Finding spiritual common ground leads to new beginnings

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This article was published 28/10/2023 (1095 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Marronne, Théâtre Cercle Molière’s slow-burning, season-opening explosion of comparative spirituality, is appropriately focused on beginnings.

Adelaide (Jessica Martin), a Senegalese emigré living in French Guiana, is surrounded by fellow castaways — a Métisse named Merveille (Amélie Pelletier-Lavack), a businessman named Devilson (Jason Santos), and an accompanist (Marie-Josée Dandeneau) with unpredictable loyalties — united by their interstitiality but separated by the borders that have defined their origin stories.

In a foreign land, serving as a diasporic middle ground, the characters crafted by Togolese playwright Gustave Akakpo all speak the same language, but with their own inflections and charm.

The forces of colonialism — visible, invisible and ever-destructive — have forced them to re-establish a community in an “overseas department” of France. “Lost between two worlds,” they have a chance to devise a new religious future, swimming against the current to recall their disparate pasts.

But for whatever circumstances they share in the here and now, each of Akakpo’s central characters — the noble, saintly Adelaide, the lively Merveille, the bombastic Devilson — holds somewhat similar, somewhat different beliefs as to what follows the ellipses in the fragment “In the beginning…”

Energetically directed by TCM artistic director Geneviève Pelletier, Akakpo’s script was developed with Indigenous communities in Senegal, Guiana and on Treaty 1 territory, resulting in a compelling blend of Afro-Indigenous futurism that stays loyal to the creation narratives of the first peoples it depicts.

In his writing, Akakpo skilfully communicates these creation stories to reveal transnational, transracial intersections grounded in human curiosity and skepticism, relying on theatre as a vessel for evangelical satire, narrative experimentation and religious education.

When she recounts the traditional creation narrative held by members of the Serer religion, a major belief system in Senegal, an impassioned Adelaide is imbued with light as she tells her comrades about the central deity, Rog, who is neither god nor goddess, male nor female.

“What a crazy myth,” Devilson says dismissively after hearing Adelaide describe the universe’s opening stanza inside a “primordial egg.”

“Belief, you mean,” Adelaide snaps back at Devilson, who believes deeply that Jesus Christ is the son of God.

It’s that tension between belief and myth, the perceived and the known, that drives Pelletier’s purposefully spare staging, which is heightened by the live and pre-recorded sound design by Dandeneau, who creates a surrealist scape of natural rhythm during the show by playing a standup bass, an instrument anchored to the ground beneath it.

Meanwhile, Tristan Olivier-Breiding’s lighting design adds necessary shock and awe, especially when strobe lights are used to simulate the revival of a fallen character. When the strobes stop flashing, the theatre is filled with smoke, and when that revived character stands beneath three beams of blue light, one could swear the audience has moved to an entirely new venue, a new world where anything can happen.

On Marronne, which translates roughly to “we’re re-rooting,” is Akakpo’s attempt of redrawing the global map, using his characters to display precisely how colonialism is designed to eliminate individuality through the promotion of assimilation.

During a phone call with her unseen mother, Merveille is advised not to blend two worlds together, to be wary of living in the space between both and losing touch with tradition; the scene is a highlight for the dynamic Pelletier-Levack.

Each character carries that burden, especially Martin’s strong-willed Adelaide, who is beset by visions of the place she left behind and the people she abandoned in her pursuit of a more open future; her brother Ismail (Blade Ali M’Baye) is as haunted by her absence as she is.

Incredibly ambitious, at times the 90-minute On Marronne can feel over-complicated, but when experienced as an act of religious spectacle, the production forces viewers to realize its core messages of individuality, collective strength and the power of creativity through storytelling, which are the defining forces behind both theatre and religion.

In the beginning … was so long ago. Now what?

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com