Green Shield stamp winner who inspired a generation

Theatre critic

Thursday 20 September 2012

When a Scots language production of a Quebecois play originally written in French toured to Montreal, it wasn't so much the equivalent of taking coals to Newcastle as making a serious political statement about language, about women and about the self-determination of two small nations.

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Neil Cooper

Twenty years on, The Guid Sisters – Martin Bowman and Bill Findlay's translation of Michel Tremblay's play Les Belles-Soeurs – is regarded as a contemporary classic twice over.

As the National Theatre of Scotland prepares for a major revival of The Guid Sisters in a co-production with the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, there are many theatre-goers too young to remember Michael Boyd's original production for the Tron in Glasgow. Without this tale of 15 women who party after one of them wins one million Green Shield stamps, a generation of Scots playwrights might never have expressed themselves so vigorously in their own voice.

The roots of Les Belle-Soeurs lay in a visit to the movies taken by Tremblay and a friend in 1965. Tremblay doesn't name the film he saw, only that it was a Quebecois feature, written in French. "We hated it," he says. "We went for coffee and we wondered why we hated it, and realised it was the language. It was a form of bland, generalised French, which no-one spoke in Quebec. There were authors writing in Quebecois, but it was a nice form of Quebecois that wasn't living in the real world. So, over coffee, I said, 'Why can't I write about two women talking in the parlour, and see if it's possible to put the language of the street onstage?' Two days later I had 15 women."At the time, I was writing fantasy and science fiction novels and plays, and the day before I started writing what became Les Belles-Soeurs, I didn't know I would need to take so long over it. Then I became very passionate about these women's lives and what they had to say. In mid-American theatre, the women were secondary, and I realised male characters didn't interest me."This has been the case, not just with Les Belles-Soeurs, but with all of his works, many of which feature the same characters in emotionally charged litanies of poetry, ritual, comedy and the bustle of life that drives it. All of which dates back to a personal root."They were the women who raised me," says Tremblay of his characters. "I was the youngest of a household of 12. There were three families in the same place, with my grandmother at the head, because it was cheaper to live that way. I was much younger than everybody else. My nearest brother to me in age was nine years older, and I would hear adults say things that wouldn't normally be said in front of a child, because they probably thought I didn't understand. Without realising it, something registered. The first critics of society I heard were women. The men were all at work, and I was at home with five women."It was three years before anyone was prepared to take a gamble on Les Belle-Soeurs. As well as Tremblay's-breaking use of language, a play with 15 actors was as hard to resource then as it is now. When finally produced, Les Belles-Soeurs arrived like a female-fronted riot of backstreet ribaldry that spoke colourfully and fearlessly about life as its characters recognised it."Like Glasgow 20 years later, it caused some kind of scandal," Tremblay remembers. "Either you loved it or you hated it. There were lots of criticisms of the language. Swearing was considered bad enough, but swearing by women was unheard of. For all the criticisms, no-one said it was a bad play."If Les Belles-Soeurs helped usher in a Quebecois cultural revolution, The Guid Sisters dates to a chance meeting between its two translators, Bowman from Quebec and the late Bill Findlay from Scotland. The pair met at the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, when they were separately researching the works of Irvine-born 19th-century novelist John Galt. "Bill was keen on getting the Scots language onstage," Bowman remembers, "and asked me if there was a play we should translate."Les Belle-Soeurs was a no-brainer, and the pair spent the next two years on the project. Literary magazine Cencrastus published an excerpt, but it was only in 1987 that the play's rich demotic was heard in a rehearsed reading organised by the late Tom McGrath, then literary director for Scotland. Eventually Bowman and Findlay's script trickled down to Boyd and, in 1989, the Guid Sisters breezed in with its first production followed by two touring revivals."It was one of the first times I saw play of mine done in a different language," Tremblay says. "I remember sitting there, and I didn't understand it, but then after five minutes I saw people laughing."The Guid Sisters opened the door for Bowman and Findlay to translate seven more Tremblay plays. The Real Wurld, The House Among The Stars, Manon/Sandra, Solemn Mass For A Full Moon In Summer, Albertine In Five Times, Forever Yours, Marie Lou and If Only have all been acclaimed as masterpieces. Although none caught the zeitgeist like The Guid Sisters, the Scots/Quebecois diaspora rolls on. The new production is directed by Quebecois wunderkind Serge Denoncourt and features a role call of some of Scotland's finest female talent, including Karen Dunbar, Kathryn Howden, Molly Innes and Gail Watson. Romanes has gone on record in these pages declaring it was the tour of The Guid Sisters that piqued her interest in Quebecois theatre. But it isn't just Scotland that has taken Tremblay to its heart. Since Les Belle-Soeurs first appeared in 1968, there have been more than 450 productions of the play. "We were there at the right moment," Tremblay reflects. "People needed to see Les Belle-Soeurs, even though they were afraid of it. We live in a harsh world, and anywhere there is a working class, whether that is in China, Japan or Scotland, it resonates."Now 70, Tremblay has just completed a novel, the eleventh in a series charting the history of the family depicted in Les Belles-Soeurs. Both Scotland and Quebec have changed immeasurably politically, but, as with his plays, it is the humanity of Tremblay's characters that count."Even though society changes, the human soul doesn't change so quickly," he observes. "That's what these women talk about. The first layer of a play to disappear is the political situation. Jean-Paul Sartre's plays aren't done very much these days. Obviously they're very well-written, but his characters are ideas more than human beings. My characters are human beings. Whether it's 15 or 500 years later, if these women are human beings, the play will still live."The Guid Sisters, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, September 21-October 13; Kings Theatre, Glasgow, October 23-27. Visit www.nationaltheatrescotland.com.

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Green Shield stamp winner who inspired a generation

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