New play at Le Pays de la Sagouine teaches Acadia 'no matter your language'
Bilingual crash course in Acadian history is the first of its kind for 33-year-old historical site.
Visiting Le Pays de la Sagouine in Bouctouche has been on Kendra Silliker's bucket list for years.
As an anglophone from Puisville, P.E.I., who teaches French, Silliker was looking for ways to learn more about the culture even though it's not her own.
The Acadian theatrical village's new play, Acadictionnaire, gave her and her husband the crash course in Acadia they needed before visiting the rest of the sprawling historical site last week.
"I didn't know any of the history at all," she said. "It was a great way to introduce Le Pays de la Sagouine and understand what each part of even the name … means."
The play is the first of its kind since the site opened in 1992. While most shows are presented in French and others only in English, Acadictionnaire is bilingual.
"It's very New Brunswick," Joe Nadeau, who plays Flo, one of two comedians in the show, said.
It's translated before the audience's eyes as Flo, and their co-star Ellie, bounce between the two languages for a dynamic, 25-minute debrief of Acadian history and meaningful cultural terms.
Josiane Benoit, known at the village as Ellie, said it's an accessible way to share the backstory of her descendants with people from the Maritimes, Quebec and beyond who may never have stepped foot in Acadia before.
The play runs all season and has three presentations daily from Wednesday to Sunday.
"Whether they know the Acadian culture or not, I think you're still going to learn something from this show," Benoit, who is originally from Dieppe, said.
"I've worked here for four years and while working on the show, we learned some things as well."
A is for Acadie … B is for Bouctouche
The story is told in a small barn, which audiences walk past as they cross the welcome centre doors into the village.
At the centre of the stage on an old wooden table is a huge, white book that serves as a manual to this crash course.
"A dictionary is a great way to go through information, and so we start with A, for Acadie, and B, for Bouctouche," Benoit said about what's inside the book. "Each letter represents something important related to Pays de la Sagouine."
Acadictionnaire blends the French words for Acadia and dictionary.
"There are a lot of visitors that would come and not necessarily know who la Sagouine was, who Antonine Maillet was, what l'Acadie was," Jac Gautreau, who created the show, said.
The letter A comes with a three-minute rap about the first Acadians in New Brunswick, what led to their expulsion in 1755 and what remains of their legacy.
"That was kind of the assignment, like, when they leave here 25 minutes later, they should have enough to really have context when they visit the rest of the site."
Later in the play, the actors also flip to the letter M.
It's dedicated to the late Antonine Maillet, the author whose well-known character of la Sagouine, an Acadian cleaning woman, served as inspiration for the historical site.
Benoit, who used to visit the site as a child, said sharing the culture with people who are not Acadian is more crucial than ever.
"It's also very important to keep that legacy going since Antonine Maillet passed away recently," she said. "I feel like we carry something very important and precious to the Acadian culture."
'We want to connect with people, not create separations'
To Monique Poirier, the artistic director of the site, seeing the line between anglophone and francophone cultural experiences blurred by this show is a step in the right direction.
"The more we can have experiences that … no matter your language, no matter your knowledge of the culture, you have a sense of connection, that's the goal," she said.
She said it's also why the site's nighttime experience, called Akadi Lumnia, doesn't rely on dialogue. Rather, it brings visitors through a show of lights, sounds and music in the woods.
As the writer of Acadictionnaire, Gautreau said he wanted to defy what audiences expected from a bilingual performance.
"Often we have bilingual shows where it's really a duplication, where you hear it in French, you hear it in English," he said. "That was not the order here."
Gautreau relied on words that are similar enough in both languages so the actors would not have to repeat themselves. He also incorporated a large screen which hangs above the stage to display visual cues.
"There's such a gap, I find, between the francophone arts and culture community and the anglophone, so I feel like it's a rare opportunity to mix both in," Nadeau said. "I think that's very special to play."
Although there may be more anglophone elements incorporated into the site's future, its fierce advocacy for the French language and Acadian dialect won't relent, Gautreau said.
"That doesn't mean we have to not speak about who we are as Acadians, that's the heart of the story and it'll stay the heart of the story," Gautreau said. "But I think our challenge is … to find ways to let people in."
That's exactly the opportunity the show gave Silliker's husband, Paul, who does not speak French.
"It's important because when you think of Le Pays de la Sagouine, you think French," Silliker said. "For him to be able to take in a couple pieces of Le Pays de la Sagouine in English was really nice for him."
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