Cabaret Bio Dégradable returns to the Lion d'Or in Montreal on Saturday before heading to Paris for several months. In an interview, producer Didier Morissonneau admits to being surprised by the longevity of his concept, which involves reading juicy passages from the funniest autobiographies of Quebec or French stars on stage.
Presented for the first time in 2008 at Café Cléopâtre, the literary cabaret has followed a simple but effective concept since its beginnings: honoring personalities through their own words, without changing a single line of their writings. An idea that has brought its creator numerous complaints, formal notices and even death threats, but which still makes the public laugh.
Open in full screen mode
From left to right: producer Didier Morissonneau, actor Pierre-Luc Brillant and presenter Anaïs Favron.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Jean-Baptiste Demouy
Since the return of Cabaret Bio Dégradable in 2022, interrupted for two years by the pandemic, the show's producer, director and presenter has felt a real new enthusiasm for his proposal, something that rather surprises him given the current social climate of heightened sensitivity finds. “It's working better than ever before, even if we're swimming against the current,” explains Didier Morissonneau on the phone.
We make trashy, misogynistic, homophobic, racist humor, and that's what actually works. But we are exonerated because these are not our words, we are reading the comments that are completely inappropriate, untimely and anachronistic [des vedettes].
The latest Quebec version of the show, featuring eight artists including Pierre-Luc Brillant, Isabelle Blais, Sylvain Larocque and Rémi-Pierre Paquin, will be presented at the Lion d'Or in Montreal on Saturday at 8 p.m.
Marie-Chantal Toupin, Mad Dog Vachon, Michel Girouard and the others
Didier Morissonneau reads a lot of autobiographies every year to bring something new to his show, but certain literary gems have remained timeless since the first cabaret.
Exit [une autobiographie], I need something funnier. There I reached a level of perfection where I can almost no longer remove any extracts, he explains.
Classics include wrestler Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon's autobiography, A Dog's Life in a Mad World (1988), in which at one point he constantly uses the N-word to describe a fight against a black man. Didier Morissonneau illustrates such an open use of the word controversial that it almost becomes comical.
Open in full screen mode
Wrestler Mad Dog Vachon (archive photo)
Photo: Collaboration with Les Percéides
Or like the book by Julie Lemay, the first winner of the reality show Loft Story, which offers reflections like: “There are mirrors everywhere, I now understand what the Indians must have felt when their photo was taken.”
According to Didier Morissonneau, no personality is untouchable. The selected excerpts are characterized by the emptiness of the words, their absurdity or the oversized ego that they find difficult to hide. And in general: the emptier, the more interesting.
The price of fame
Among the autobiographies recently added to the show is that of Éliane Gamache Latourelle, a young self-proclaimed millionaire who actually drowned in debt. Or that of the cultural journalist Michel Girouard, who died in 2021, from which Pierre-Luc Brillant reads excerpts.
He wrote a book in 1980 called “I live my homosexuality, but there is one.” [tirade] at one point against bisexuals, explains the show's producer. Everything he says against bisexuals is what the world said against homosexuals in the 1960s: that they are perverts who have no morals, who only think about sex, and who should practically burn in hell.
Open in full screen mode
Former culture journalist Michel Girouard died in 2021. (Archive photo)
Photo: Courtesy
Was Didier Morissonneau ever afraid of offending someone? Not really, he says. According to him, it is a kind of tax that comes with fame […] We also read you because you are well known enough for people to read you.
In the 1960s, the cynics said, “If you’re no longer worth a joke, you’re no longer worth anything.”
French personalities suffer torture in Paris
Didier Morissonneau's concept is gaining momentum. The cabaret was performed for the first time in Paris last fall after Pascal Guillaume of the company Ki M'aime Me Suive fell in love with the Quebec version after seeing it at the Lion d'Gold.
It's exactly the same idea, but they're just autobiographies of French stars. We have cast a wide net in the last 50 years, he explains, recalling the actress Nadine de Rothschild, the singer Alain Barrière or even Nabilla, the star of French reality TV who is like a cheap Kim Kardashian.
The French show will also be presented at the Comédie Bastille in Paris from January 9th to May 28th with artists including Virginie Pradal, Guillaume Clérice and Nicolas Martinez.
Didier Morissonneau hopes that Cabaret Bio Dégradable will continue its expansion while remaining in French-speaking countries, as he is less interested in English-speaking stars and the concept has already been created in the language of Shakespeare. So to France, Belgium? Belgian stars, to your feathers…