Thursday September 3rd 2015
"Program Express"

Opening night of AMERICANDREAM.CA Partie 2 : Pax Americana tonight at the Glendon Theatre.

AMERICANDREAM.CA
Part 1: Malaises et Part 2: Pax Americana

** CREATIVE TEAM **

CLAUDE GUILMAIN
Author, set designer and co-director

LOUISE NAUBERT
Co-director and artistic direction

DUNCAN APPLETON
Video imaging, design consultant and technical director

AURELIEN MULLER
Photography, design consultant and stage manager

CLAUDE NAUBERT
Sound design and original music

GUILLAUME HOUËT
Lighting design

SYLVIE BOUCHARD
Movement

MIKAEL LAVOGIEZ
Web design and photography

 

** CAST **

SASHA DOMINIQUE
Pat

MAGALI LEMÈLE
Brigitte

BERNARD MENEY
Claude

LOUISE NAUBERT
Maude

PIER PAQUETTE
Alain

ANIE RICHER
Émilie

 

Synopsis
AMERICANDREAM.CA : Partie 1 : Malaises 

The Cardinal family is getting together to celebrate Alain’s 50th birthday. That very morning, he loses his high-ranking government job as part of a wave of budget cuts.

Meanwhile, during a therapy session, his wife Pat comes to the realization that she is incapable of feeling love for their two children.

While at the corner store, Claude has to break a twenty to give some change to an insistent panhandler, so he buys a lottery ticket. The next morning, he discovers that he has won the jackpot, which will turn his quiet life upside down.

As for Maude, she has just learned that she has breast cancer and will need to undergo a double mastectomy. She tells her brothers that she will be taking a three-month vacation in the South.

Brigitte, Maude’s oldest daughter, teaches history in university. She sleeps with her students and writes trashy novels on the side.

Émilie, the youngest daughter, is a soldier in Afghanistan. While on patrol, she meets a six-year old Afghan girl. Later, she informs her superiors of some suspicious activity near their base. Her commander orders an air strike. The next day, as she inspects the site of the strike with a reconnaissance platoon, Émilie finds, among the debris, a gold thread woven in a piece of blue fabric. All that remains of the little girl she had met the previous day.

As they gather around the table, the members of the Cardinal family exchange platitudes, until someone evokes the memory of Joseph Cardinal, the grandfather they never knew, and whose mysterious disappearance in the United States opens the door to wild speculations.

Maude, the eldest of the three siblings, has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. At the party, she tells her family she will be going on a European vacation instead of telling them she is going in for surgery.
Her youngest daughter, Émilie, a veteran of Afghanistan, lives with the guilt of having caused the death of a young afghan girl while on patrol in the Panjw’ai province. Brigitte teaches American History at university and writes trash fiction.

Each of these six characters is living a personal tragedy that only the audience will witness through a series of monologues. But the real tragedy is that they are unable to communicate their true feelings to each other and that between them, nothing is shared but small talk and banalities.

After too many years of keeping up appearances, will the masks finally come off?

The eventual discovery of their grand father’s fate will have a very different affect of the paths Alain, Maude and Claude’s lives will take.

 

 

For more information, photos, videos and archival documents, please naviguate the rest of the website.

Photo: Claude Guilmain
Photo: Claude Guilmain
Photo: Claude Guilmain

AN ORIGINAL WORK

by Claude Guilmain