Le vieux monde derrière nous

Spring 1968. Gil Kemeid, a 22-year-old student from Montreal, falls in love just weeks before a journey meant to trace his Levantine roots. Delayed by the protests that engulf Paris, he reaches Marseille, where he finds a used Vespa that allows him to set off eastward. From Europe to the Middle East, he encounters flat tires, new people, and breathtaking landscapes. Throughout this exhilarating journey, he writes to the one he left behind in Quebec.

Fifty years later, his son uses this correspondence as the starting point for a story that reinvents their family mythologies. By adapting Olivier Kemeid’s novel for the stage, Denis Marleau weaves a sensitive dialogue between the voices of father and son, brought together in a dynamic and embodied solo. Alternating memories, historical digressions, and travel narratives, the performance explores the past as a fictional terrain, where the parent-child relationship is inverted: a father transformed back into a young adventurer, and a son reading him as a mature and cultured man. The old world behind them evokes, through the son’s imagination, the romantic and adventurous odyssey of a man in an era when everything seemed possible.

About – UBU compagnie de création

Founded in 1982, UBU compagnie de création is dedicated to producing and presenting the works of its two artistic directors, Denis Marleau and Stéphanie Jasmin. Through their creations, they offer audiences a wide range of stage projects, from exploring unpublished texts or the classical repertoire to opera, video installations, and effigy theatre. Their non-hierarchical approach to the performing arts, passion for literary voices and art history, and research into actor training form the foundation of their theatrical practice.

Based in Montreal, UBU operates with a flexible and adaptable production structure and enjoys remarkable recognition. Their works have been acclaimed at venues such as the Musée d’art contemporain and the Centre Pompidou, as well as at the FTA and Avignon Festival, Espace Go, Usine C, and CTD’A in Montreal, and at Théâtre de la Cité internationale and La Colline in Paris.

This is UBU compagnie de création’s second visit to Le Diamant. Their play Les Dix commandements de Dorothy Dix with Julie Le Breton was presented in October 2023, in co-production with Espace GO and Théâtre national de la Colline.

About – Centre du théâtre d’aujourd’hui

The Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui is both a theatre institution and a creation and presentation centre, founded in 1968 and located in Montreal.

Entirely dedicated to playwriting from here, it supports the creation, production, and presentation of Quebec and Canadian works in French. It champions author-driven theatre as well as a modern, uncompromising reflection on contemporary issues. To be part of it is to leave one’s mark on history—ours, the one being written in the present.

Le Diamant presented Pas perdus | documentaires scéniques, a creation of the Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui in co-production with Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette and Émile Proulx-Cloutier, in April 2023.