“It speaks to today,” playwright George Boyd said of his recreation of Boulogne’s life in a Black Theatre Workshops production of Boyd’s latest play, Le Code Noir.
“If you’re a black man, people make you think that you’re in with the program, but really, you’re not,” Boyd said. “You’re accepted as an insider, but you’re really an outsider.”
The play appropriates the name of a racist decree passed by France’s King Louis XIV, which set the conditions for slavery in France and its colonies.
Boulogne lived under the decree, yet managed to survive and earn the praise of president John Adams, who called him “the most accomplished man in Europe.”
A master-composer, world-class fencer, equestrian, swimmer, military officer, marksman and violinist, Boulogne was nevertheless relegated from society.
“He was superman. You can quote me on that,” Boyd said.
For Boyd, the only way to depict a polymath of such magnitude was on stage, with fragmented and painful flashbacks of a life on the outside of society.
Playgoers learn of Boulogne in his dying moments. Holed up in a garret after an assassination attempt, Boulogne recounts his life to a journalist in hallucinatory bursts of love and sadness.
“I had to use that technique, because we tried every other way and it just looked like a documentary,” Boyd said.
A difficult moment in the play is Boulogne’s encounter with his mistress and the mother of his child.
“The wet nurse was told not to feed the baby because the baby came out black, so the baby died of hunger,” Boyd said. “His life ends out to be nothing but betrayal, even by his parents.”
But the story is not cloaked in sadness. Boulogne’s very life is testament to the will of human and artistic spirit, Boyd said.
“Art always prevails,” he said. “You can throw it in the corner of your room, but that little monster will be out there saying, this is what it was all about,” Boyd said. “They tried to burry him for 200 years, but that little monster in the corner is saying, hello, I was here.”
Le Code Noir is staging from March 17 to April 5 at the Segal Centre, 5170 Cote-Ste-Catherine Road (Metro Cote-Ste-Catherine). Tickets: $17.50 to $23.50. Box Office: 514-932-1104 ext. 226. www.blacktheatreworkshop.ca
Black Mozart revived on stage
Black Mozart revived on stage
- Publié le 13 Mars 2009
- Publié le Febuary 6th, 2010
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Matthew Brett
From March 17 at the Segal Centre
Eighteenth century classical composer Joseph Boulogne was neglected by his own class because of the colour of his skin. His black child was purposefully starved to death, and Boulogne died alone and destitute. But his music survives.
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