There was Paul in Quebec who was the subject of a film. Red Ketchup who has recently become the hero of an animated series. But in the memory of a journalist who loves comics, never has a Quebec album been the subject of a theatrical adaptation. The ice is broken with the arrival of Whitehorse on the boards.
Before being a play and a comic strip published by Pow Pow, Whitehorse was first a short story, born from the fertile imagination of a CEGEP student named Samuel Cantin, who had just learned that He had one leg shorter than the other. Was he suffering from a new syndrome that was gradually transforming his body?
“This story served as my initial inspiration,” says the cartoonist. I brought the short story back after a few years to make a comic book to which I added a love story. It’s a bit biographical. I wanted to talk about the artistic environment in which I often found myself. »
The comic strip tells the setbacks of Henri, a drifting writer, who is consumed with jealousy when he sees his girlfriend Laura participating in the next film by the libidinous filmmaker Sylvain Pastrami. As if that wasn’t enough, Dr. Von Strudel diagnosed him with a unique illness: “turtle syndrome” which will make him deformed in two years…
This story, just offbeat enough, inspired actors Guillaume Laurin and Sébastien Tessier for an audition scene with Duceppe. “Instead of presenting Chekhov, we said to ourselves: we are adapting a scene from Whitehorse,” says Sébastien Tessier, who plays Henri in the show. The idea hit the mark and as soon as their audition was over, Jean-Simon Traversy, co-artistic director at Duceppe, suggested they adapt the entire album.
Sébastien Tessier admits it bluntly: he fell in love at first sight when reading Whitehorse for the first time. “I fell in love with the humor of the dialogues, which are very theatrical,” explains the actor. It’s rare for me to laugh out loud while reading a book! »
How would he describe the cartoonist’s humor? “Wacky, raw, irreverent, touching, uncomfortable”, lists Sébastien Tessier.
The Whitehorse theatrical adaptation was done by six hands, Samuel Cantin adding his pen to those of Sébastien Tessier and Guillaume Laurin. “When the guys contacted me, I said yes straight away. It’s like a dream come true for me,” says the designer. The team went to find a great enthusiast of absurd humor, Simon Lacroix, to take charge of the direction.
“His company Projet Bocal is one of the few in Quebec to focus on comedy. With him, we work on comic subtleties and the rhythm that is so important in comedy,” says Sébastien Tessier.
The latter, however, insists: the play Whitehorse is not just a long series of gags.
Indeed, when Samuel Cantin is asked to name his influences for this album, he does not cite Monty Python or The Heart Has His Reasons. “I really like romantic comedies like those by Woody Allen or Modern Romance by Albert Brooks. I have already been told that there is a relationship between Whitehorse and Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Now, it’s my favorite book…”
Nevertheless, we laugh more at the works of Samuel Cantin than when reading Dostoyevsky. Now, what makes the cartoonist laugh?
With the comic duo Brick et Brack, which he created with François Ruel-Côté, Sébastien Tessier also actively practices uncomfortable humor. “It’s a whole different medium, though. We are in stand-up humor, concept humor. In Whitehorse, there is a story to follow, dialogues which serve as a link. »
Samuel Cantin denies having wanted to settle scores with the cinematographic world, which he knew relatively little about when he wrote his album. “But there is a gang phenomenon in the world of cinema which is fun to describe…” Moreover, the cartoonist is already working on the sequel to Whitehorse where the action takes place, this time, in the world literary.
There will undoubtedly be a few bruised egos along the way…
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