Joey Lespérance in Michel(le), Théâtre La Seizième at L’UniThéâtre. Photo by Gaëtan Nevincx

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“Dramatic, tragic, eventful, and very singular.”

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That’s how Joey Lespérance describes the real-life story that inspired his first-ever solo play Michel(le). The L’Unithéâtre season finale opens Thursday at La Cité francophone (in French with English surtitles), after a successful run at Vancouver’s Théâtre La Seizième.

It’s the story of siblings, two queer kids growing up, and up against it together, in a big family in the working-class Quebec of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Joey and Michel both found their solace, and escape, in different, but related, ways — the one as an actor (and a busy one) on the other side of the country, the other in the Montreal drag scene, holding on to the dream of becoming a theatre artist.

And the narrative has an extraordinary arc: It’s the story of a “bro-sister,” a brother who became a sister for two years, and then a brother again. She “de-transitioned after a family event that turned out to be pressure.” And then, in a horrifying (and not un-related) dénouement, Michel(le) was murdered in 2005, “a tragic event that inspired the whole project,” says Lespérance.

“I use the magic of theatre, and I let Michelle live both her dreams.”” says the charismatic perfectly bilingual actor-turned-playwright, last in Edmonton in 2019 to play Pierre Elliott Trudeau in Darrin Hagen’s The Empress and the Prime Minister. Lespérance and L’UniThéâtre’s new artistic director Steve Jodoin have a shared 20-year history, back to shows like Kenneth Brown’s Cowboy Poétré and Porc-Épic.

Michel(le), says Lespérance, “is a gesture of reparation. It’s a love letter. It’s a scream of anger at heteronormative (repression).”

It was a culture “that wouldn’t let us be queer kids,” says Lespérance of the time and place of his background landscape. “We were constantly reminded of what not to be…. I was able to pull through. I was very fortunate; I confronted the male figure, the authority figure, the bully — my dad.” he says.

The show takes us back to the childhood in the Montréal suburbs shared by the siblings, just three years apart and allies in a hostile world. As kids,  “Michel and I did shows all the time, drag comedy…. People thought we were twins. As much as we knew about it we silently knew each other’s queerness; we knew each other. Both artists, both queer.”

“When I met Michelle my sister, it was so comfortable,” Lespérance remembers. “Then he re-surfaced…. Her tragic death happened to me too. It changed me forever.”

For one thing it sent Lespérance “straight to therapy, grief therapy. I didn’t have any point of reference.” Shockingly it took six years for the murder case to come to court. “Then, back to therapy.” And now, “my first solo show I’ve written myself…. I realize how important it is for me to speak my words the way I speak.” And part of that is that “I’m choosing to speak about my queerness,” an act in itself of defiance given the strictures of the working-class family he grew up in.

When a journalist, struck by the play, queried its “raw and harsh language,” he says, “I answered that you’re only hearing what we, as children heard. Harsh enough for an adult, but for a child….. We were bombarded daily,” the kind of verbal torture that leaves scars.

Have things changed in the world from which Lespérance fled as a young man? “Yes,” he considers after a pause, with the cavil “in certain places…. In smaller communities it’s more difficult. We’re not done; we have to be careful.”

This is of course real-life material for a very dark play. But Lespérance assures that “the show ends in something gorgeous, something with sparkle, something that gives life to Michelle’s lost dreams,” both of them, to be the woman she always was inside, and a theatre artist. A team of top-flight artisans assembled for director Esther Duquette’s Théâtre La Seizième production has seen to that, he says. “She’s young, so talented, so connected. A magic touch!” he says of the director, who moved to Montréal two years ago. “I knew she’d make me work hard….”

The story is vividly tough-minded, to say the least. But Duquette emphasized to Lespérance that “we’re here to do a show!” he says. “Absolutely! That’s the most important thing: it’s a show, and you’re gonna laugh along the way.”

“And at the end you’ll feel pure celebratory joy! That I guarantee.”

PREVIEW

Michel(le)

Theatre: Théâtre La Seizième at L’UniThéâtre

Created by and starring: Joey Lespérance

Where: La Cité francophone, 8627 91st Street.

Running: Thursday through Saturday

Tickets: lunitheatre.ca