En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize
1998
Jacob Wren, Julie Andrée T., Tracy Wright, and Alexandra Rockingham Gill in En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize (1998). Photo: Sébastien Fournier
Benoît Lachambre and Julie Andrée T. in En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize (1998). Photo: Catherine-Mélina Bisaillon
Jacob Wren and Alexandra Rockingham Gill in En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize at Nouvelle Scène-Festival de théâtre des Amériques in Montreal (1999). Photo: Sébastien Fournier
Tracy Wright in En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize at Nouvelle Scène-Festival de théâtre des Amériques in Montreal (1999). Photo: Sébastien Fournier
This work examines personal and artistic criticism as it exists both in the careless details of everyday life and in the somewhat more literary universe of criticism and thought. It’s form and thematic bases are derived from the relationship between Montréal and Toronto, the fluid process of translation – and mistranslation – back and forth between French and English, and the very human relationships between three artists from each city.
The performance En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize does not focus on the role of the critic, but rather on the casual ways in which human beings evaluate one another – from the stray comment all the way to the scathing attack. The implication is that while it’s easy to criticize, it’s difficult to actually do anything, to make even the smallest scratch in a world overloaded with information and stimuli and desensitized to content, to create something that breaks down walls (which strangely have been broken down a million times before and yet now seem able to absorb even the most ferocious of sandblasting), to develop anything resembling lasting value in our lives or our work.
Like all PME’s work, En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize takes place in the Bermuda Triangle formed by the interrelation (and concurrent lack of communication) between the disciplines of dance, theatre and performance art, effortlessly blending the cerebral and the visceral to create an achingly casual style of performance. Meaning is generated gradually and collaboratively through a direct relationship between the performer and the audience.
Created and performed by Alexandra Rockingham Gill, Benoît Lachambre, replaced by Martin Bélanger, Julie Andrée T., Tracy Wright (once replaced by Shannon Cochrane), and Jacob Wren. Translation of the texts by Carrie Loffree, Sylvie Lachance, Caroline Dionne, and the cast. Translators/cameo performers on tour: Ondřej Hrab (Prague), Detlef Skowronek (Dresden), Sven Åge Birkeland (Bergen and Stockholm), Sven Medvesek (Zagreb), Nikolai Francke (Berlin), and Veit Sprenger (Hamburg). Lighting: Robert Gauthier and Lee Anholt. Production support: Catherine Bisaillon. Technical Direction: Lee Anholt and Paul Caskey. Touring agents/advisors: Menno Plukker and Sherrie Johnson.
A copresentation with Tangente and Les 20 jours du théâtre à risque Festival (Montréal). With the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Heritage Canada, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade of Canada, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Toronto Arts Council, Laidlaw Foundation and Georges Laoun Opticien, as part of Québec in Motion-UK 2000 and Québec in New York 2001.
Montréal, Tangente/Les 20 jours du théâtre à risque • Montréal, Nouvelle Scène-Festival de théâtre des Amériques • Bergen, BIT Teatergarasjen • Prague, Divadlo Archa • Dresden, Projekttheater • Québec City, Mois Multi Festival • Toronto, The Theatre Centre • Lisbon, Culturgest • Cognac, L’Avant-Scène • Brighton, Gardner Arts Centre • Mont-Saint-Aignan, Centre d’art et d’essai • Manchester, The Green Room • London, ICA • Cardiff, Chapter Arts Centre • Zagreb, Eurokaz Festival • Berlin, Podewil • New York, P.S. 122 • Hamburg, Kampnagel • Stockholm, Kulturhuset • Ghent, Nieuwpoorttheater • Montréal, Usine C
Part dance, part social critique, part heady fucking around… PME interrogates the idea of performance itself. But it never fails to be that performance, and a damn good one […] God Bless Canada.
– Brian Parks, The Village Voice, New York
The five actor-dancer-performers of PME have an irresistible stage presence that makes them veritable big bad wolves of theatre, whose conventions they trample effortlessly by deconstructing the idea of a linear storyline, subverting the seductive role of lighting and costumes, thumbing their noses at the notion of a decorative or ostentatious theatrical aesthetic, and making fun of the common pretension of managing to communicate on stage.
– Solange Lévesque, Le Devoir, Montréal
We can understand that Jacob Wren – beautiful guest of the FTA – is a crafty eccentric, a little devil that cunningly uses the theme of translation as well as that of criticism, and we don’t quite know why except that these art forms, according to him, might be seen as two forms of treason. Oh là là.
– Robert Lévesque, Ici, Montréal
This show pleased me completely. How fresh! How intelligent! [two] guys, [three] girls. Good music … [what I have seen] represents the precise quality that I look for: a link between art and life. The same desire, I think, that makes Filiou say: “Art is what makes life more interesting than art.”
– Sylvie Cotton, ETC., Montréal