The dreamer in his bath: a dip in the imagination

“Our motto is 'if it's crazy, that means it's the right way'”, reveals the man who founded the Théâtre troupe Everything in Trac 25 years ago.

“The mission of my company is to work on the imagination, he continues in a telephone interview. It's my signature. I draw from Robert Lepage as well as Ariane Mnouchkine's Théâtre du Soleil. I really like to bring the marvelous to the stage and transport the spectators elsewhere. 

His new baby is therefore in line with the fantastic works he has presented, such as Around the World in 80 Days and The Adventures of Baron Münchhausen.

“I have always wanted to democratize the theater, so that it is accessible, he notes. The truth interests me, because you have to believe in it, but realism is not my thing, since it is already well rendered on TV. »

The great forgotten

In The dreamer in his bath, Hugo Bélanger pays homage to great artists of the late 19th & early 20th century who have fallen into oblivion, such as the magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the filmmaker Georges Méliès and the cartoonist Winsor McCay.

“I wanted to talk about these forgotten precursors,” he says. It's interesting to rediscover these creators of new arts, but who we no longer remember.   »

Hugo Bélanger wrote the text and the staging of the play Le rêveur dans son bain.

For this production, the author therefore imagined a dreamy cartoonist, played by Normand D'Amour, who has been living in a bath for twenty years following the departure of his wife.

“&nbsp ;This idea of ​​the artist stuck in thinking of Fred, the author of the comic book Philemon, he says. For his last comic, he was stuck for 25 years, but he found his final inspiration in his bath. 

Hugo Bélanger explains that this character is far from being comfortable, which also leads him to talk about his relationship with his son who has to endure it.

“As with Picasso, who was a great painter but an execrable being, do we have to forgive the genius ? Is it correct, what an artist can do to those around him? These are questions that are being raised. ”

Postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic, this show has been tweaked a lot since then. The playwright maintains that this is his 57th version! 

This is another proof that creation comes with hard work.

The dreamer in his bath is presented from May 2 to 27 at the TNM.