Canadian
theatre 
Othello (1996)
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| Jérôme Labbé |
Jérôme Labbé
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Jérôme Labbé is the author of the ten-minute theatrical work Othello presented as part of 38 in 1996. Labbé graduated with an undergraduate degree in French literature and an MA in Drama and initially wrote for the cinema, collaborating on three short films: Jean-Daniel, Le Cheeseburger antéchrist et Plastic [The Cheeseburger Anitchrist and Plastic], chair et tournevis [flesh and screwdriver]. In 1986, he published a collection of writings called La Marginale orthodoxe. Other works followed in journals (Stop, La Tordeuse d'Épinal) and in collections (Complicités, Rêves et Djabe chez PAJE Éditeur). Labbé has always had a strong interest in theatre and participated in numerous workshops that contributed to his reputation as a miniaturist and experimentalist. Since 1990, after editing his a work on the different techniques used for writing in fragments (“l'écriture en fragments”), Labbé decided to commit more completely to the creation of dramatic texts. He is best known for his trilogy of works that consists of the following plays: Jusqu'au Colorado [Just to Colorado], Dormir au bout de la nuit [Sleep to Night’s End], and Motel Paradise, Burlington [Paradise Motel, Burlington].
38 was a remarkable Québécois theatrical “happening” dating from 1996. The premise was simple: take 38 authors under the age of 38, and over five days, ask them to write short, ten-minute pieces that adapted, reflected or riffed on, however liberally, Shakespeare’s 38 plays. As the jacket cover for the accompanying publication (Dramaturges Éditeurs) declares: “the authors were, how to say? … entirely, completely, totally free to do as they pleased with the [Shakespeare’s] work.” This being done, the authors, with an actor or actress of their choice, set to realizing their texts under the general supervision of Claude Poissant, actor, playwright, director, and Artistic Director of Théâtre Petit à Petit. 38 originated as a collaborative venture between Théâtre Urbi et Orbi and Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui in Montreal and was staged from the 17th to the 21st of September in 1996. The overarching premise of 38 was one that placed the relationship to Shakespeare in question via adaptation:
Whether we attack him [Shakespeare], we measure ourselves in relation to him, or we revere him … Shakespeare, the man, is an enigma. One thing is certain, even though many doubt his identity, the work exists … all dramaturges since Shakespeare submit to his work like a stone in their shoe. Cornerstone or stumbling block? (Book cover; back flap; translation mine)
Remarkable as 38 was as a distinctive theatrical undertaking in its own right, in the larger context of French Canadian and Canadian adaptation the project was unprecedented, if only because it addressed, from the perspective of a wide range of younger authors, Jean Gascon’s infamous question, “Pourquoi Shakespeare?” And 38 framed in no uncertain terms the field of adaptation as an unconstrained form of encounter with the Bard, one that allowed for complete artistic and linguistic freedom, even as it investigated whether Shakespeare, the enigmatic authorial presence, was in fact a theatrical cornerstone or a stumbling block from the perspective of Québécois playwrights and theatre.
In this general context Labbé’s adaptation of Othello sets the tone by overwriting Othello’s name with that of Michel, and doing so in heavy joual, the distinctive form of French spoken in Québec: “Moé, mon vrai nom c’est Michel … mais icitte … tout le monde m’appelle Othello” (Me, my real name is Michel … but here … everyone calls me Othello). Michel/Othello, it turns out is also a wife killer and Labbé self-consciously has Michel/Othello reference Shakespeare’s Othello as a well-known tragedy that is “moins grande que la mienne” [less important than my own] because Shakespeare’s tragedy took place in the mind of a writer of plays.
In making this move Labbé ironically displaces the Shakespearean legacy he is confronting with the authenticity of his own central character’s storyline, a move comparable to the move he makes in the opening lines of the play, where joual displaces standard French as the language of transmission. In addition to the linguistic and narrative displacements Labbé takes great pains to have his character narrate a reading of Shakespeare’s Othello from within the cultural space he occupies. Thus, the play functions as both an interpretation of Othello, but as a meta-interpretation of the central character’s own story, with the tensions and parallelisms of how the stories both coincide and diverge fully exploited by Labbé. Using references to contemporary culture, Labbé’s Michel/Othello states this convoluted relationship explicitly in the following lines: “Othello y’était comme moi, pis même si y’était nègre c’est pas pantoute la même affaire que O.J. Simpson” [Othello was like me, and even if he was a negro, it’s not at all the same thing as O.J. Simpson].
These lines, for a Québécois audience would resonate in all sorts of ways, not the least of which is the way in which they introduce American popular/celebrity culture into the mix: the O.J. Simpson murder case of 1994, in which Simpson's former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were found stabbed to death was commonly read in terms of the Othello story, not unproblematically––even during the Simpson showcase trial Othello was often cited as an appropriate literary parallel. But for Quebeckers the reference Michel makes to being a negro would have contexts that invoke Québécois nationalism, one of the key documents related to the nationalist movement in Québec being Pierre Vallières’ 1968 book Nègres blancs d'Amérique: Autobiographie précoce d'un terroriste (White Niggers of America: Precocious Autobiography of a Terrorist]. Vallières, who began the polemical and controversial book in prison, compared the plight of the Québécois to African-Americans, arguing that Quebeckers had been at the service of three forms of imperial cultural, French, English, and American. For Michel/Othello to make this comparison some thirty years later in the context of O.J. Simpson and the re-inscribing of Québécois culture on the central icon of English imperial culture, Shakespeare, is not without importance.
At the end of Labbé’s play, Michel/Othello states: “La journée que j’va y raconter l’histoire d’Othello … ça va être le grand jour de ma délivrance … parce qu’après j’va faire comme le nègre … mais ça gardez-lé pour vous autres! Quand y savent icitte qu’on veut partir pour de bon, y veulent juste nous retenir … même so on n’a plus de raison d’être là” [The day that I’ll tell you the story of Othello … that’ll be the big day of my deliverance … because after I’ll do like the negro (i.e. commit suicide) … but keep that to yourselves! When they know here that we want to go for good, they just try to keep us here … even if we have no further reason for being]. These lines, spoken in the mode of the larger context for the play as it addresses issues of nationalist concern, resonate with relation to the Sovereignist Movement in Québec, and ongoing struggles to reconcile “indépendantiste” sentiment with pressures to remain in the Canadian federation. In this context, Michel/Othello’s gesturing towards his own suicide takes on new meaning as a trope for cultural extinction and the struggles to tell stories that are not part of a colonial legacy but rather distinctively one’s own. Labbé’s work then fits into an adaptive context that associates doing things to Shakespeare with finding a voice that escapes the prison-house of anterior narratives to establish its own veracity and authenticity.
Daniel Fischlin
Link to Script
Link to Program
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