Claudine Mercier, who has been in retirement for almost five years, will be back on stage this summer in the Quebec adaptation of the French hit Silence, on tourne!.
A return to the stage that certainly would not have been possible without their trust in Emmanuel Reichenbach, who is autographing the adaptation but also a longtime friend and collaborator, and Encore Spectacle, who once produced his tours.
A few weeks before the premiere, the 61-year-old comedian, who is also a painter and illustrator, said she was thrilled to find the stage and, more importantly, the audience. “It’s been so long since I’ve shot a scene, it’s funny. I can’t wait to find that energy again,” she told QMI Agency, specifying that she “had a lot of fun” getting back in action and being able to “join this beautiful gang trip.”
Claudine Mercier has been out of the spotlight since her last tour ended in 2018 and has since taken the time to take a breath and do something else. In particular, she wrote a play for children with a friend, which will be performed a little later, but not before 2024, she said. She has also agreed to do illustrations for a children’s book, which she plans to work on in between performances this summer.
“I love children and the beauty of writing for them is that anything is possible.[…] I also enjoy drawing and creating characters a lot. I also learned how to work with the iPad and the various tools. I like the result but I’m sure it will take a lot of time,” the comedian replied.
Though she’d love to try writing a few “jokes” this summer “just to watch,” Claudine Mercier doesn’t know if she’d concretely want to try the devil again one day with a new comedy show. “It’s been so long since I wrote jokes. I’m a bit rusty. I don’t know if I have the taste to get back into it,” she confirmed, while also hinting that she would remain open to what might happen to her.
“I don’t make plans. I do what comes. I listen to my instincts,” the actress explained, adding that just hearing laughter in the theater was enough to rekindle her interest in the profession time after time.
A flagship partnership for the Gilles Vigneault Theatre
“Silence is Turned!” is a comedy that has a beautiful originality in its structure. “There’s drama behind the scenes, love triangles, little intrigues that always alternate with that little gunfight that never succeeds in the end and that’s more messy than anything,” explained playwright Emmanuel on Wednesday. Reichenbach at the QMI Agency during a media rehearsal.
The story of the play takes place in a theater that is taken over by a film crew shooting a movie there. Obviously nothing runs like clockwork. Catherine Proulx-Lemay plays the role of the machinist, Michel Olivier Girard the director and Marc St-Martin the assistant director who guides the audience during the shooting, because the viewers are somehow extras in the film.
Roger Léger, Catherine Paquin-Béchard and Louis-Olivier Mauffette play the actors’ roles, while Catherine Bouliane plays a very special make-up artist who doesn’t seem to understand French.
Emmanuel Reichenbach, who adapted “Sainte-Marie-la-Mauderne” in 2022, wants to continue the momentum and collaborate with the Gilles-Vigneault theater in Saint-Jérôme for as long as possible. He is currently working on the next play, which will be performed at these locations next year.
The Quebec adaptation of the comedy Silence, on tourne!, directed by Charles Dauphinais and produced by Encore Spectacle in association with Just for Laughs, will be staged at the Gilles Vigneault Theater in Saint-Jérôme from June 23 to August 12 .