Playwright, born in Montreal, Quebec, SE Canada. His first play, Le Train (1959), won a Radio-Canada award. Les Belles-Soeurs (1968, The Sisters-in-law) is written in the street language, joual. Many consider Le Vrai Monde (1987, The Real World), his 19th play written in as many years, his most important work to date. A new departure was his opera Nelligan (1990), with music by André Gagnon.
Michel Tremblay (born June 25, 1942) is an important Quebec novelist and playwright.
Born in Montreal, Tremblay grew up in the French-speaking part of the Plateau in Montreal, whose working-class character and joual dialect would heavily influence his work. Tremblay's first play, Les Belles-Sœurs, was written in 1965 and premiered at the Théâtre du Rideau Vert on August 28, 1968.
His work and its impact
The most profound and lasting effects of Tremblay's early plays, including Hosanna and La Duchesse de Langeais, were the barriers they toppled in Quebec society. Until the Quiet Revolution of the early 1960s, Tremblay saw Quebec as a poor, working-class province dominated by an English-speaking elite and the Catholic Church.
His most famous plays are usually centered on female characters.
In the late 1980s, Les Belles-soeurs ("The Sisters-in-Law") was produced in Scotland in Scots, as The Guid-Sisters ("guid-sister" being Scots for "sister-in-law").
He has always been openly gay, and he has written many novels (The Duchess and the Commoner, La nuit des princes charmants) and plays (Hosanna, La duchesse de Langeais) centred on gay characters.
His latest play to receive wide acclaim is For The Pleasure Of Seeing Her Again, a funny and nostalgic play, centered on the memories of his mother.
He later published the Plateau Mont-Royal Chronicles, a cycle of six novels including The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant (La grosse femme d'à côté est enceinte, 1978) and The Duchess and the Commoner (La duchesse et le roturier, 1982).
The second novel of this series, Therese and Pierrette and the Little Hanging Angel (Thérèse et Pierrette à l'école des Saints-Anges, 1980), was one of the novels chosen for inclusion in the French version of Canada Reads, Le combat des livres, broadcast on Radio-Canada in 2005, where it was championed by union activist Monique Simard.
Tremblay is currently working on a television series entitled Le Cœur découvert ("The Heart Laid Bare"), about the lives of a gay couple in Quebec, for the French-language TV network Radio-Canada.
He recently completed a new cycle of books, the Cahiers (Cahier noir, Cahier Rouge, Cahier Bleu), reflecting the changes happening in 1960s Montreal during the Quiet Revolution.
Politicial views
For many years, Tremblay has believed that the only reasonable solution for Quebec is to separate from Canada.
Despite his often outspoken views in public, Tremblay's treatment of politics in his plays is subtle. Speaking of politics and the theatre in an CBC interview in 1978, Tremblay said:
"I know what I want in the theatre.
In April 2006 he declared that he did not support the arguments put forward for the separation of Quebec.
Awards and honours
Tremblay has received numerous awards in recognition of his work.
He received the Lieutenant-Governor's award for Ontario in 1976 and 1977. Tremblay was named the "Montréalais le plus remarquable des deux dernières décennies dans le domaine du théâtre" (the most remarkable Montrealer of the past two decades in theatre) (1978). In 1991 he was appointed Officier de l'Ordre de France, and in the same year, Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Québec. He is also a recipient of the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France (1994).
In 1999, he received a Governor General's Award for the Performing Arts.
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