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24-505: Les Belles-sœurs ( French pronunciation: [le bɛl sœʁ] ; "The Sisters-in-Law") is a two-act play written by Michel Tremblay in 1965. It was Tremblay's first professionally produced work and remains his most popular and most translated work. The play has had a profound effect on Quebec language, culture and theatre. Set in Montreal in the 1960s, the plot involves a woman who, having won an enormous quantity of trading stamps in

48-489: A housewife in Vancouver to be fluent in both English and French. Despite his often outspoken views in public, Tremblay's treatment of politics in his plays is subtle. Speaking of politics and the theatre in an CBC interview in 1978, Tremblay said: "I know what I want in the theatre. I want a real political theatre, but I know that political theatre is dull. I write fables." In April 2006 he declared that he did not support

72-691: A sweepstakes, throws a "stamping party", with her female relatives and some neighbourhood women invited. As the women paste the stamps into booklets, they bicker, banter, critique, and argue about their problems, circumstances, and everything wrong with the world. Les Belles-sœurs premiered at Théâtre du Rideau Vert on August 28, 1968. It was directed by André Brassard and starred Denise Proulx, Odette Gagnon, Denise Filiatrault , Rita Lafontaine , Luce Guilbeault , Germaine Giroux and Nicole Leblanc among others, with set design by Réal Ouellette and costumes by François Barbeau. The English version, translated by John Van Burek and Bill Glassco , had its first run at

96-531: Is a Canadian Yiddish -to- English literary translator as well as a professor of English literature . She currently holds a professorship at the University of Lethbridge , where she teaches nineteenth-century British and American literature as well as modern Jewish literature . Her translation repertoire includes several stories by I. L. Peretz . She is also the primary translator of much of her mother's work, including The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in

120-528: Is a Québécois novelist and playwright . Tremblay was born in Montreal , Quebec , where he grew up in the French-speaking neighbourhood of Plateau Mont-Royal ; at the time of his birth, a neighbourhood with a working-class character and joual dialect - something that would heavily influence his work. Tremblay's first professionally produced play, Les Belles-Sœurs , was written in 1965 and premiered at

144-529: The Quiet Revolution of the early 1960s, Tremblay saw Quebec as a poor, working-class province dominated by an English-speaking elite and the Roman Catholic Church . Tremblay's work was part of a vanguard of liberal, nationalist thought that helped create an essentially modern society. His most famous plays are usually centred on gay characters. The first Canadian play about and starring a drag queen

168-550: The St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto on April 3, 1973 and starred Candy Kane, Elva Mai Hoover , Monique Mercure , among others. The production was also directed and designed by André Brassard. The Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia describes the importance of the play in the following way: The impact of this work is still being argued in Quebec today, but suffice it to say that it changed much of what

192-462: The Commoner , La nuit des princes charmants , Le Coeur découvert , Le Coeur éclaté ) and plays ( Hosanna , La duchesse de Langeais , Fragments de mensonges inutiles ) centred on gay characters. In a 1987 interview with Shelagh Rogers for CBC Radio 's The Arts Tonight , he remarked that he has always avoided behaviours he has considered masculine; for example, he does not smoke and he noted that he

216-676: The French version of Canada Reads , Le combat des livres , broadcast on Radio-Canada in 2005, where it was championed by union activist Monique Simard. Tremblay also worked on a television series entitled Le Cœur découvert ( The Heart Laid Bare ), about the lives of a gay couple in Quebec, for the French-language TV network Radio-Canada . In 2005 he completed another novel cycle, the Cahiers ( Le Cahier noir (translated as The Black Notebook ), Le Cahier rouge , Le Cahier bleu ), dealing with

240-682: The Lodz Ghetto and Survivors: Seven Short Stories , for which she won the 2005 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award and the Modern Language Association's Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize for Yiddish Studies in 2006. She is the author of Dickens and Heredity: When Like Begets Like (1999), as well as of articles on Dickens, Victorian literature, translation and the works of Chava Rosenfarb. In 1992, she translated Michel Tremblay's classic French-Canadian play Les Belles-Sœurs (1965) from French into Yiddish for performance by

264-555: The Plateau Mont-Royal Chronicles, a cycle of six novels including The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant ( La grosse femme d'à côté est enceinte , 1978) and The Duchess and the Commoner ( La duchesse et le roturier , 1982). The second novel of this series, Therese and Pierrette and the Little Hanging Angel ( Thérèse et Pierrette à l'école des Saints-Anges , 1980), was one of the novels chosen for inclusion in

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288-485: The Théâtre du Rideau Vert on August 28, 1968. It transformed the old guard of Canadian theatre and introduced joual to the mainstream. It stirred up controversy by portraying the lives of working-class women and attacking the strait-laced, deeply religious society of mid-20th century Quebec. Tremblay's early plays, including Hosanna and La Duchesse de Langeais , challenged the boundaries of French Canadian society. Until

312-717: The Yiddish Theatre of Montreal under the directorship of Dora Wasserman. The Yiddish title of the play was Di Shvegerins . Her translation of Chava Rosenfarb's play The Bird of the Ghetto , about the Vilna Ghetto resistance leader, Isaac Wittenberg, was performed in a staged reading by Threshold Theatre of Toronto in November 2012. She is also the editor of Chava Rosenfarb's book of poetry in English, entitled Exile at Last (2013). Morgentaler

336-419: The arguments put forward for the separation of Quebec. But he clarified his thoughts some time later by saying he was still a supporter of Quebec sovereignty , though critical of the actual state of the debate, which in his opinion was too much focused on economic issues. In response to this, the columnist Marc Cassivi of La Presse wrote that "there was only one closet a Quebec artist could never exit and that

360-716: The award. While he did not do this, he did admit, for the first time, that he had refused the Order of Canada in 1990. In 2000, Encore une fois, si vous le permettez ( For The Pleasure of Seeing Her Again ) won a Chalmers Award and a Dora Mavor Moore Award . In 2024, a plaza-playground in the Plateau-Mont-Royal was named Place de l'Ange-Cornu in honour of Tremblay's book Un ange cornu avec des ailes de tôle . Note: Most titles also available in English translations Note: Most titles also available in English translations Goldie Morgentaler Goldie Morgentaler (born 1950)

384-728: The changes that occurred in 1960s Montreal during the Quiet Revolution. In 2009 The Fat Woman Next Door was a finalist in CBC's prestigious Canada Reads competition. For many years, Tremblay has believed that the only reasonable solution for Quebec is to separate from Canada. Once the Parti Québécois was elected in Quebec, he softened his views on allowing his plays to be produced in English there. He made it clear, however, that that did not mean that he agreed with bilingualism , calling it "stupid" and stating that he thought it ridiculous to expect

408-537: The past two decades in theatre) (1978). In 1991 he was appointed Officier de l'Ordre de France, and in the same year, Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Québec . He is also a recipient of the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France (1994). In 1999, Tremblay received a Governor General's Performing Arts Award , Canada's highest honour in the performing arts. This produced controversy when several well-known Quebec nationalists suggested that he should refuse

432-750: The play into contemporary Scots as The Guid Sisters . Michael Boyd produced this adaptation for Glasgow 's Tron Theatre in 1989 and it went on to play in Toronto in 1990 and the Centaur Theatre in Montreal in 1992. It was revived by the National Theatre of Scotland and the Royal Lyceum Theatre , Edinburgh , in 2012. In 2018 it played at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin , under the title The Unmanageable Sisters . A production of Les Belles-Soeurs

456-874: The three works in this edition, only one is rendered in the Scots language. Polish : Kwaterko, Józef, trans., Siostrzyczki (Revue / Dialog 8, 1990) performance Kraków television, Oct. 1993. Italian : Lemoine, Jean-René & Francesca Moccagatta, trans., Le Cognate , in Il teatro del Québec (Milan: Éditions Ubulibri, 1994) performance at Teatro di Rifredi, Florence, 15 Feb. 1994. Yiddish : Anctil, Pierre & Goldie Morgentaler , trans., Di Shvegerius (Montreal: Saidye Bronfman Centre , 1992) and performed there June, 1992, as well as in Tel Aviv and Brooklyn. The play has been translated into about thirty other languages. Michel Tremblay Michel Tremblay GOQ (born 25 June 1942)

480-457: Was 45 years old and did not know how to drive a car. "I think I am a rare breed," he said, "A homosexual who doesn't like men." He claims one of his biggest regrets in life was not telling his mother that he was gay before she died. His latest play to receive wide acclaim is For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again , a comedic and nostalgic play, centred on the memories of his mother. He later published

504-521: Was believed to be Quebec culture; language, the form of theatre, which plays should be done at which theatres, the displacing of the Old Guard... It set off a storm of controversy, firstly because of the language (a particularly raucous — some say vulgar — joual ), and then because it dared to portray working class women doing working class things... In 1980, Martin Bowman and Bill Findlay translated

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528-899: Was his play Hosanna , which was first performed at Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montreal in 1973. The women in his plays are usually strong but possessed with demons they must vanquish. It is said he sees Quebec as a matriarchal society. He is considered one of the best playwrights for women. In the late 1980s, Les Belles-sœurs ("The Sisters-in-Law") was produced in Scotland in Scots , as The Guid-Sisters ("guid-sister" being Scots for "sister-in-law"). His work has been translated into many languages, including Yiddish , and including such works as Sainte-Carmen de la Main , Ç'ta ton tour, Laura Cadieux , and Forever Yours, Marilou ( À toi pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou ). He has been openly gay throughout his public life, and he has written many novels ( The Duchess and

552-881: Was performed at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario during its 2023 season. Sisters and Neighbors! (Nos Belles-sœurs) , a film adaptation directed by René Richard Cyr , premiered in theatres in July 2024. English : Glassco, Bill & John Van Burek, trans., Les Belles-Sœurs (English version) (Vancouver: Talonbooks , 1974, 1992) performance at St. Lawrence Centre, Toronto, 3 April 1973. German : Plocher, Hanspeter, trans., Schwesterherzchen (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1987) performance at Romanistentheater der Universität Augsburg, 1987. Scots : Bowman, Martin & Bill Findlay, trans., The Guid Sisters and Other Plays (London: Nick Hern Books , 1991, ISBN   9781854591180 . Of

576-746: Was the federalist one." Tremblay has received numerous awards in recognition of his work. These include the Prix Victor-Morin (1974), the Prix France-Québec (1984), the Chalmers Award (1986) and the Molson Prize (1994). He received the Lieutenant-Governor's award for Ontario in 1976 and 1977. Tremblay was named the "Montréalais le plus remarquable des deux dernières décennies dans le domaine du théâtre" (the most remarkable Montrealer of

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