Although Tremblay long ago lifted his ban on English productions of his plays in English in Quebec, those who have directed them at Centaur - Maurice Podbrey (Albertine in Five Times, 1985) and Gordon McCall (notably For the Pleasure of Seeing Her again, 1998) - were not born in Quebec.
"I'm one of the children of people who this work was pissed off at," Stanley observed as we talked shop over coffee in Old Montreal this week.
Stanley's family left in 1980, when she was 18. As a result, she ended up doing her university degree at Queen's University in Kingston. She founded her first theatre company, Baby Grand, there. But she soon gravitated to Toronto where she made her mark with a site-specific Romeo and Juliet staged under the Bathurst Street Bridge, co-founded Die in Debt theatre company and served two years as artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times theatre.
Now 44, she moved back to Montreal four years ago to teach drama at Concordia University and the National Theatre School. She lives in an "eco-condo" in Point St. Charles, although she continues to work in Toronto. Last season she directed an excellent production of Glorious! at Centaur and played the lead in Infinitheatre's That Woman, by Daniel Danis. In December, she directed Teesri Duniya's My Name Is Rachel Corrie at the Monument National.
Directing her first Tremblay play means a lot to Stanley. But she's feeling the pressure. It's been almost a year since McCall asked her to take on one of Tremblay's darkest works - the first of his plays chosen to be produced at Stratford (1990). "He was interested in having me direct Assorted Candies," she explained, "but I wasn't available. So I think he had a notion that Tremblay and I would be good partners."
Asked if Tremblay is produced often in Toronto these days, she replied, "Not to my knowledge." But she couldn't say why.
Centaur's touring production of For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again did well there in 1990.
Stanley has chosen to use the original English translation of Forever Yours, by John Van Burek and Bill Glassco, inaugurated at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto in 1972 - one year after its debut at Theatre de Quat'sous here. She prefers it to the Stratford Festival updated version.
Because? "It was widened, a bit more generalized," she said. "This one is quirkier, trickier in places. But for my money, it's way more authentic-sounding than the later one."
Talking about the play, Stanley sounded remarkably humble in her approach. "There's a musicality to the writing," she said. "There's a tautness and a clarity, a singularity, and a drive that's ensuring." As she sees it, it's her job, and that of the actors, to get out of the way at critical moments, asking themselves questions like, "Am I obscuring what's there to be revealed?"
Forever Yours has "a masterly quality," she added. Written in response to the 1970 October Crisis, it's a proudly defiant work. And she doesn't want to undermine that in any way.
The play pits two sisters, Manon and Carmen, against each other as they rehash details of their parent's unhappy marriage and tragic deaths, "It's about that which happens in a marriage until death do us part," Stanley said. "And what it is to enter into a union without having been given a choice. It's also a story that sets sex and God against one another."
While the metaphor of family is important, to her the political aspect is even more so.
Which is more than passing strange to hear from a former student of Roslyn Elementary and ECS (Miss Edgar's and Miss Cramp's School). Her 92-year-old father can still remember the exact date each mailbox was bombed.
But Stanley, who was 7 at the time of the October Crisis, never fit the Westmount mold.
As a rebellious teenager, "I pretended I was francophone," she recalled. "I would escape from Westmount, take the metro, go downtown and pretend I was French. I had this whole secret identity. I was really ashamed of being anglophone. I was deeply ashamed of living in Westmount. I was really angry and confused. I remember watching, all by myself, the election in 1976 and being so excited about the possibility for change. It was completely unformed. It certainly wasn't an impulse strung together from an intellectual perspective. It was just this pure desire for some kind of change."
In her opinion, the time has come for anglophones to seriously reflect upon the meaning of Forever Yours, Marie-Lou.
Judging from her previous work, she could be just the right person to help us do that. Forever Yours, Marie-Lou, by Michel Tremblay, continues through May 25. Tickets $20 (student) to $42.50. -- www.centaurtheatre.com
