I think it was Urban Tales in 2005. It was a pivotal point as an actor and as an author. I gave myself permission to do Scotstown [Editor’s note: play with a raw, even provocative tone, which caused a stir when it was presented at the Théâtre La Licorne]. From the moment people saw that, people started offering me things as a writer and as an actor. I had never lacked work, but now I started to have a choice.
If one day there is a matantes project, I think it has to be a girl who does it. I set out to meet the “Quebec monuncle” to demystify him. A girl could act like a mother. That would make more sense. A girl who perhaps feels like a matron… And the mama, she comes to my rooms a lot and I find her a lot of fun. It’s anecdotal, but after one of my shows, I was chatting with people and there was someone who told a lady that he was surprised that at her age, she liked [my show]. She replied: “My boy, I saw L’Osstidcho.” It’s not because people are older that it makes for a more closed-minded audience.
Given the number of years it takes to develop this, I’m not sure I have that patience. You never know, but I find the process long. When I have an idea, it seems like I get impatient and it needs to happen a little faster.
I went deer, but didn’t harvest this year. Doing 99 shows in a year doesn’t leave much time for hunting, so it wasn’t fruitful. I had about three days to go there. But I’ve already booked my hunting and fishing weeks for next fall and I’m promising myself something better!
I run away into the forest. I need to go outside and do very practical things: make cords of wood, tend a forest, do gardening. Making a garden and maintaining flowerbeds brings me a lot of good in life. I became that! I start from small trees too. At the start of the season, I find things in my flowerbeds and I don’t pull them all out. I’m trying to figure out what it is. […] Every year, I replant around fifty trees which I grow in pots. I transplant them into the countryside in my area. I have plenty of space. I also sometimes collect oak acorns and put them in places where I think they would take a tree. On vacant land or elsewhere…
I wish it a second season. Launching a talk show is hard work. It has improved and it will continue to improve, and I think we need to give more than two or three shows, more than one season to give the world a chance to get to their point. Especially live. The public has also changed over the years, maybe we no longer have the patience… Everything is so edited now: we see variety shows that last 30 or 45 minutes, but they filmed two hours to get there to that. Maybe once in a while we can go back to real live music and we have to relearn how to listen to live music.
