L'preuve parisienne: le cas d'Albertine, en cinq temps de Michel Tremblay

Theatre as a public art has a major role in the affirmation, interrogation and confirmation of community and national identity, and nowhere more so than in minority societies. In Quebec, the need for a specifically Qubcois theatre, distinct from that of France, was first publicly recognized in Gratien Glinas's vision Pour un thtre national populaire (1949) and decisively taken forward subsequently by Michel Tremblay in his first major play Les Belles-surs (1968). But reinforcement of community and nation from within leads on to the ambition of recognition of community or national profile from without, particularly in Quebec's case recognition from France. The 1988 performance and reception in Paris of Albertine, en cinq temps (1984a), probably the most highly acclaimed of Tremblay's plays after Les Belles-surs, highlights some of the difficulties of this ambition, and raises questions as to the extent to which particular and universal values can be successfully transposed and shared between two related, and yet distant and distinctive, environments.