JONATHAN RITTENHOUSE
Cette étude s'inscrit dans un vaste projet qui vise à préciser l'histoire du théâtre francophone et professionel de Montréal. (p. 17)
Les nuits de la "Main". Cent ans de spectacles sur le boulevard Saint-Laurent (1891-1991) tackles this formidable task by enlarging it!
Ce n'est pas au théâtre seul mais au monde de spectacle que nous consacrons les pages qui suivent espérant par là mieux rendre compte d'une réalité historique particulièrement complexe. (p. 19)
This historical complexity is framed not primarily by language, as one might presume, but by geography and history. The French language, spoken word entertainments and legitimate theatre are not privileged in this work; rather the multi-ethnic character of boulevard Saint-Laurent- the Main- its cultural and linguistic diversity, its liminal/marginal status, its commercial/cultural privileging of "popular" entertainment and its constant flux are highlighted and detailed.
Le Monument-National, finished in 1893 and situated in the Lower Main, does, however, function as a somewhat more conventional point of reference for this study. Designed to be the theatre of French Quebec, designed, so the authors claim, to prevent "les anglais" from taking real and symbolic control of this most important north-south artery and to halt the assimilation of québécois values and culture by anglo-American hegemonic practices, le Monument's history, as traced by Bourassa and Larrue, is a counterpoint to the myriad spectacles--cultural, economic, political, social-that inhabited the Main. The authors have informed their analysis of francophone theatre and culture with Annales style detailing and a post-modern respect for multiplicity and boundary blurring. While a part of the Main's story is a replaying of the founding of Canada myth-another Plaines d'Abraham- the authors provide a more complicated blow-by-blow account of Montreal's cultural "battlefield."
If Bourassa and Larrue interestingly complicate Montreal's cultural history it is certainly not to eschew "conclusions" or the large statement. The book is packed full of mini-assessments on such various subjects as Les Soirées de Famille, Julien Daoust, Cantonese opera, Yiddish theatre, les Variétés lyriques, Gratien Gélinas, etc. For example:
Les Variétés lyriques ont joué un rôle inestimable dans l'évolution de la vie culturelle et artistique du Québec.(p. 111)
En ramenant l'univers québécois, sa langue et ses représentants, dans un genre "serieux", les dégageant du répertoire burlesque et des mélos auxquels ils avaient été réduits, elle annonçait la fin d'une époque et le début d'une autre, que allait aboutir a l'éclosion du "théâtre québécois" des années soixante. (p. 139-referring to Gélinas' Tit-Coq)
While one might consider such commentaries as equivalent to the unproblematized enunciations of classroom lectures or first-night reviews and, perhaps, critically evaluate their self-assured assertions, I read and enjoyed them for their complete engagement with their subject matter and the authors' willingness to take their case as far as it would go.
On the subject of the Main they go pretty far, indeed. They demonstrate how the road got dubbed "Main Street" as far back as 1825 and was "la plus vieille artère montréalaise à avoir été développée vers le nord à partir des anciennes fortifications" (p. 7). They provide information in their text and in "Annexe I" about the ethnic transformation of the boulevard and of its consistent reputation as the dark side of Montreal- brothels, opium dens, arson, mob killings and protection rackets. They also occasionally wax rhapsodic about the Main's positive "otherness": "une oasis de liberté au coeur même de ce qui était alors la nouvelle cité" (p. 185) and "ce qui, pour un Québécois, revêt tous les charmes du l'exotisme et du dépaysement, est rassurant pour l'immigrant fraîchement débarqué" (p. 184). The authors underline the boulevard's symbolic value, "un axe intouchable, une frontiére sacrée entre les communautés anglophone et francophone" (p. 17), and verge on civic boosterism when they speak for the new post-modern Main: "La marginalité, sur la "Main", n'est pas une affaire de mode mais une façon d'être" (p. 16) and "à confirmer sa nouvelle vocation de locomotive culturelle et artistique pour tout le pays" (p. 171). Now that's a subject!
The proof for many of these assertions rests not only on the two collaborators' synthesis of their own and other writers' work on Montreal's social and cultural history-relatively conventional scholarship--but also on an intriguing and radical foregrounding of the cadastral traces of buildings, art spaces of all kinds and artists for the last one hundred and fifty years of the Main's existence. This research marks the text as something different from book-length studies of theatres past. "Annexe II" provides much of the raw data that the authors unearthed, edited to emphasize the "spectacle" nature of the boulevard. Fifty odd pages of the Main's addresses and what/who was there over the hundred and fifty year span are followed by forty odd pages of explanatory notes designed to warm the heart of any good Braudelian. These one hundred pages generously (and Larrue and Bourassa are very generous scholars) urge the reader to go down to the Main, check out "L'actualité" and, perhaps, take this research even further than the authors.
Considering the Main as a kind of Montreal Off-Broadway the authors have concluded that there have been over one hundred entertainment spaces (cabaret-bars, cinemas, jazz bars, nightclubs, strip joints, etc.) at one time or another on the Main, and many other spaces just off it on its many tributaries. L'Eden Musée gets the nod for the first performance space on the Main (opens March 23, 1891) where it provided American vaudeville and a curios gallery. The authors mention the first public screening of cinema in Canada which took place on June 27, 1896 at the Palace Theatre in the Robillard Building. Other cinema firsts on the Main are connected with Cinéma Parallèle which in 1979 was "la première salle permanente en Amérique consacrée à la diffusion du cinéma de recherche" (p. 166), which also was the first electronic cinema in North America (in 1988) and which in 1989 presented the first public showing of high definition works.
The book abounds with information on such groups as Les Compagnons de la Petite Scène or Théâtre Intime, doing little theatre à la Copeau/Appia at le Monument-National years before Père Legault and les Compagnons de Saint-Laurent were doing it. Les Veillées de Bon Vieux Temps at le Monument, which before the Second World War celebrated "les anciens Canadiens" with such stars as La Bolduc, are discussed. The Frolics Cabaret is described with its $50,000 dance floor where Americans came up to avoid prohibition and drink $15 champagne, $1 beer or nothing else! The forties and fifties free and easy Main is detailed where Le Faisan Doré provided a unique night-club experience for its francophone clientèle and where Louis Metcalf's International Band supplied the latest in jazz at various nightspots. Much information is also provided about the Upper Main's efflorescence since the late sixties when artists like Dumouchel and Goodwin set up their studios and living quarters and where "la nouvelle danse" and post-modem theatre found a receptive space to exist and develop.
Les nuits de la "Main" does succeed in conveying the energy, mutability and significance of the Main and, for this reader, succeeds in writing a history of theatre/spectacle that tells me much more than a history of le Monument or legitimate theatre ever could. The text usefully blurs the boundaries of disciplines- architectural history and heritage, theatre research, popular culture, urban geography and sociology, cinema- and provides an often fascinating mix of perspectives and information.
The book does have its faults, faults I don't think are specific to this reader but are quite general. The book, extraordinarily, has no map or maps and though I have walked the Main myself a few times I cried out for some innovative and creative geographer to give the reader a clearer sense of developing space on the Main. While "Annexe II"'s cadastral account of buildings on the Main seems to carry the text's scholarly weight for the "proof' of data and statistics, the text could use tables and graphs, to accompany the useful photographs and narrative, in order to make what it wishes to say more fully absorbable. The Index is usefully complete and should help the flip-and-run reader find out what she wants quickly; spot-checking of ten entries, however, found four with minor errors.
Finally, I must say that this reader, a Montreal-bom anglophone WASP, felt his gang(s) had been uncharacteristically lumped into one all-purpose, generic "les anglais." The text's strengths, I would aver, are in how it shows the variety of Montreal's cultural communities and their influences upon the development of the Main and also refrains from conveying a narrow definition of Québécois. While WASP Montrealers have had less influence on the Main than elsewhere, Les nuits de la "Main" is not afraid to wander off the Main for a while to unearth/reveal some interesting fact about Montreal's or Quebec's cultural life. However, as individuals, "les anglais" provide minimal anecdotage for the text. Further, the textual effect of the use of the category "anglo-Américain" is the marginalization of English Canada and English-speaking Montreal. As if what "we" did or was done in Montreal/ Canada were identical in creation/reception to what occurred in "anglo-land" or "America." Finally, it strikes this reader as bizarre that the controversial Mordecai Richler's books are only referred to by their French translations- as if! Who knows them as that, who would really use them, in translation, for an appreciation of the Main?
Les nuits de la "Main" is idiosyncratic and occasionally quirky (on p. 19 the text defends its historic starting point of 1891 by saying this year marks the opening of two important entertainment spaces on the Main and then doesn't tell us what they are). The book, however, is admirably engaged with its complex and ever-changing subject. I also consider its emphasis on entertainments of all kinds and its foregrounding of urban geography as positive models for other theatre researchers to emulate- if we can. Despite my cavils above, I thoroughly enjoyed it.