Architectures de la joie

After many years of making the Frenchspeaking world laugh with his cult albums (over 2 million copies sold) and his work on radio and television, François Pérusse now presents his very first original stage play, created in the pure tradition of Boulevard theatre. 

In 1965, two men took the stage for a heated verbal sparring match in Cambridge, with the writer James Baldwin facing the conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. The former dismantled the myth of the American dream, arguing that it was created at the expense of African-Americans. The latter defended the notion of the United States as a meritocracy, convinced that inequality comes down to individual effort rather than a history of oppression. Two visions of the world collided in a debate that has taken on mythic dimensions thanks to archival footage.  

More than 25 years after its original release, Guillaume Corbeil and Marc St-Martin revisit Louis Saia’s film — based on an original idea by Richard Goudreau and a screenplay by Christian Fournier — by bringing it to the stage. It’s a chance to reunite with Quebec’s most famous hockey team (okay, maybe the second most famous…) and to remember the importance of mental toughness.