genuinely nothing gives me more joy than to read and write fanfiction like !!!!!! oh my god !!!!!!!! it's so fun !!!!!!! and then I just spend my writing hours torturing these little characters in my brain like hey guys sorry about this
I want to talk about the play I’m listening to so here’s a detailed resume with commentary
Because of the pandemic(TM), my favorite theater made their latest play available as a podcast. I’ve been listening to it over and over again and now that I recognize the characters’ voice and understand the story well, I have thoughts I’m ready to talk about
So when the TNM released their play calendar, Le Peintre des Madones by Michel Marc-Bouchard interested me.
I discovered this playwriter through school and I’ve loved his work mainly because his main themes: forbidden (lgbt) love and religion. I’ve loved Les Feluettes, Christine la Reine-Garçon, Tom à la ferme and I’m loving Le Peintre des Madones
Set during the times of the Spanish Flu, a young prist commisions a sacred triptych depicting the Virgin Mary in the hopes that it’ll keep their small community from the sickness. The arrival of the Italian painter disrupts the community, secrets resurface, and what was supposed to bring hope condemns.
The play opens with an enticing choir, I fell in love after hearing the first notes. Soon after, a man enounciates his vision for what he hopes to commission for his small community. I can’t describe very well everything he list, but you can feel his hopes as he describes the image of the Madonna.
I like the characters we’re introduced to: The candid Marie-Anne. Marie-Paule the “promiscuous” young girl. Marie-Louise who can read ‘sheets’. Marie of the dead, who helps the dying to die in peace by listening to their ‘secrets’.
The prist enlists the financial help of the doctor to pay for the commission. A very entertaining conversation between a naive young man who expects his act of faith to be enough to keep the Flu away and an older man who’s too down-to-earth to be swayed by words. I find it interesting how the prist talk down to the doctor telling him that by financing the triptych, his soul will find peace and alleviate his conscience. The doctor retorts his conscience is clear and how little rewarding his job actually is nonetheless he hands him the ring he took off the hand he had amputated earlier as his salary. The prist’s words hadn’t swayed the doctor, only his pretty face
The painter always uses a girl among the community to pose as when he works so they hold a little presentation to decide which Marie will be the Madona. Alessandro chooses Marie of the dead, the only Marie who hadn’t signed up to model, but he wants her, he says she’s ‘Splendida’ that her sadness highlights her beauty. She retorts that she is only looked at when one dies, that no one from here talks to her sweetly and that people are afraid of her. Alessandro says she’s the one he wants. Is this supposed to be sweet? I didn’t have enough information to decide so I decided to wait.
Shortly after, Marie of the dead tries to renounce her position as the Madona, she can’t be distracted from her work and she doesn’t like how Alessandro looks at her yet doesn’t paint her face. The prist tells her to suck it up, that her mission is sacred. I don’t like where this is going. Their next session, Alessandro tells Marie of the dead he will paint her face if she tells him a secret, he will tell her his secret if she tells him her secret. Despite her loneliness and her sadness, Marie of the dead is a young girl desperate to be love, and so she falls for his words. She tells him how her mother tried to abort her brother with knitting needle only for him to be born deformed I’m sad for a girl and her mother who deserved better.
While the work is being done, many die from the Flu. The prist is desperate, Marie of the dead is sick, he confides in the doctor his worries, the doctor’s not interested in that, the prist’s pretty face is not as handsome when worried The prist is distraught because the doctor looks at him the same way the painter looks at him when he should be painting.
Marie’s sickness is not from the Flu, it’s more akin to the Madona’s though this conception isn’t immaculate: she’s pregnant. Now when people want her to listen to their secrets before their death, when they want her to tell them how much things are better on the other side than their current pain, Marie of the dead pushes them away coldly. Die, die without me she tells Marie-Paule as she tries to reach her before she dies
Marie-Louise is sad, the dead are envelopped in the sheets she used to read. there are no more sheet. Will there be any for her when it’s her turn to die?
The doctor visits Alessandro to pay him. He’s shown the face of the Madona, the most beautiful face made splendid by it’s immortality captured by the work. Yes, the doctor is quite satisfied unlike Alessandro. The painter shares his boredom, how he had hoped Marie of the dead would be different from all the others he had charmed before. she wasn’t and what an inconvinience to him! The doctor’s not interested, he has work to do, too many dying. If Alessandro needs ‘help with their baby, the doctor knows he’ll know where to find him...
The fever has caught up with the prist, he realises his desire for the triptych might have been a mistake: to adore images is a sin. This scene I’m not exactly sure what happens but I think I understood. The doctor offers the prist morphine, in an earlier scene, morphine is used to amputate a man’s arm. In the next scene the prist’s face is said to be covered in bandages. The doctor tells him that after a little of paradise, it’s quick.
Marie of the dead is happy, free from the heavy secrets that were intrusted to her. She joins Alessandro, her voice is light very different from what it was in the beginning. She loves the baby already and she can picture their lives together. Alessandro says nothing, Marie looks at the painting, those are not her eyes. None of those features are hers. I had to paint a virgin Alessandro says coldly. He no longers talks to her in english, I don’t understand what he says in Italian but I understand when he says Adio Maria. My heart breaks for Marie of the dead as she begs the embryo to leave her body in a voice riddled with anger, as she hopes she’ll knit better than her mother did.
Marie-Anne tells the feverish prist that since the triptych is finished, the war ended, the Flu kills no more. He begs her to close the churche’s door before she arrives, a dark figure holding a deformed cherub leaving behind her a red trace, surrounded by secrets and cursing the living. The wind takes her away, her assumption
Before he dies, the prist asks Marie-Anne to describe the triptych. She does, it’s a maliciously deformed version of his initial vision. It depicts the final fate of all the characters.
“Please , describe me the Madona’s face.”
“It’s yours, your face.”
The play ends in an enticing choir.
Some remarks :
So a lot of things were kinda predictable, doesn’t make them any less impactful when they happen. I wish I could’ve seen this play in theatre but oh well.
This story is set in old Quebec so yeah it’s old-fashioned and it shows i.e. the girls deserved better.
I love how many things came full circle, that’s something I love in stories and this one delivers.
Kinda funny how there were characters with unusual gifts.
I don’t think many if any will read this but idk I needed to share so thank you if you’ve made it this far. DM if you want the link to the play or you can look up TNM Le peintre des Madonnes and I’m sure you can find it, it’s in french tho
Sometimes I feel just too much of this life in so little time, but I think it's okay, because at least I can write all of these things and throw up everything out of myself, I can watch those feelings on the paper, seeing how beautiful they're when I turn them in words, even if they make me feel bad and this has always been so emotional, turning pain in beautiful words
So, people do their “what I learned writing MAH BOOK” guest posts here and so I thought, well, hell, why shouldn’t I do one, too?
Chuck Wendig:
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING (AND THAT’S MAYBE A GOOD THING?)
Let’s just get this out of the way right now: I do not know how to write a book. By which I mean, I do not have a reliable way to write a book. I thought I did. We begin as authors, I think, to take in and accept certain truisms — if not about Writing In General, than about Our Individual Processes. We just say, “Well, this is how we do this. I outline the book, I think up some character arcs, I pray to the Dark Goat Slorgath, I pour a phial of demon saliva in a cursed inkwell, and then I write the book, two thousand words a day until it is done.”
