1 Following a theatre workshop offered by the Commission culturelle fransaskoise at Collège Mathieu in Gravelbourg during the summer of 1984, Alphonse Gaudet, Carmen Gareau, and Michel Quirion were inspired by Claudia Gendron (Gaudet, email 3 June) to establish a French theatre company in Saskatoon (Gaudet, email 15 June). Determined to develop a fransaskois theatre which highlighted self-exploration, self-definition, self-acceptance, and self-celebration, the three created La Troupe du Jour (LTDJ) in 1985. A devised piece, Azarie (October 1985) marked the debut of what was to become the company’s focus on new play development. It repositioned the language debate in Saskatchewan by investigating the cultural marginalization of elderly Fransaskois in the provincial nursing-home system (Lusignan 7). The material hit a nerve with its public; the show became an instant success.

2 Bypassing the repertories of Quebec and France, founding members became resolute in their endeavour to bring the fransaskois experience to their public. The first season’s program announced their goals:

They incorporated LTDJ as a non-profit company in 1985 with Gaudet as its first artistic director. The time was ripe “de passer à un théâtre ‘fait maison’ qui serait le reflet du peuple fransaskois, de sa langue, de ses défis, de ses mythes” (Bonetto 3).

3 This paper explores two questions. The first, “What defines fransaskois playwrights?”, draws attention to a binary feature I refer to as dis/bislocation and re-examines the notion of minority status as it applies to French-Canadians living outside Quebec. The second, “How has LTDJ cultivated fransaskois playwriting?”, examines the mechanisms LTDJ has instituted to develop new work since the arrival of Denis Rouleau.

4 Saskatchewan’s first French settlers were a heterogeneous lot, hailing from Quebec, France, Belgium, and the United States (Beaulieu par. 25).1 Linguistically compatible despite cultural differences, they merged into an unusual minority population due to extraordinary circumstances, as Roger A. Lalonde noted in 1974:

Settlers straddled two geographies, both “there” in linguistic expression and social customs, and “here” in practice, living and negotiating the tensions in the gap between the two.

5 LTDJ’s fransaskois playwrights follow this pattern: like the first settlers, linguistic compatibility and cultural hybridity are features they share. Geographically and culturally severed from the place where their French originated (dislocation), these individuals constantly negotiate two francophonies (bislocation), the formative one from the pays d’origine which is hors contexte in the geographical present, and the current one which dynamically lives and transforms in a Saskatchewan context. Unless a fransaskois playwright is a recent transplant from Quebec or has been assimilated into Quebec culture, joual plays an inconsequential role in the linguistic idiosyncrasies found in fransaskois plays. David Baudemont writes in an idiom particular to France, specifically to Alsace where German and French cohabit; Ian C. Nelson, a Francophile originating from Nottingham, England, has adopted an Île-de-France French distinctively coloured by French argot; Madeleine Blais-Dahlem and Raoul Granger incorporate certain spoken idiosyncrasies of québécois in their writing, but belie their Quebec origins with a standard French that occasionally is encroached upon by English constructs, such as syntax, vocabulary, and colloquial expressions. Scripts by Baudemont capitalise on the playwright’s European origin; Nelson blends British humour with French sensibilité in his; Blais-Dahlem and Granger disrupt and interrogate cultural, societal, or historical values familiar to their Quebec ancestors in theirs. A patchwork of idiomatic voices, their hyphenated experiences, their dis/bislocation of knowledge and purpose, of ethos and practice produce a unique hybridity found in la nouvelle dramaturgie fransaskoise of LTDJ.

6 A neologism coined in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the term Fransaskois, modelled after the word Québécois, presents its own problematic. Born of the sixties, Quebec nationalism was territorial and exclusive:

While Anglophone Canada looks to Quebec to locate the official minority voice of French Canada, all other francophonies, from the Maritimes to British Columbia, become marginally resituated as the geographically overlooked voix minoritaires outside of Canada’s official minority. ³

7 When other francophonies are dispatched from the fold, repercussions are inevitable. During the Festival du jamais lu in Montreal (2011), Madeleine Blais-Dahlem articulated her feelings of artistic alienation from Quebec interests in a public forum:

Blais-Dahlem is fastidious in ensuring the particular fransaskois elements found in her plays relate to universal experiences. Occasionally, invited artists most often from Quebec (dramaturgs, playwrights, and directors) promote their cultural agendas when working with fransaskois playwrights. A positive occurrence at the best (and worst) of times, it provides fransaskois playwrights with a fluid margin to establish in what ways they are like, or decidedly not like, their québécois counterparts.

8 Cultural hegemony imposes itself on two fronts, by Francophone Quebec and Anglophone Canada, imprinting fransaskois playwrights with a double-minority status. Unlike Quebec’s majority French population, less than 2% of Saskatchewan’s inhabitants declare French as their mother tongue (Statistics Canada). The peculiar advantage to being overwhelmed by the majority culture is how specific fransaskois playwrights use English to advance their scripts. Although English drafts by Baudemont and Granger are rare, Blais-Dahlem and Nelson regularly alternate French with English drafts, allowing them to explore the myriad ways one language impacts on the other and to discover which ways they firmly resist any kind of influence. Fransaskois playwrights live, interrupt, and negotiate the tensions between their cultures, the official minority culture and the majority culture—a part of, but not the same as either. They write their alterity in an in-between space: historically, sociologically, linguistically, politically and/or religiously.

9 Gaudet ceded artistic directorship to Denis Rouleau in 1990. Modifications began immediately, starting with the composition of the season. Rouleau maintained three community-based productions, but the fourth—for young audiences—, Joël Richard’s Monsieur tout gris, was professional (Rouleau). Touring the province, it strategically connected isolated fransaskois enclaves to LTDJ, making LTDJ a dynamic cultural hub. Laurier Gareau, regarded as the godfather of fransaskois playwrights, remarks that, “C’est un moment clé. Denis Rouleau a fait d’un théâtre encore très amateur une troupe professionnelle” (Léveillé 19). In a few months, LTDJ became the only professional Francophone theatre company in Saskatchewan. The next step was to develop its artists (Beaudoin 6).

10 Following Rouleau’s investiture as AD, Gareau publicly called for the creation of a dramaturgical volet to hone the skills of fransaskois playwrights:

Although this focus waned somewhat during LTDJ’s early professional stage, the unexpected arrival of Alain Pomerleau in 1992 rekindled Rouleau’s interest. In 1993, Rouleau directed Pomerleau’s first play, Le Vieux fou. The play’s remarkable popularity prompted Rouleau to alter LTDJ’s season again, reducing the community shows to two in order to add a second professional show targeting la dramaturgie originale.

11 Spurred by public enthusiasm, Rouleau acquired a $25,000 Saskatchewan Arts Board grant in 1996 (“Moving Drama”) to offer Pomerleau the position of Writer-in-Residence. Pomerleau’s mission was to write plays and evolve the skills of established and emergent fransaskois playwrights intra-provincially (Allary 2). Rouleau further demonstrated LTDJ’s commitment to la nouvelle dramaturgie fransaskoise by including it in the company’s mandate (Allay 2). Halfway through Pomerleau’s two-year residency, Rouleau introduced LTDJ’s first cercle des écrivains. Established as a provisional mechanism of support, it provided fransaskois playwrights with writing workshops and one-on-one dramaturgical assistance. Although in its infancy, le Cercle des écrivains was to become the vehicle through which all new plays would be developed. Response to this initiative was so great that Rouleau created a public outlet for texts of promise: Le Festival de la dramaturgie fransaskoise. Although Rouleau anticipated two or three scripts of promise (Allay 2), an unprecedented five créations originales were given platform readings with professional artists (Forsyth 146).

12 Following the termination of Pomerleau’s contract, LTDJ hosted Le Festival de la dramaturgie des prairies. The shift from “fransaskoise” to “prairies” signalled an “intra-” to “inter-” provincial expansion, welcoming writers associated with Edmonton’s L’UniThéâtre. This festival occurred three times: in 1998, 1999,4 and 2001 when I was one of the festival’s dramaturgs. By 2003, the name changed to the Festival de la dramaturgie de l’Ouest. Over the course of five weeks, three companies hosted the event in three major western cities: Théâtre la Seizième in Vancouver, L’UniThéâtre in Edmonton and La Troupe du Jour in Saskatoon. As a festival dramaturg, I witnessed firsthand Rouleau’s unwavering commitment to developing la nouvelle dramaturgie fransaskoise.

13 At the end of the last millennium, fransaskois playwrights began advocating for a permanent infrastructure to support their writing. Rouleau responded by making le Cercle des écrivains a cornerstone of the company, targeting all levels of writing competency for development:

Since 2001, Ian C. Nelson—actor, director, and playwright—has been LTDJ’s in-house animateur/conseilleur dramaturgique. Nelson guides writing exercises, leads group discussions on produced works, offers individual supervision and provides playwrights with insightful feedback following a production when requested (Nelson, Telephone).

14 Today, le Cercle des écrivains operates on a three-year cycle which allows texts to be produced by LTDJ when they meet the criteria of the artistic directorship:

Given the size, the fiscal means of the company, and its tiny nucleus of artists, LTDJ has produced a remarkable collection of new fransaskois plays. Dramaturgs, almost always from Quebec or Ontario, are usually integrated at phase two or three of the process, following Nelson’s preliminary guidance. They have included: Alain Pomerleau, Robert Marinier, myself, Alain Jean, Marie-Ève Gagnon, Yvan Bienvenue, Paul Lefebvre, and LouisDominique Lavigne (Nelson et al. 2, 4-6). Cultural imperatives dictated by québécois interests do not necessarily fuel or interest fransaskois playwrights; often, they have the opposite effect. External dramaturgs work best with fransaskois playwrights when they can accept the “not like us” status of these artists, who are shaped by their cultural hybridity, their double-minority status and a gaze that opens out onto the world.

15 Prior to 2011, Le Centre national des Arts (CNA) honoured two fransaskois plays: Le Costume by Raoul Granger appeared at CNA’s 15 jours de la dramaturgie en région in 1999 (Côté 25); Rearview by Gilles Poulin-Denis was produced at CNA’s Zones théâtrales in 2009. That said, 2011 was LTDJ’s landmark year. After twenty-five years of peripatetic wanderings, LTDJ opened its state-of-the-art, multi-million-dollar Centre de production in Saskatoon. Madeleine Blais-Dahlem was recognised for “Outstanding Playwriting” by the Saskatoon and Area Theatre Awards (SATA)5 committee for La Maculée. La Maculée was the only entry from the West at CNA’s Zones théâtrales (Centre national 12-13). Company artist, David Granger, was one of seven young Francophone artists awarded a Prix d’excellence by La Fondation pour l’avancement du théâtre francophone au Canada (Centre national 30). The most outstanding accomplishment was the bestowment of the prestigious life-time achievement award, the Prix Marcus-Banque Nationale, on Denis Rouleau as the Francophone artist “dont la carrière a contribué de façon majeure au développement du théâtre francophone au Canada” (Centre national 30). International attention is currently on the rise. Five scenes from Blais-Dahlem’s La Maculée will receive a platform reading at the Women Playwrights International Conference in Stockholm in August 2012. One of eight Canadian entries, it is the only translation from a French original. A Catalan translation of Poulain-Denis’s Rearview by Elizabet Ràfols of Saskatoon’s Theatre Tant per Tant (Ràfols Email 19 June) will receive a platform reading in Barcelona, Manresa and Girona come November (Ràfols Email 20 June). Accolades proliferate: municipally, nationally and internationally.

16 The significant role LTDJ currently plays on local, national and international stages is entirely due to Rouleau’s agency. He listened to his public’s desire for fransaskois theatre and answered their need. He welcomed those with the potential to become fransakois playwrights, valuing the francophonies they embraced, culturally, politically, and linguistically. He respected their “like us/not like us” status, encouraging their similarities and welcoming their differences as they negotiated and revalued the double-minority context in which they live. He methodically and systematically expanded dramaturgical programs to enhance their skills, finding public outlets for their works in progress. Eventually, he produced the most promising scripts. Successful plays toured provincially, nationally, and soon will appear internationally. A tiny fransaskois theatre company, LTDJ has become a national treasure. Focused on cultivating and promoting la nouvelle dramaturgie fransaskoise, LTDJ celebrates the fransaskois voice. Given LTDJ’s birth as a little-known, alternative, grassroots organization, it has grown exponentially in terms of its reputation, thanks to the fransaskois voices it nurtures and to the quality of work it produces. A true théâtre rassembleur, LTDJ has given agency to the fransaskois voice which has found its way into the minds and imaginations of so many.