About the Play:

Sainte-Carmen of the Main (English-language version of Sainte Carmen de la Main) is a play Michel Tremblay. A play about cultural identity and cultural awakening based on a country and western singer from St. Lawrence Blvd. in Montréal, known as the "The Main."

Carmen — a character who appeared previously in Forever Yours, Marie-Lou — returns to the Rodéo from Nashville, where she has been sent to "improve her technique" in yodelling. But not only does she improve her technique, she also begins to write her own songs whose lyrics speak directly to the people about their problems, in words they understand. This challenging and profound play poses the question: "It's fine to wake people up, but once they're awake, what do you do with them?"

Fashioned after a Greek tragedy, the play is a parable where autonomy and cultural identity collide head-on with opportunism and oppression.

Cast: 4 female, 13 male and a chorus of 12 persons (6 female, 6 male)

What people say:

"An absolutely fascinating gesture by a powerful playwright." — Toronto Star

"Michel Tremblay has steeled his courage and done that which lesser writers dare not do: written a classical tragedy … It is an absolutely fascinating gesture by a powerful playwright who, in his own personal hubris, is attempting to write a successful tragedy where writers of the stature of T.S. Eliot who attempted the same thing have managed at best mixed results. With St. Carmen, Tremblay too has had mixed results. But that, considering the odds, is a formidable accomplishment." — The Globe and Mail

About the Playwright:

Michel Tremblay has been one of Québec's most prominent playwrights since the end of the 1960s. One of the most produced and the most prominent playwrights in the history of Canadian theatre, he has received countless prestigious honours and accolades. His dramatic, literary and autobiographical works, originally written in French, have long enjoyed remarkable international popularity and translations of his plays have received huge success worldwide.