Ember Alert | Diana Leblanc admired playwright Wajdi Mouawad when she was a director, now in Scortched, she gets to appreciate his as an actor.
DETAILS
SCORCHED
Directed by Richard Rose. Written by Wajdi Mouawad. Translated by Linda Gaboriau. Starring Sophie Goulet, Janick Hébert, Diana Leblanc, Sarah Orenstein, Gareth Potter. Rice Theatre, The Citadel. Jan 15-Feb 1. Tickets available through the Citadel box office (425-1820/citadeltheatre.com).
Diana Leblanc first heard of the acclaimed French-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad in the early 1990s, back when she was artistic director for Toronto’s Théâtre Français. A fellow company had set up an exchange program for Quebecois plays to be brought over and performed in translation for English-speaking audiences — one of these was a black comedy called Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’.
“I thought it was odd, intense, puzzling, and quite fascinating,” she says. “[Mouawad’s early plays] have a kind of — I don’t know if absurdist is the right word, but they certainly do have a grimly and darkly comic tone.”
Jump ahead almost two decades later, and Mouawad is now a decorated Governor-General’s Award winner in the middle of a sombre quadrilogy of plays about large-scale historical tragedy. The second of these, ched, about the 1975 Lebanese civil war, is now touring the country with director Richard Rose, and Leblanc is one of three actresses playing a mysterious freedom fighter at various stages of her life in flashback, as her adult children uncover the truth about her shocking past after her death.
Mouawad subdues his usual overtly comic sensibility in ched, but the rest of Leblanc’s description is right on the money: alongside the graphic depictions of life in war-torn Lebanon are disorienting shifts and overlaps in time, all underpinned by a classic mystery plot. Considered together, they make a strange and captivating whole, with Leblanc’s Nawal at the absolute centre.
“I’m just in awe of her, actually, so trying to put myself in her shoes is almost intimidating,” she says. “How a woman goes through what she has gone through ... She not only survives — what I find extraordinary about her is that she survives with dignity and forgiveness. I think you can survive these things, just by living through them, but to come through in a way that reaches down and calls forth the best in human nature ...”
It’s that big-picture interest in humanity that Leblanc will bring to her role here at The Citadel, which is where she joins the Canadian tour. She keeps her focus squarely on Nawal’s world, leaving audiences to draw whatever modern parallels they deem fit.
“To me, the play works because it deals with universal truths and at the same time is rooted in something very specific,” she says. “Obviously, when events such as the ones going on in Gaza right now occur, these looks at tribal and blood belongings perhaps make it more present.
“But I think for me, as an actor, I’m not trying to make sure it seems relevant to you. I think the playwright does that, I think the production does that. For me, it’s more important to get to the heart and truth of this particular individual in these circumstances, and anyone who wants to extrapolate will have enough material to do that with.”
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