NOTE TO THE LIVING:

We’re organizing a party, and you are invited.

Just so you know, it will be a celebration of the dead. I can hear you now – What’s up with that? I’m alive! – but after a few minutes your skeleton might start to boogie and shimmy, shaking back and forth. You might realize that we all have a skeleton that can move like that. And that just might make you very happy.

Karine Sauvé

The NAC’s Théâtre français cordially invites you to a ceremony that pays tribute to the memory of all grandmothers, women we have loved and who have enlightened our lives. Les grands-mères mortes is celebration complete with party hats, music and songs! Karine Sauvé, accompanied onstage by her musical accomplice Nicolas Letarte, does much more than rekindle the memory of Thérèse, Lucille and Simone. She brings them to life by means of myriad objects and anecdotes. Full of tenderness, the show will be presented on February 14 and 15 at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. in the NAC Studio. Ages 9 and up.

Throughout the process I was able to see the piece gradually take shape, watch it be transformed. I was also able to take the pulse of children invited to discover the work every time a new creative phase was completed. Their reactions run through my mind like a joyous string of laughter, exclamations, feet energetically beating time to the music and heads bobbing here and there, for the themes of memory and of saying goodbye make for a piece brimming with life. Life oozing from every pore!

Mélanie Dumont, associate director of Théâtre français, Youth Programming

Comments from children who saw the show:

It’s a tribute full of emotion. We feel the love that Karine Sauvé has for those ladies, and the play makes us want to do the same thing for someone who has left us. It was inspiring!

Fabricio, Hans-Keddy, Jessica and Ly-Ann, age 10

 

It’s great fun to watch. It was touching, and we also laughed a lot.

Manar, Hamza and Anna, age 10

An interdisciplinary artist, Karine Sauvé favours a theatre of images sculpted by matter, the voice, objects and bodies. In her projects she works with puppets in the general sense of the term, as an intermingling of the visual arts and theatre. Les grands-mères mortes is the first production by her company, Mammifères, and was first performed in 2013.

Families are invited to participate in entertaining and creative activities in the Studio lobby 45 minutes before the performance. Like Karine Sauvé, they can pay tribute to and celebrate the life of someone who has passed away by sending a postcard to that person. They can also “decorate a skeleton” along the lines of the festivities in Mexico for the Day of the Dead. 

Text, conception, direction and performed by: Karine Sauvé // music : Nicolas Letarte // text and external view : David Paquet // assistant directors: Maude Labonté et Manon Claveau // stage design assistant : Julie Vallée-Léger // artistic support: Mélanie Charest, Sylvie Cotton, Émilie Laforest // technical director: Amélie-Claude Riopel // lights : Thomas Godefroid

Production : Mammifères

Duration : 50 minutes