Malaise dans la civilisation

Imagine walking into a theatre to see a show that will never happen. It’s absurd!

As the audience settles, they encounter four individuals who enter the theater as tourists, haphazardly exploring the venue, interacting with a remarkable lack of compassion for others or their environment. Through a series of mundane and minor accidents, this small sample of humanity, linked together by improbable situations, gradually transforms the empty space of the stage into a universe filled with hilarious possibilities.

The absurdity sometimes becomes thought-provoking when the four stooges awkwardly ask philosophical questions. Strange and playful, Malaise dans la civilisation allows us to observe complex, fascinating beings who innocently venture to the limits of morality. It’s touching—and disturbing.

In their creative partnership, co-directors Alix Dufresne and Étienne Lepage shake up both social and theatrical conventions, experimenting with the porous border between the stage and the audience. The four characters in Malaise dans la civilisation, with no defined age, refuse to accept norms, or more precisely, do not care about them.

Allegorical of the little care we take of the world and ourselves, of others in the world, Malaise also appears as a brilliant example of what stage writing can give. The rare, irresistible lines infuse a play created for and by its performers Florence Blain Mbaye, Maxime Genois, Renaud Lacelle-Bourdon and Alice Moreault.