Theatre pioneer

The defining figure of the country’s oldest active theatre company is celebrated in Pauline Boutal, entre les toiles et les planches (Between Canvases and Boards), the opening production of Théâtre Cercle Molière’s centennial season.

Boutal, who was born in France in 1894, was an active participant in the troupe from Day 1, working alongside her artistic peers — including her husband Arthur, her costume designing mother and her handyman father — to establish a lasting tradition of francophone theatre in St. Boniface.

As artistic director of Cercle Molière from 1941 to 1968, Boutal, who also was a fashion designer, Eaton’s catalogue illustrator and nationally acclaimed portraitist, broke new ground.

In Boutal’s life, which ended at age 97, playwright Lise Gaboury-Diallo found for herself a dream character whose influence spanned centuries.

“I was fascinated by the idea that this woman at that time could have such a successful life as an artist, working in a man’s world,” says Gaboury-Diallo, a poet and longtime literature professor at the Université de Saint-Boniface, where her studies largely focused on Canadian women until her retirement in September.

“She was very blessed with a lot of talent, and I don’t know that she had a lot of luck, but she definitely had a lot of courage and stamina to push through and follow her star. I think she was a very emancipated woman for that time.”

Four years ago, Gaboury-Diallo was approached by Cercle Molière’s former artistic director Geneviève Pelletier, who was already gearing up for the company’s landmark year. Gaboury-Diallo had written shorter stage plays, but had never tried for a full-length production.

With Boutal, the poet knew the challenge wouldn’t be a thin subject: Gaboury-Diallo had read and re-read Louise Duguay’s biography, Pauline Boutal: An Artist’s Destiny, a book that led the University of Manitoba art historian Oliver Botar to refer to Boutal as “the most important franco-Manitoban artist of the mid-20th century” in an appreciative review published in Great Plains Quarterly.

Boutal (played by Maryse Gagné) was ushered into the artistic director’s seat after the previous director, her husband Arthur (played by Colin Rémillard), suffered a fatal stroke.

“I think she should be more well-known — she’s a hidden gem that a certain generation of the francophone community knows well.

“I think that a bit of my goal was to let people know who she was, and all that she did, in a short time frame. It was very difficult because she did so much and lived a very long, rich life,” says Gaboury-Diallo, whose father, Etienne, was a famed local architect and whose mother, Claire, was a ceramicist and potter whose works can be found in the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the National Gallery in Ottawa. She died in June at 88.

For 21/2 years, Gaboury-Diallo conducted extensive archival research, poring over Boutal’s personal effects, artworks, costume designs, stage directions and her extensive collection of written correspondence with figures including author Gabrielle Roy, which proved an invaluable resource in the playwright’s understanding of how Boutal saw herself and her artistic community.

Early drafts were heavy on historical detail, but Gaboury quickly realized she would have to whittle before the result became overwhelmed by biographical tidbits, no matter how many aroused her curiosity.

“The most challenging was to try and get the most important information out and let go of other things that were perhaps in my eyes, in my view, important. But for dramatic theatre, you have to make choices. It’s not a biography or a novel. It’s a play. It has to move. It has to be dynamic. And hopefully that’s what I achieved. We’ll soon find out,” she says.

Some imagining was necessary: the opening scene finds Boutal in the audience at a production of Molière’s Malade Imaginaire at the all-male St. Thomas College in 1908.

“I have no absolute proof that this happened, but I imagined Pauline Boutal in the audience. She was enthralled. She just loved it, loved it, loved it,” says Gaboury-Diallo.

The play, which debuted Friday and is directed by Simon Miron, has already been published by Les éditions du Blé.

The opening production of Théâtre Cercle Molière’s 100th season — the first under the artistic direction of Marie-Ève Fontaine — runs until Nov. 1 with a six-person cast featuring Gagné, Rémillard, Tobias Hughes, Jodi Kristjanson, Caroline Touchette and Jack Maier.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca