375 Celebration Brings Big Circus: 7 Fingers Explores Montréal's History - CircusTalk

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375 Celebration Brings Big Circus: 7 Fingers Explores Montréal’s History

This year Montreal is going above and beyond the usual summer fanfare to celebrate it’s 375th birthday. Just for some context, the usual fanfare is a summer full of weekly fireworks, dozens of festivals (including the Montréal Complètement Cirque Festival, the International Jazz Festivaland the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival.) But the city made it through another deep freeze winter (during which they also celebrate with a festival called Montreal En Lumiere) and is ready to enjoy its ripe old age with some extra festivities during 375MTL. Of course, the cities’ circus institutions could not resist the chance to participate, Cirque Éloize by producing 19 shows over the course of the summer in 19 different neighborhoods, and 7 Fingers with a multi-media walk down the memory lane of St. Laurent during the bawdy era of the 1940s. We had the chance to speak to Cirque Éloize events producer Jean-Philippe La Couture and 7 Fingers co-founder Isabelle Chassé about the role they play in the celebrations. In this two part series, we begin with 7 Fingers.
 Kim: Can you tell us a little about your background with circus?

Isabelle Chassé:I started performing at a rather young age. When I was thirteen, I left on tour with Cirque du Soleil. I performed in a contortion quartet for about ten years with them. I did Nouvelle Experience,and then I moved on to the aerial fabric. I did Quidam with them for three years. We founded the company Les 7 Doigts (the 7 Fingers) in 2002. I’ve been in the business for more than 25 years already, mostly performing myself but more and more lately I’ve been of course ageing and having a family and everything. I’ve been leaning more towards directing shows and assisting and directing shows. Of course, my body is aging and that is a reality but it’s also I feel the more I am aging the more I have things to say and things to express and ideas. So it’s kind of an normal evolution to become more of a director when you are getting older.

Are you or any of the other founders in Vice & Vertu?

No, I am not in the show–only one of the founders is. There is a cast of about almost 30 performers. There are about 20 circus performers and five actors and four musicians. So it’s a pretty big cast. We are three co directors in the show. Two of us are only directing and one is directing/performing.

Will 7 Fingers be celebrating Montreal 375th birthday with Vice & Vertu? Will it also be a show in Montréal Complètement Cirque?

It’s a project that we started writing a couple years ago for the 375th. It has developed a lot in the process. It’s quite a different show now and its really not in our typical territory. The show is going to take place in three different locations. Within the same building, people are going to walk to get from one station to another. It’s really sort of very immersive as a show. It’s not like there is one main stage and all the action happens there and the audience is sitting down. It’s really that the action takes place on the whole floor and the audience has to move around to see the action. The audience will have to walk from one place to another and they might have to run from one place to another. They will have to climb stars, they will have to crouch down, they will have to turn around. It’s a very active performance for the audience as well. People are going to get a very different show depending on where you are standing because the performance is taking place among the audience. The audience is going to have a great proximity with the actors. This venue is called the SAT (La Société des arts technologiques). It’s one of the only places in North America where they have a dome which is a screen for projections. So part of the show is in the dome completely surrounded by projections. It’s like IMAX on crack.

Is being involved in Montréal 375 significant for 7 Fingers and for you and why?

It’s significant in that it is very nice for us to be able to perform at home. Most of the shows that we create we end up touring them– and now it’s the opposite. The world is not going to be able to see that unless the world comes to Montréal. So this is really great for us. It’s something we can put forth, as a token of our appreciation and love for the city. So that is a great opportunity for us.

Would you say Montréal is the circus capitol of the world?

There is definitely a big circus buzz here for sure and during the festival it is ten fold. Its really great to have all these companies from all over the world to come perform here during the festival. It’s hard for me not to be biased because I am from here and I think that what we do is quite special. At the same time, I think Cirque du Soleil has opened a lot of the paths for smaller companies to emerge and we are very fortunate of that.  So yes there is somewhat of a fertile ground that is lying here for those performing arts and circus arts and contemporary circus in general. I know that the Australians do really incredible things as well, and the French do really incredible things. There are a few companies in the US that are really pushing the envelope and that are proposing really interesting things. So I wouldn’t say that we have the monopoly on the coolness of circus stuff. But there is definitely a big community here for sure.

What gave you the idea to make a show about Montréal in the old days?

This was a really special time in Montréal because of the prohibition in the United States. A lot of the acts were brought up to Montréal because there was no prohibition here. So there are a lot of things that happened here that were somewhat illegal or somewhat risqué and it was at a time that the system was quite corrupt with police and there was a lot of tension between the good and the bad. We wanted to take a moment of history  from Montréal when that tension was at its climax, so this is why Vice & Vertu exists. The church and the people that were very “righteous” were absolutely against homosexual clubs and brothels and gambling and gaming. They were pushing really hard to close down those places but at the same time in those places it wasn’t only bad stuff happening. There were also more classy things happening. I feel like if something is being crushed down it just screams out. So in the forties it was really in that era. It was the apogee of the cultural emancipation of Montréal and after that it got completely crushed. A lot of policemen got thrown in jail and they revealed a lot of corruption in Montréal and they really cleaned up the city. So we just thought that moment in time was very full of flavors and goodness to create a show with. It’s been really an interesting process. We’ve been working with Montréal historical centers who validate some of the facts we came across and we’ve been working with the archives of Montréal and the police department to really get inspired by the true stories and the true characters. Of course, it is a fictional piece. We are not in any way doing a course and we are not historians. The piece is very greatly inspired by true events and true characters that lived in those days. So it’s been a really awesome process.

What is your key audience and what will they take away with them? Is it for Montréalers?

I think it’s for everybody. Although, it is very rare that we do shows that are for 18 years+. So that is nice that its pushing us in a direction that we rarely go to. Definitely 18 plus because it’s a little bit risque and controversial, not in the way that we present it, but in the actual substance of it. I think the import thing for us is that we’ve pinched the curiosity of people. They think “Oh my god I didn’t know that about Montréal! (Elise Unfier) was voted one of the most beautiful woman in the world in that year and she performed on the stage that is right around the corner from where I live.” We basically want to make people curious about this city. Its history, its really rich, rich, history.

 

Kim Campbell
Writer -USA
Kim Campbell has written about circus for CircusTalk.News, Spectacle magazine, Circus Now, Circus Promoters and was a resident for Circus Stories, Le Cirque Vu Par with En Piste in 2015 at the Montreal Completement Cirque Festival. They are the former editor of CircusTalk.News, American Circus Educators magazine, as well as a staff writer for the web publication Third Coast Review, where they write about circus, theatre, arts and culture. Kim is a member of the American Theater Critics Association.

 

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Kim Campbell

Kim Campbell has written about circus for CircusTalk.News, Spectacle magazine, Circus Now, Circus Promoters and was a resident for Circus Stories, Le Cirque Vu Par with En Piste in 2015 at the Montreal Completement Cirque Festival. They are the former editor of CircusTalk.News, American Circus Educators magazine, as well as a staff writer for the web publication Third Coast Review, where they write about circus, theatre, arts and culture. Kim is a member of the American Theater Critics Association.