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    Les Belles Soeurs
    Les Belles Soeurs
    Les Belles Soeurs
    Ebook151 pages1 hour

    Les Belles Soeurs

    By Michel Tremblay

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    About this ebook

    Germaine Lauzon has won a million trading stamps from a department store. Her head swimming with dreams of refurbishing and redecorating her working-class home from top to bottom with catalogue selections ranging from new kitchen appliances to “real Chinese paintings on velvet,” she invites fourteen of her friends and relatives in the neighbourhood over to help her paste the stamps into booklets.

    Raucous, reckless and rude, the women shamelessly share their most secret hopes and fears, complain stridently about their friends and relatives, fantasize wistfully about escaping the misogynist drudgery of their lives and surreptitiously tuck most of the stamps into their purses and clothing, self-righteously appropriating what they consider to be Germaine’s “illegitimate” good fortune.

    While earlier attempts had been made to stage the realities of Québécois life using colloquial language and a realist backdrop of working-class Montréal, these populist hits were considered rustic and anomalous, while “real” (Parisian) French continued to dominate theatre and “high culture” until the end of the 1950s.

    As Québec searched for a new socio-political identity and a language that could articulate its rapidly emerging post-colonial reality throughout the “quiet revolution,” Michel Tremblay struggled to find an authentic Québécois voice. Written in 1965, it took three years for him get a first production of Les Belles Soeurs in 1968. Premiering at the Théâtre du Rideau-Vert in the same year that René Lévesque founded the nationalist Parti Québécois, this first of what was to become more than a dozen plays in Tremblay’s Cycle of Les Belles Soeurs became an overnight success. In one fell stroke, Joual, the distinctive Québec vernacular that had evolved over centuries since the end of French colonial rule had been legitimized, and Michel Tremblay, much like Chaucer in English and Dante in Italian, had become “the father of the Québécois language.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTalonbooks
    Release dateFeb 1, 2013
    ISBN9780889228092
    Les Belles Soeurs
    Author

    Michel Tremblay

    A major figure in Québec literature, Michel Tremblay has built an impressive body of work as a playwright, novelist, translator, and screenwriter. To date Tremblay’s complete works include twenty-nine plays, thirty-one novels, six collections of autobiographical stories, a collection of tales, seven screenplays, forty-six translations and adaptations of works by foreign writers, nine plays and twelve stories printed in diverse publications, an opera libretto, a song cycle, a Symphonic Christmas Tale, and two musicals. His work has won numerous awards and accolades; his plays have been published and translated into forty languages and have garnered critical acclaim in Canada, the United States, and more than fifty countries around the world.

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      Book preview

      Les Belles Soeurs - Michel Tremblay

      9780889223028

      LES BELLES SOEURS

      A Play

      by Michel Tremblay

      Translated by John Van Burek

       & Bill Glassco

      Talonbooks

      Talon_logo_07_4ebooks

      Table of Contents

      Cover

      Production History

      Characters, Scene

      ACT ONE

      ACT TWO

      Also by Michel Tremblay

      About Talonbooks

      Copyright Information

      Production History 

      Les Belles Soeurs was first performed at Théatre du Rideau-Vert in Montréal, Quebec on August 28, 1968, with the following cast: 

      GERMAINE LAUZON

      Denise Proulx

      LINDA LAUZON

      Odette Gagnon

      ROSE OUIMET

      Denise Filiathrault

      GABRIELLE JODOIN

      Lucille Bélair

      LISETTE DE COURVAL

      Hélène Loiselle

      MARIE-ANGE BROUILLETTE

      Marthe Choquette

      YVETTE LONGPRÉ

      Sylvie Heppel

      DES-NEIGES VERRETTE

      Denise de Jaguére

      THÉRÈSE DUBUC

      Germaine Giroux

      OLIVINE DUBUC

      Nicole LeBlanc

      ANGÉLINE SAUVÉ

      Anne-Marie Ducharme

      RHÉAUNA BIBEAU

      Germaine Lemyre

      LISE PAQUETTE

      Rita Lafontaine

      GINETTE MÉNARD

      Josée Beauregard

      PIERRETTE GUÉRIN

      Luce Guilbeault

      Directed and designed by André Brassard

      Les Belles Soeurs was first performed in English at the St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto, Ontario, on April 3, 1973, with the following cast: 

      GERMAINE LAUZON

      Candy Kane

      LINDA LAUZON

      Elva-May Hoover

      ROSE OUIMET

      Monique Mercure

      GABRIELLE JODOIN

      Araby Lockhart

      LISETTE DE COURVAL

      Mia Anderson

      MARIE-ANGE BROUILLETTE

      Deborah Packer

      YVETTE LONGPRÉ

      Louise Nichol

      DES-NEIGES VERRETTE

      Maureen Fitzgerald

      THÉRÈSE DUBUC

      Irene Hogan

      OLIVINE DUBUC

      Lilian Lewis

      ANGÉLINE SAUVÉ

      Patricia Hamilton

      RHÉAUNA BIBEAU

      Nancy Kerr

      LISE PAQUETTE

      Trudy Young

      GINETTE MÉNARD

      Suzette Couture

      PIERRETTE GUÉRIN

      Melanie Morse

      Directed and designed by André Brassard

      This revised English translation of Les Belles Soeurs was first performed at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, on June 1, 1991, with the following cast: 

      GERMAINE LAUZON

      Susan Wright

      LINDA LAUZON

      Shannon Lawson

      ROSE OUIMET

      Barbara Bryne

      GABRIELLE JODOIN

      Anne Wright

      LISETTE DE COURVAL

      Patricia Collins

      MARIE-ANGE BROUILLETTE

      Michelle Fisk

      YVETTE LONGPRÉ

      Mary Hitch Blendick

      DES-NEIGES VERRETTE

      Pat Galloway

      THÉRÈSE DUBUC

      Nancy Beatty

      OLIVINE DUBUC

      Sidonie Boll

      ANGÉLINE SAUVÉ

      Kate Reid

      RHÉAUNA BIBEAU

      Janet Wright

      LISE PAQUETTE

      Julia Winder

      GINETTE MÉNARD

      Ann Baggley

      PIERRETTE GUÉRIN

      Goldie Semple

      Directed by Martie Maraden

      Characters

      GERMAINE LAUZON

      LINDA LAUZON, Germaine’s daughter

      ROSE OUIMET, Germaine’s sister

      GABRIELLE JODOIN, another sister

      LISETTE DE COURVAL, neighbour

      MARIE-ANGE BROUILLETTE, neighbour

      YVETTE LONGPRÉ , neighbour

      DES-NEIGES VERRETTE, neighbour

      THÉRÈSE DUBUC, Germaine’s sister-in-law

      OLIVINE DUBUC, Thérèse’s mother-in-law

      ANGÉLINE SAUVÉ, neighbour

      RHÉAUNA BIBEAU, neighbour

      LISE PAQUETTE, Linda’s friend

      GINETTE MENARD, Linda’s friend

      PIERRETTE GUÉRIN, Germaine’s youngest sister

      Scene

      The kitchen of a Montreal tenement, 1965. Four enormous boxes occupy centre stage.

      ACT ONE

      LINDA LAUZON enters. She sees four boxes in the middle of the kitchen.

      LINDA:

      God, what’s that? Ma!

      GERMAINE:

      (offstage) Is that you, Linda?

      LINDA:

      Yeah! What are all these boxes in the kitchen?

      GERMAINE:

      (offstage) They’re my stamps.

      LINDA:

      Already? Jeez, that was fast.

      GERMAINE LAUZON enters.

      GERMAINE:

      Yeah, it surprised me, too. They came this morning right after you left. The doorbell rang. I went to answer it and there’s this big fellow standing there. Oh, you’d have liked him, Linda. Just your type. About twenty-two, twenty-three, dark curly hair. Nice little moustache. Real handsome. Anyway, he says to me, Are you the lady of the house, Mme Germaine Lauzon? I said, Yes that’s me. And he says, Good, I’ve brought your stamps. Linda, I was so excited. I didn’t know what to say. Next thing I knew, two guys are bringing in the boxes and the other one’s giving me this speech. Linda, what a talker. And such manners. I’m sure you would have liked him.

      LINDA:

      So, what did he say?

      GERMAINE:

      I can’t remember. I was so excited. He told me the company he works for was real happy I’d won the million stamps. That I was real lucky… Me, I was speechless. I wish your father had been here, he could have talked to him. I don’t even know if I thanked him.

      LINDA:

      That’s a lot of stamps to glue. Four boxes! One million stamps, that’s no joke!

      GERMAINE:

      There’s only three boxes. The other one’s booklets. But I had an idea, Linda. We’re not gonna do all this alone! You going out tonight?

      LINDA:

      Yeah, Robert’s supposed to call me…

      GERMAINE:

      You can’t put it off ’til tomorrow? Listen, I had an idea. I phoned my sisters, your father’s sister, and I went to see the neighbours. And I’ve invited them all to come and paste stamps with us tonight. I’m gonna give a stamp-pasting party. Isn’t that a great idea? I bought some peanuts, and your little brother went out to get some Coke…

      LINDA:

      Ma, you know I always go out on Thursdays! It’s our night out. We’re gonna go to a show.

      GERMAINE:

      You can’t leave me alone on a night like this. I’ve got fifteen people coming…

      LINDA:

      Are you crazy! You’ll never get fifteen people in this kitchen! And you can’t use the rest of the house. The painters are here. Jesus, Ma! Sometimes you’re really dumb.

      GERMAINE:

      Sure, that’s right, put me down. Fine, you go out, do just as you like. That’s all you ever do anyway. Nothing new. I never have any pleasure. Someone’s always got to spoil it for me. Go ahead, Linda, you go out tonight, go to your goddamned show. Jesus Christ Almighty, I’m so fed up.

      LINDA:

      Come on, Ma, be reasonable…

      GERMAINE:

      I don’t want to be reasonable, I don’t want to hear about it! I kill myself for you and what do I get in return? Nothing! A big fat nothing! You can’t even do me a little favour! I’m warning you, Linda, I’m getting sick of waiting on you, you and everyone else. I’m not your servant, you know. I’ve got a million stamps to paste and I’m not about to do it myself. Besides, those stamps are for the whole family, which means everybody’s gotta do their share. Your father’s working tonight, but if we don’t get done, he says he’ll help tomorrow. I’m not asking for the moon. Help

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