A hard-hitting work that did not leave the audience indifferent when it was presented at the FTA last spring, Surveillée et Punie opens the Prospero theatre season starting September 10. Or how to understand the effects of harassment, whether it is in the street, on social media or by radio hosts and their listeners. Singer Safia Nolin paid the price for it for a long time because being different, owning it and exposing it sometimes comes at a very high price. On stage, in a production by Philippe Cyr, Safia Nolin explains how difficult it is to stand out from the norm.
“At the 2019 Francofolies, I staged Safia Nolin’s show and she asked me to include at the very beginning excerpts of the violent remarks she had heard about her,” comments the artistic director of Prospero, Philippe Cyr, “I had the idea of working on what we understand today by freedom of expression, by censorship, or even by self-censorship, and I suggested to Safia Nolin to create something around what she had suffered.”
The singer took a long time to think before accepting the proposal. It was not easy for her to go back to a period that had knocked her down. No one is ready to receive so much hate where certain comments made by anonymous people on social networks ordered her to commit suicide, among other things. “Then, one day, she called me to tell me that she agreed and she sent me a file in which she had archived all the hateful comments by subject: fatphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, and of course misogyny,” continues Philippe Cyr. The file even contains the conversations she had with the police who did not want to follow up when Safia Nolin wanted to file a complaint against the harassment she was the victim of. Which makes Philippe say “that there is indeed a double standard since other public figures have received support from the police.”
The material is there, but how to make it into a show. The choice quickly becomes obvious: Safia Nolin is a singer, and who better than her, through her art, could then give an account of what she has suffered. For hateful remarks, what could be better than a choir representing the crowd of anonymous people who hide behind social networks to spit their venom. The choir’s booklet is written by Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard, the music is by Vincent Legault, all of course in collaboration with Safia Nolin, a dozen songs in all.
Facing this heart, Safia Nolin will not be alone on stage. For Philippe Cyr, it was necessary to provide a counterpoint, a dimension that would have to do with hope. Actress Debbie Lynch-White did not need to be asked twice. “On the one hand, I know Safia well, on the other hand, I also know what it means to be dragged through the mud simply because of my appearance,” confides Debbie Lynch-White, “and I liked what Philippe Cyr proposed in this silent character who accompanies Safa, to evoke something positive, like sisterhood, friendship, love between women, in fact kindness and tenderness.”
Far from being a show that plays on pathos and victimization, Watched and Punished then appears as a collective catharsis to be able to better get back up, and face up again. As Debbie Lynch-White specified at the end of the interview, “There is in this show something like a resumption of power over oneself, individually of course, and perhaps a resumption of collective power”. An awareness then that perhaps will begin to move the lines in the face of all forms of harassment.
NEWS | Watched and Punished, From September 10 to 21, 2024, at the Prospero Theater
A production of Prospero. Booklet Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard + Safia Nolin.
Music Vincent Legault + Safia Nolin. Directed by Philippe Cyr.
Interpretation Debbie Lynch-White + Safia Nolin
