Le Futur: Requiem for a weapon

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Forget science fiction. Le Futur, a play about violence and justice, built on Mozart’s Requiem, refers to the vision of Italian futurism, which glorified modernity, speed, machines and the use of violence. One hundred years later, a student, the main protagonist of the play, is completing a doctoral thesis on this movement and—confronted with the ongoing economic, social and climatic impasses—she acknowledges how it has influenced our very societies.

“The doctoral researcher slips into a state of despair, as she hears the resounding of futurism in the harshness of all current economic systems,” says Geneviève L. Blais, invited as director by author and co-producer Martin Bellemare. The student feels that her thesis no longer makes any sense and she no longer knows which way to go, how to continue, how to make herself heard. This observation triggers her wanting to commit a desperate act.

The student believes she must respond to the overwhelming violence with a gratuitous symbolic action. She will murder the richest person in the world. “This play shakes me up and confronts me by the main character’s anger and by the act she plans to commit,” says Blais, who to some degree likes to explore the troubled areas of our humanity: “If I am in a place of discomfort, which challenges me, it’s a field for creation.”

Texts are at the heart of her encounter with Bellemare (finalist for the 2020 Siminovitch Prize, winner of the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award for Cœur minéral). After their first collaboration, the international success of the poetic consultations RX contes-gouttes (Usine C 2020), an immersive form for a spectator, the two creators have pursued their conversation.

“Martin’s writing is both highly human and very well-crafted, poetic; you can feel beings actually communicating with each other,” says Blais. She was touched by the text and its analysis of the echo between the futurist movement and the multiple forms of abuse that we all undergo. The author found inspiration in Mozart’s Requiem and adapted the form of a mass for the dead. “The requiem goes over and above us; it brings us to consider our very mortality.”

Immersive drama

“The main character collects requiems, because for her it is the form that fits best to modern times.” A frightening thought, since to approach a requiem is to some extent to approach agony. The music of the show is, therefore, a collection of requiems—with some more contemporary versions, including some heavy-metal ones. Composer Gentiane Michaud-Gagnon (Révélation Radio-Canada jazz 2018-2019) has used works by Mozart, Berlioz and the Welshman Sir Karl Jenkins for the soundtrack.

“As a young girl,” says Blais, “I used to go to church and the music was part of the emotional impact of the mass experience—its powerful, all-embracing nature.” Blais is also renowned for her immersive theatre. “ The place of the spectator is significant, his position is always my first point of reference.” The performance will unfold in 360 degrees, we will sense the protagonists very closely, in intimacy.

“Without revealing everything, the audience’s place is part of the proposed experience; they are invited into a place of representation.” And rest reassured, Blais’s shows are not participatory. The show remains immersive, even if it is not in situ; other schemes will play with space, architecture and matter—such as objects, which are very prevalent in the director’s work.

The weapon and the child

The production is a huis clos between the student and the richest person in the world, a woman she has come to murder. In accordance to the interrogation about violence that is at the heart of the work, the author has chosen to replace the prayer to the Lord by a mass of the dead that addresses the weapon that the student will use and that is deified. “Even if we are not fond of weapons, we can retrieve the revolts that we are experiencing in this text.”

At the same time, a mysterious child sneaks into the story. Another director might have selected a small adult. But Geneviève L. Blais is no stranger to staging with children: “I decided to choose a very young child, because watching him brings a strong feeling and leaves us to wonder how the next generation will handle power struggles and the pernicious issue of economic savagery.”

Martin Bellemare’s work is deeply politically charged, and the director approaches it from an intimate and relationship-based perspective. “Since we’ve been working on this project, the issue of accessibility to firearms has caught up with us; it’s still incredibly acute in the United States, and with recent events, we can now see that finding a gun in Montreal, or anywhere in Canada, is almost as easy.”