention their time and provenance in History, and bypassing what happened to them in 1755 ''Deportation' and the horrific destiny they suffer from the Brits....right?
Just like (and rightfully so) we can't omit mentioning the Holocaust and the suffering of the great Jewish Nation when we revisit WWII....question of fairness that's all.....(friendly sounding always) Robert