Emma Haché’s play invites us to consider history from a very particular angle: Without challenges and trials to demonstrate their valour, who would our mythical heroes be? What if Wolfe were only the shadowy mirror in which we are afraid to look at ourselves? Apolline believes that Jackie Vautour, the last holdout among the expropriated residents of Kouchibouguac Park, is the only person who can help her understand the darkness and light within her. Along the way she meets Wolfe, who suggests another route... but it’s not the kind of shortcut she had in mind.

In his capacity as artistic director of French Theatre at the National Arts Centre, Wajdi Mouawad invited three Franco-Canadian writers from outside Quebec to join French Theatre as Associated Artists during the 2008–09 season, to workshop and discuss their own work and writing in general. Emma Haché was one of the three playwrights.

Well aware of the close ties between writing and childhood, Wajdi Mouawad expressed a desire, in the fall of 2008, to accompany Emma on a week?long visit to Acadia, “a visit punctuated by silences and discussions about the mysteries of writing.”

Wajdi Mouawad kindly agreed to share his impressions of this very enlightening voyage. “Emma had been inhabited by her project for several years—haunted, even, by the events surrounding the story of Jackie Vautour and the federal government’s expropriation of the land for Kouchibouguac National Park. I was particularly moved by the way Emma set about interweaving people’s individual stories with the collective narrative of their time, their memories of their territory with the forces of the present. By taking this approach, she had to constantly re-evaluate not her story, but the form her writing of it would take. Thus I had the great privilege of witnessing, over the course of that week, the journey of a written work as it moved through a writer’s imagination. My role was to listen, to watch and to witness: landscapes, sounds, songs, and most important, an astonishing and transcendent humanity, all the more sublime for having its roots in the living words of a writer who was talking to me.”

For this particular press release, and in the spirit of our artistic director, I have opted to describe Emma Haché’s artistic practice without trying to summarize it (and thereby run the risk of leaving out crucial information). Here, then, is what Emma has to say about her creative process: “You don’t always know immediately what has sparked an impulse or an idea. As a teenager, I had heard about Jackie Vautour and his struggle. I was fascinated by the strength of his commitment and his capacity for violence, but also by his great sensitivity. Later on I learned what had happened to the people who were expropriated from Kouchibouguac Park, New Brunswick. I knew I wanted to tell their story—but more than that, I knew I had to uncover the meaning those events had for me. Even though I hadn’t experienced them personally, the shock waves affected me. How could that be? That was the question I had to ask: I had to venture outside myself and reach out to others, then bring that experience back to inform my self-awareness. I discovered that, just like the many people who knock on Jackie Vautour’s door every day in hopes of meeting this living legend, I wanted to believe that in some way I shared his strength and commitment. Instead of knocking on his door, I wrote a play, and gradually a legendary Jackie Vautour emerged, a character who was both human and larger than life. Then Wolfe showed up and turned these people’s lives upside down in such a brutal and mysterious way that I had to go beyond personal history to explore collective history, where stories and archetypes form the true archives of the human adventure.

“It seemed perfectly natural that I should also direct the play, because I was really the only one wholly familiar with the referential framework behind the poetry of this piece of theatre. I also wanted to explore that aspect of the creative process to see how it would translate onto the page. After ten years of playwriting, that’s the point I had reached. In staging this production I have come back to the essential narrative, to the place where men and women felt the need to invent myths in order to deal with life’s trials and tribulations.”

Note: Wolfe will premiere on February 8 at Théâtre l’Escaouette in Moncton.

RENCONTRE DU JEUDI
On Thursday, February 17, the audience is invited to stay in the Studio after the performance for a talkback with the creative team on the following topic: “What will become of us on the last night of our exile?”

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MEDIA CONTACT:
(Ms.) Aude Rahmani
Communications Officer, French Theatre
613-947-7000, ext. 396
Cell: 613-558-1322
arahmani@nac-cna.ca