Gabrielle Roy adaptation ‘Cet été qui chantait’ returns to its theatrical home

When she began to adapt Gabrielle Roy’s Cet été qui chantait for the stage in 2018, writer-performer Marie-Ève Fontaine travelled to the famed Franco-Manitoban author’s summer home in Petite-Rivière-Saint-François, a green-shuttered cabin at the end of a secluded road in rural Quebec.

That home, 60 kilometres from Quebec City, served as the inspiration for 1972’s The Summer That Sang — a work that saw Roy moving away from the socio-realist themes of earlier novels, including 1945’s The Tin Flute, toward more naturalist and magical realist approaches. In Roy’s retelling of her summertime home, the cow on the pasture had a voice and so did the insects crawling along the forest floor.

“It’s as if the Earth itself were writing its story,” wrote literary critic Jean-Éthier Blais.

While The Tin Flute earned praise for transitioning Quebecois literature to the city instead of the countryside, capturing a distinct working-class, war-time voice, Cet été found inspiration in elements less accessible in concrete cities.

Dedicated to “children of all seasons, to whom I wish never to tire of hearing stories about their planet Earth,” the book spoke to Fontaine, who enriched the content by quoting extensively from personal letters between Roy and her sister.

When Cet été qui chantait — a sonically immersive, hour-long puppet show — premièred at Théâtre Cercle Molière in 2023, it was so well-received by audiences that Fontaine and the creative team were able to take the show on the road, performing not just in Petite-Rivière-Saint-François, but for a crowd that included former neighbours of Roy, a literary icon who died in 1983 at the age of 74.

They even performed a tightly packed show inside a local cabane à sucre, a sugar shack, for 40 people, Fontaine says.

Soon came performances at a national showcase of French-Canadian theatre in Ottawa, which led to offers to tour the show to eight cities through 2025, with stops in Ontario and New Brunswick.

The show’s loving homage to Roy, whose career included stints as a performer at Théâtre Cercle Molière, convinced the theatre’s former artistic director Genevieve Pelletier to program Cet été qui chantait again as part of the company’s landmark 100th season, which began last fall with Lise Gaboury-Diallo’s tribute to longtime artistic director Pauline Boutal. That decision was made before Fontaine, who’s acted as Roy’s sister Clemence in the ICI TV series Le monde de Gabrielle Roy, was hired as Pelletier’s successor last year.

By her own admission, Fontaine was a Gabrielle Roy nerd from the moment she read The Tin Flute — titled in French as Bonheur d’Occasion — as a student at Collège Louis Riel.

Her first paid job was as a tour guide at Roy’s former home on Rue Deschembeault.

Now, three years after it premiered at Théâtre Cercle Molière, Cete été returns to St. Boniface this month for another go around, with most of the original creative team, including director-puppetmaker Pierre Robitaille and sound designer-instrumentalist Gérald Laroche, returning. The production runs to Jan. 24.

Continuing the company’s tradition of enhanced audience programming, on Friday, Sébastien Gaillard, the executive director of Maison Gabrielle Roy, will host a pre-show discussion about the themes of the play, Roy’s legacy and the author’s lasting connection to the community in which she was raised.

After performances tonight and on Jan. 22, Théâtre Cercle Molière is offering a “meet the artists” session for audiences. On Saturday, following the 2 p.m. matinee, the company will host five stations for audience members to explore shadow, light and puppet-making techniques in the lobby.

Recommended for audiences eight years old and up, English subtitles are available at every performance on personal tablets.

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