Productions
UP
OUR PRODUCTION
BAGO
IN COLLABORATION WITH DIANE CORMIER VÉZINA
The story is set in a row in the Saguenay region. Between the 1970’s and 2000, this little corner of the country was particularly hit hard by deaths, one after the other: suicides, accidents of all kinds. You could easily call it the row of tragedy, but the mysterious thing was that no one in this country really mentioned it, we often went to funerals, it almost became a ritual, as if it was part of life.
Years later, a woman who lived in this row remembers her childhood tinged with all these deaths. She wonders who remembers them, she is afraid that these people will be forgotten and is concerned about their trace: most of these families are now deceased or scattered under a heap of scrap metal, because they built a highway.
One day, a crow lands in her kitchen in Montreal. This woman, named La Passeuse, pays special attention to this bird, because she believes it to be premonitory. That's when she decides to urgently return to Bago, bringing back with her, her sidekick, Le Sort, whom she has imprisoned at her home so that he will never return to her ranks.
In short, La Passeuse accuses Le Sort of being the rank-and-file criminal and she sets out to make him feel what the people of Bago have experienced, for each of the dead. She will take him with her on a journey on foot by the Montreal railway to Bago. She will make a real journey through the ranks, approaching these deceased people to bring them, for a few moments, to the land of the living. A one-way room, where the main action is walking; like life towards death. The short dialogues and borrowings from modern and classical poetry come to lighten the subject of death, and even to raise its luminous and necessary side.
Diane Cormier Vézina
ACTRESS & STAGE DIRECTOR
Originally from Saguenay, Diane Cormier Vézina was introduced to theater at the Conservatoire de Chicoutimi and continued her training as an actress and teacher in Montreal. In 1994, she founded a drama theater school with a program of four years of study. With her students, she created the Finally Winter Group, where she became artistic director of an intimate room with 60 spectators. In her theater, she helps generate words that pay tribute to the people of our region, to the people here.
Thanks to her passion for writing, creation and adaptation, she will present texts including: Tales of the uncertain country and the English Tales of Jacques Ferron, La folie comme de raison, taken from the book of the Collectif Solidarité-Psychiatrie, and her own creations, Hier, La porte and Les Invulnérables.
While teaching, she continued her profession as an actress, in 1995, she won the auditions of the Quat'Sous, under the watchful eye of René Richard Cyr, which earned her to be noticed by the members of the Théâtre Prospéro, for which she played successively in the decomposed theater or the dustbin man by Matéï Visniec, in a production by Claude Lemieux, and in The demons, by Dostoïevski, under the direction of Téo Spychalski.
From 1999, she was asked to become a member of the Théâtre Prospéro, but instead chose to create her own theater. She will play there: Mathilde by Véronique Olmi, in 2009-2010; The banquet of little people or the politeness of despair by Michel Garneau, in 2013 and, Jean and Béatrice by Carole Fréchette, in 2012-2014. All of these plays were presented at the Théâtre Parenthèse and produced by the Group Enfin l'Hiver. Currently, she is busy creating her next original piece: Bago, which she wants to present to us in 2022.
Written & performed by Diane Cormier-Vézina
Directed by Véa
Lighting design: Cédric Delorme-Bouchard
Dramaturgical advisor: Anne Sophie Gergoy
Lyrical song and interpretation: Virginie Mongeau
Produced by Productions UP