By sheer coincidence, the week were in Vancouver visiting Motherland Filming sites coincided with Emilie Leclerc being in a play, Ce Que Je Sais De Vrai. In English this is What I Know Is True. So naturally, we bought tickets for the show. It was quite fitting that the show is in French, as not only is Canada a bilingual country, but French is Emilie’s first language.
We reached out to Emilie and she offered to meet us after the show.
Even getting to the play was a Motherland adventure. About 3 blocks form the theatre, we passed Alder St. Of course, I had to get photos. General Alder gets everywhere.
The website for the play is https://seizieme.ca/fr/spectacles/ce-que-je-sais-de-vrai/ which includes a series of rehearsal photos. Emilie is in some of these.
The play was at La Seizieme theatre, which is a French cultural centre. This is the advertising board for the play.
This is the cultural centre where the performance takes place. As well as a performance space, there is a French language library and bookshop as well as youth services and community outreach.
Emilie’s bio for the performance mentions Motherland.
It is about a family. The parents and their four adult children. Emilie plays the elder daughter. They try to come to terms with a number of unexpected crises and tragedies, which challenge them individually and as a family. It was originally an Australian play, but was translated into French and the action moved to Vancouver.
The performance was in French, but they had English surtitles. This was the first time that I had experienced surtitles and I was very impressed. I wear hearing aids and I struggle with going to the theatre because I often cannot hear well enough to follow what the characters are saying. Surtitles solve that. I want more British theatres to adopt surtitles as standard.
We met Emilie afterwards and got some photos with her. I was very surprised, she remembered that we had met before. She even remembered where it was – Witchbomb.
It was good to meet her and chat about Motherland. It is clearly a show she loves and has very positive memories of. She would love to be invited to do more conventions.
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