Shakespeare and the Exploration of Manhood in Québécois Theatre: An Interview with Reynald Robinson on Roméo and Julien

Reynald Robinson

Reynald Robinson was interviewed in French by CASP research associate Marissa McHugh in October 2002.

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Introduction:

I met with Reynald Robinson in October of 2003 to discuss the adaptation process he undertook in 1979 for his Shakespearean adaptation entitled Roméo and Julien, which was co-written by Québec actor Jacques Girard. Roméo and Julien is an episodic structured play that was originally performed as an improvisation piece and which includes live music and gesture. In the following interview, Robinson describes that he and Girard wanted to create a piece of theatre that openly and honestly exposed the male voice in relation to issues of fatherhood, homosexuality, and male intimacy. Roméo and Julien appropriates Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet characters and uses their identities as metaphors throughout the play for the dual conflicted sides of the male psyche. Romeo stands as the repressed stereotypical "masculine" side whereas Juliet is used as a representation of the intimate and emotional "feminine" side. Throughout the play, various male perspectives are presented ranging from men that are fraught with homosexual urges to men that are desperately seeking intimacy in their non-sexual relationships.

In the following interview, Robinson notes that Roméo and Julien marked the ascent of his career in theatre, as it proved he could act and write at a professional level. After Roméo and Julien, Robinson pursued as career both as an actor and as a playwrights. He worked extensively as an actor with Théâtre Répère in Québec City. Robinson was the artistic director of the Théâtre de Gros Mécano between 1988 and 1992. Since then, he has written numerous children plays, which have been produced in Québec. Recently, his second play for adults Horizon Hotel was translated from French to English and read at the Factory Theatre in the fall of 2002.

Interview with Reynald Robinson:

MM: How does the adaptation of a Shakespeare play allow the Québécois identity to emerge?

RR: Roméo and Julien was an inspiration starting from the idea of the impossible relationship between Romeo and Juliet. In terms of Shakespeare's plays, we don't really feel they belong to a specific mentality or a specific spirit. Even when you stage a Shakespeare play traditionally, in Quebec, we give it our own spirit and our own mentality. We don't really feel it belongs to England or the British spirit because Shakespeare really picked his settings from all over the place. Notably, Romeo and Juliet is inspired from Italy. He situated it there. And for us, it seemed possible to do a reading of that. To do a reading of what we are.

Jacques Girard and I were inspired by the use of excess in Romeo and Juliet and in Shakespeare's plays. It's not a naturalistic play. The excess in it gave us the freedom to say what we had to say and go all the way with it without judging ourselves. Because this text is passionate, we wanted to use it to talk about the friendship between men, in a passionate way. To a certain extent, the text can be acquired, except the work was created through improvisation. During the whole run of the show, we never knew the text by heart. We improvised. The first night we improvised and finally the play became self-structured.

There was also a carnivalesque spirit to the play that Shakespeare has in his plays ... a kind of unrestrained spirit. There are Shakespearean comedies where two characters suddenly arrive to perform a short scene. We wanted that spirit. So, the structure inspired us, as well as the passionate aspect of the play ... that becomes passionate ... that forces people to become irrational. That was really the source of the inspiration.

MM: Do you find that the carnivalesque spirit present in Shakespeare's plays is similar to the celebratory spirit present at the carnaval de Québec?

RR: Yes, because we find ourselves in that carnival spirit, of theatre celebration, of an evening where we can relax and see a little bit of everything. To be serious, but also to be relaxed and funny. Comedy and Tragedy ... the two aspects. So, we find ourselves in that same spirit. I have to say that in that decade, when we did Romeo and Julien, the theatre in Québec was really, really popular. We constantly had an audience. People would come. The party spirit ruled. And the voice of Québec was largely created from the theatre. It was the theatre that assured that voice. That's how we found the connection with the celebratory spirit in Shakespeare. The Québécois people really, really, really, really love Shakespeare. It's almost bigger than the French masters. We find ourselves in the celebration element that is present in Shakespeare's plays, more than in Molière's plays. Molières are really about comedy and celebration too, but with Shakespeare ... maybe because there's a mix of the two [comedy and tragedy]. It's closer to us because of the mixing of the two. And it's closer to you, because we are, after all, a mix of the two cultures: Anglophone and Francophone. I am. I'm originally Anglophone, but I have completely assimilated to Francophone culture. I'm a mix of the two.

MM: Could you describe your experience in the writing of a collective play?

RR: It was entirely created from improvisation. Entirely. Nothing was written. We did about two hundred and fifty performances of the play. It was after that it was put on video. And it was only after the video that someone transcribed the text from what they had seen. But, it was really made from improvisation. We were constantly adding parts.

MM: At the end of Roméo and Julien you do a testimony. I assume it was intimidating to blur the lines between fiction and reality as an actor and a writer. What did you hope to achieve with this monologue? How did you expect the audience to react?

RR: It was really difficult. We wanted to suddenly give a real-life aspect. A little bit like at the end of The Tempest when Prospero says that the theatre is life. We really feel like Shakespeare is testifying to what he lived in the theatre. It was this serious, revelatory aspect that we wanted to give after having laughed. The revelation aspect really produces a sympathetic effect on the audience while creating a simple relationship with them that lacked artifice. That's what we wanted.

MM: Did this testimony identify you in the theatre community? Did that identity influence your future work?

RR: Yes, because this was a play that confirmed I could write. So, it gave me a security, a living language, and a confirmation of a live language that I could create. For the theatre and artistic community, it confirmed an important presence. It showed how people could get involved. A real theatre performance is constituted from people that apply themselves to their performance. A play is not just a pirouette. It's not just a fantasy you forget when you go home after the show. There is something in the theatre that is a reflection of who you are. It's living; we are living. People like that. People like that intimate relationship.

MM: When discussing themes, such as male sexuality, what motivated you to make the play a comedy?

RR: Looking back, I can tell you that comedy allowed us to say a little bit more, without offending anyone ... We had no idea how the play would affect people. We thought maybe they would throw tomatoes at us. It was the first time men were talking about men. We got harsh reviews. We got harsh reviews especially the next day and in the official reviews. The critique was not about the thematic relationships between men or the intimacy between men, but rather on the form. Certain reviewers liked the form, but refused to accept it because it was irrational. They wanted it to be more pragmatic. But, we didn't want to do that at all. We didn't want to say that men were like this, etc, etc. To make a demonstration of it. We wanted to talk like it could be simple. To be simple is the hardest thing to do. Comedy allowed us to say some things that would have been too harshly spoken in a different way. It let us outlet some things, say some things, and confess some things. I'm thinking specifically of the masturbation scene. We needed to find a form that allowed us to play the scene without actually doing the scene. We couldn't act out that scene. We used black lights and white gloves. This allowed us to have fun with a form that was gesture-driven while saying other things. We would have said a lot less if we didn't have comedy as a medium. We would have been forced to back down.

MM: You mentioned earlier that the reviews were negative. Was the audience reaction different than the reaction of the reviewers?

RR: The audience's reactions were nothing like the reviewers' reactions. It was really different. Never, never was there a negative comment. It was a huge success. The reviewers just hated the form, because it was a new form. I am an actor who sings, dances, and does a little of it all, and so is Jacques. We wanted to use all of our potential and maybe that is what made it so structurally strange. It was really explosive. We were making huge characters. And you could feel the improvised aspect. So, the critiques were harsh, except the surprising thing is that at the start we did about thirty representations of the play. It was a huge success, so we continued and the critics came back and they changed their opinions.

MM: At the end of Roméo and Julien, we discover that Roméo and Julien are the same person. What was the intention behind this staging decision?

RR: It was simply that we wanted to show the two aspects of that person. We wanted the intrigue that kept the audience asking who it was, but finally we realise that they are two parts of one. It's like the surprise scene, the penis scene. The audience didn't understand what Jacques represented. All of a sudden in the gesture of Jacques coming from between my legs, the audience understood it was the character's penis. All of the scenes are a bit like that, there is suspense. Who is the other? Who is the other? The suspense allowed us to show the two aspects and the two voices of the man: the feminine side and the masculine side of a man. That affronts itself and that loves passionately. And there is always one side that dominates. It makes you shy when it is the feminine side. That is what we wanted, the duality that is always there. And by taking the text of Romeo and Juliet, we showed the impossibility of this duality. A sort of impossible meeting place.

MM: Roméo and Julien is written in "joual." Do you think that it is possible to translate this text while remaining faithful to the original play?

RR: Yes.

MM: Did you want the audience to be asking themselves questions as they were leaving the theatre after having seen Roméo and Julien?

RR: Firstly, what we really wanted was for women to learn some things. I'll go back to the penis scene. We wanted the female audience to learn the male relationship with himself. That ... the female audience was really happy about. To discover a bit of that world. And we wanted men to know that there is no real danger in talking about that inner world. To relieve yourself of thing wasn't that big of a risk. It was a bit of both things that we wanted to accomplish ... the surprise element for women and the reassurance for men that there is no real danger if you vent something - you don't turn into an effeminate creature or become different. And life is a lot simpler when you allow the dual side of a male to exist. Also, we wanted to show the male voice. The bottom line is that we can have a voice too that describes how we live, a voice that doesn't resort to "tavern talk," or a discourse that we know. We were simply trying to speak a male discourse we had learnt and were living.

MM: Did Théâtre de la Bordée play an important role in the production of Roméo and Julien? Did the direction of the play change very much after the run at Théâtre de la Bordée?

RR: When the play was redone, it didn't change much. The text had been set at this point. The visual aspect didn't change much either, but there was the new temperament of my character's replacement, Jacques, who happened to be a nervous little guy. He created his characters from what he was, rather than in imitation of how I had played them. And Théâtre de la Bordée was extremely useful at the start. It is not any company that will allow twenty-five performances of a show that is improvised, without text, just like that, while saying, "Go ahead," and while giving us the green light. And they allowed us to do it on a strange topic. It allowed something new to happen in the theatre. Théâtre de la Bordée was audacious. They allowed the creation of new works and of improvised shows. It was a very important theatre in Québec. Now it has become a theatre that only does textual theatre. I still work there quite a bit. And now, well ... it's a "well-behaved" theatre.

MM: In relation to the ideologies on male silence that are presented in the play, why do you think that men have difficulties expressing themselves? Do you think that the theatre liberates the male voice?

RR: Certainly, men feel a real danger in asserting voice. Even artists, even me as an author. I know when I want to express intimate things, I will often outlet it through my female characters, and a lot of other Québec playwrights do that as well. I'm thinking specifically of Michel Tremblay. It seems like it is unacceptable for men to have an emotional side to them ... I don't want to call it fragile, but they have an aspect that is limpid. What a man is completely made up of emotionally is not entirely accepted yet. I think I am fair in saying that men find it extremely difficult to express themselves emotionally because there is a side that is too fragile and that gives too much of them away. There is an enormous number of male writers in Québec that write mostly from a female character's point of view. We had a discussion last year about that at a meeting of playwrights, where we observed that the majority of Québec characters are women. The vast majority of characters in the Québec repertoire are feminine, while the playwrights are men. It's as if the male author is more comfortable from the female perspective when expressing himself. It's as if the female perspective was more reassuring than the male perspective. I know that I do not do it voluntarily. But in all my plays, it is my female characters that have the expressive voice. I have realised that whenever a man has an expressive voice or is about to gain a voice in my writings, he is close to death. All my men express themselves because they are dying. That's serious. It's like the male acquisition of his voice correlates directly with death. It's like death awaits us if we express ourselves. I think that is a serious problem. I think that is a scary fact. Because when women express themselves, they are directed towards personal liberty. When a male character expresses himself he dies. Maybe men feel that when they express themselves part of them dies. Or they risk dying.

MM: Has your perspective on the "male condition" changed since you wrote Roméo and Julien? Has the representation of men on stage changed in the last twenty years?

RR: Yes, if I look on the ensemble of writers and characters created, I see the situation and representation of men has changed. It has changed because now men are made more voiceless than ever. Also, if they express themselves, they are either about to die or they are homosexual. But never, well I would have to look really hard for a male character that has a balanced and assured voice. I am sincere in saying that I can't think of one. The only one that comes to mind is from Michel Tremblay's play on the male couple where one is dying of AIDS. He seems to be balanced. But, again he is a homosexual man and he is about to die, but his character is emotionally balanced. But other than that, I don't know any male characters like that. I don't know if the masculine voice has evolved. I don't think so. I sincerely don't think so.

MM: Do you think that if Roméo and Julien was staged today that it would be received differently?

RR: I think staging the play could be really useful. I don't think that the play is debased. I think it is still enormously present: the fantasies and the interior counter-representations in Roméo and Julien.

MM: Do you believe that your characters are more identifiable as Québecois or as Canadians?

RR: For me, in terms of all my texts ... I come from Gaspé. I am originally from Gaspé, from a little village that is Francophone, but that is inhabited with Francophone people, Scottish people and Irish people. My mother is Francophone. For me, there are always two cultures present. My grandfather is Scottish and talked with an accent his whole life - even in French. He didn't like England, so we were almost not allowed to speak English in front of him. It meant you were on the side of the British monarchy. It was only at the end of his life that he would speak a little English with us and tell us Scottish legends.

When I write, I have the impression that I utilise these fantasies ... the two spirits are present. I have the feeling that I am made up of two conflicting cultures. I would say that the culture of the extremely alive Québec voice coincides with a Scottish culture that is highly pragmatic. And in my texts it is said that nothing can be displaced because they are logical.

And, I work enormously with structure. For example, the text that is being read tonight is one hundred and seven pages in my manuscript, but I wrote six hundred and fifty pages for it and then reduced it to one hundred and seven pages. So, what is present is extremely essential. That comes from my father and my Scottish grandfather ... pragmatic. And the Francophone actors that read my text say that my structure has a way that should be read in English.

Me, I write from myself, from pragmatic realism, and from inventive form. I invent a bit of my Québécois language. Let's say, I add to it. But, I add a bit of the Anglophone spirit to it. When I heard the text, a week ago ... the rhythm! The rhythm is the hardest part for the Québécois actors to master with my texts. But, the Anglophone actors read my text for the first time with the right rhythm. I find it bizarre that the rhythm I write in as an author is more present with Anglophone actors than with Francophone actors.

But to answer your question more specifically, I hope that my plays are universal. I hope. It happens in a little village, but it unifies many localities. I find that all the greatest works are like that, the ones I like anyways, are localized. Shakespeare is local. His stories exemplify the histories of the British monarchy, but simply as a pretext. Because it is a pretext, it is universal. I think and I hope because I like this quality, that it is present in my texts, as well.

But, I think what is Canadian in my texts is born mostly from the meeting of two cultures present in the narratives. It's Canadian. In my first text La salles des loisirs, there was a strong Canadian presence, a physical presence of the geography simply because my character was on the run. Her name was Agathe and she was constantly running. So, the piece covered the whole of Canada while she searched for a way out. It was a pan-Canadian play in her geographical adventure. This one Roméo and Julien is not. But, it's really North American. It's Canadian in terms of its culture, I think. It's not at all the American style. I don't see a correlation. But, there is a meeting ... there is the presence of two cultures colliding. So, Roméo and Julien could be read in this way. There is an element of Canadian, of Francophone, and of Anglophone. It shows a vision of Canadian identity from under a prism. It's a piece about duality.

MM: In your opinion, is there a correlation in the theatre among culture, location, and geography?

RR: I don't consider theatre to be a modern art. I'm saying it's not television, film, dance or visual art. But, I find that theatre is an art of representations and that it's loved when it's popular in the sense that it's distracting and attention holding. It's made like a rock show. I compare it to a rock show. I'm saying that people move around/travel to see it. They buy parking tickets, they pay babysitters, and then they arrive in a room. To top it off, this room is demanding. If you go to the cinema, you can walk out and no one will judge you. You can eat in there. In the theatre, you are committed. You can't leave and you can barely move in your seat. And it's difficult. It is a really difficult art form. So, with all this, it has to be popular. You have to count on things that are in the medium. If the theatre tries to make it too "fluffy," or they try to show the fourth wall too evidently, I don't get caught up in it. I don't say, "Oh I want this, I'm caught up in it. I'm focused on it." It's about being engaged emotionally. That is what I mean by the word popular.

It's not a contemplative art. It's active. Inevitably, it has to be like the people that are watching it. It has to parallel how they live. If I do theatre that parallels what I am, I unite people that are like me. And theatres, like for example in Toronto, have to have theatres that talk to the people from Toronto. So, when the audience leaves the theatre at 10:30 on a Thursday night, they leave changed. They leave after having lived something. But if theatre is made for consumption, either visually or literarily, they see a nice play, but they don't live anything. Then, there is no transformation. And you are left with consumerism.

Plus, theatre is expensive. And to top it off, we don't make a lot of money. As an actor, you are paid little. You don't make a living doing theatre. You can live, but very ordinarily. Writing for the theatre is extremely time consuming and it is poorly funded. It's not in the theatre business that you make money. So, you have to get something out of it. Me, as an actor, when I'm acting, I need the audience to leave the theatre saying, "Wow, that was fun." Or, when I write a text, I need them to say, "That got to me." That is how I know I am important in life. Am I important? It's an important question to ask as an artist. In my opinion, all artists want to be important. So, there will be a link between the theatre, the culture and the geography. The theatre is an art form about links and contacts. Also, I find that the theatre is a voyeuristic art form. It's nice to see a show. You can stare at people from head to foot. You can observe them. It's a little indecent. It's true that it is an indecent relationship. And all of the sensuality of it is in front of you. It's saying, "I'm sitting here, I'm receiving things and I'm watching people say things." It's a contact with actors that is sensual and intimate. So, theatre is about the physical.

I studied in Venice about 25 years ago in Commedia Dell'arte. It really marked me. I was coming out of a school where we played our characters very seriously. We researched our characters and created inner lives for them. It meant being a good actor. I was studying with a teacher that told me, "It's not important that you are good. It's what you give to the people that are watching that is important." And that really changed my way of acting and of watching theatre.

I realised in all plays, the first thing to strive for is the link between the medium and the audience. So, there is a link when you know the public and understand the geography. If I am writing characters from Gaspé, necessarily they are going to be French because of their assumed geographical placement. I have to transmit in my plays, the impression of the living geography. To play is to incarnate. The theatre is incarnation work. Automatically, all those factors [culture, location] become important.

MM: Who were the greatest influences on your life and on your work?

RR: When I was sixteen, I read a play by Tenessee Williams and I was inspired. The theatre that I knew was the French theatre. And after reading Williams, I really felt that there was an American theatre in the continental sense. We could write the Americas. That really, really affected me. And a little later, I discovered Chekhov. I became a fan of both Chekhov and of Williams. I admire both of them because they are able to write in a language that looks completely realistic and natural, but that allows for several levels of comprehension in the reading of it. With Williams, you see a situation that is completely familial, psychological and all that, but then there is also a reading of the Americas in there. There are multiple readings from different points of view. That is what really marked me. The mark of a great author is the ability to do that without highlighting things. Chekhov is also able to create an apparently banal world that hides a different world of comprehension under the banal voice. That is what I like.

When I was in Japan, I saw a company do one of Tennessee Williams' plays. So, I went to see it. When I got into the theatre, the play had already begun. All of the characters were chewing gum and they all had bottles of Coke. I couldn't get over the image they had of America. But after some discussions, I realised for them this image was not at all an image of banality or so out of the ordinary. You had to see it to understand it.

For example, when we produce an Italian play, I don't know ... let's say here [Toronto] or in Québec, we habitually play with images of pasta and tomatoes to play on the idea of "Italian."

We seek things that are representative. It's a reflex. And, I think that occurs everywhere in the world. To me it seems that everyone expects Chekhov to be slow and silent because that is our representative image of Russia: immense and full of lamenting people, even though it is not like that at all. When you see Russian people playing Chekhov, it is with passion. It heats up constantly. We function largely through cliché to understand things. I am passionate about those authors because of their double language, their simplicity and their constant ability to create a situation of family life or quotidian life that allows a further reading of the social and political life. It opens your spirit up. And you start to understand all kinds of things through what appears to be a simple and normal culture. So, it is really those two authors that have influenced me.

MM: Do you think that the canonical literature taught in high schools constructs the national and individual identity of the student that reads them?

RR: At schools back home, the reading of Québécois texts and new creations are present in the school system. They are as present as the texts in the repertoire. The texts are welcomed by the schools ... new texts, unfinished texts, etc. It's frequent. For sure, it could happen more. We can always dream for more.

Theatre forms individuals. I find this extremely important that people are working to define themselves, to define students. It's really important because that is an artist's job. We try to ... we scratch ourselves for answers and we ask, "What are we? And what can we bring to the world?" In relation to the way Canada views Québec, in terms of the whole independence issue ... For Québec the big question was, "But us ... what can we bring?" That is always the question that marks Québec. We want to exist. We exist by dissociation. What can we bring that is original? Just like for English Canada: what can you bring in particular? In terms of culture, in terms of geography, in terms of what we have lived, in terms of our politics, in terms, in terms of, in terms of. All of this, while we scratch our heads for answers like we have to. That is the reason we exist. We want to leave them on earth when we leave.

For students, it's the knowledge that someone is working to define them. I also write children's novels and I find it important to never forget that children have their own set of problems. Theatre concerns them. It's difficult, though. It is always difficult to convince people that it is amusing to see an intimate act. That it's agreeable to have an intimate relationship. It's not so dangerous. I return to the idea in Roméo and Julien. It's not dangerous, but it is formative. For the writers in Québec, they need to be told that it's not the literary quality that counts, it's the voice.

MM: What does it mean to be "man"?

RR: For me ... it's difficult to define because it is different than being a woman, but I have never been a woman, so I can't define that. At this time in my life, I am holding on to some male aspects. I think more so than in the seventies. In those years, I formally rejected them. I rejected all masculine clichés. There are certain things I come back to that are typically masculine. I like masculine relationships. I like things based on material, from what we build, from what is pragmatic. But, that is so insufficient.

I have two daughters. I am the father to two daughters. I am a grandfather to three grandsons. But, my daughters are two very feminine women. But, I really persisted that they have independence because I found that it was a quality more enforced for men. I have two grandsons. When they fall back into behaviours that are typical of "boys," sports, and so forth, they sometimes treat girls differently or poorly. That is something I do not accept. For me, being male is accepting with serenity the emotional aspect of myself with the male aspects (sports, fighting). This acceptance forms a contact that is extremely masculine. It means being emotionally balanced and reassured. I like that role. Of father. Of male buddy. I like the role of the one who reassures and communicates to others that there is no danger in being yourself. I think as an author, it is to realise and to say that there is a masculine presence missing from my texts. I'm going to try to fix that and discover why. I am writing a play right now and maybe that presence will be there.

Marissa McHugh

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Bibliography

Brisset, Annie. "Translation and Parody: Quebec Theatre in the Making." Canadian Literature 117 (Summer 1988): 92-106.

Girard, Jacques, and Reynald Robinson. Roméo and Julien. Quebec: Théâtre de la Bordée, 1982.

Conseil des arts des letters Québec. "Le Théâtre du gros Mécano." 10 Dec. 2002.
<http://www.calq.gouv.qc.ca/fr/jeunepublic/theatre/thduGros.htm>.

"Reynald Robinson. " Répertoire des members du Centre des auteurs dramatiques. 8 Oct. 2002.
<http://www.cead.qc.ca/repw3/robinsonreynald.htm>.

"Saison 2001-2002: L'Hotel des horizons." Théatre de la Pap. 10 Dec. 2002.
<http://www.espacego.com/00-01/hotel_des_horizons.html>.