Atwood poem inspires stage production

Atwood poem inspires stage production. Stranger Theatre presents The Hanging of Francoise Laurent at SummerWorks Festival, Aug. 5 to 15. Pictured is Sarah Cormier, one of the show's creator/performers, who plays Madame. Photo/COURTESY

Its writer/director Kate Cayley stumbled upon Atwood's 1970s poem about the young servant girl sentenced to death in Montreal for stealing a pair of gloves. At the time, in 1751, a woman could escape execution if she could persuade the hangman to marry her. However, there is no hangman in her case. Instead, while in prison, Laurent hears the voice of a young soldier in the cell next to hers, whom she convinces to become a hangman and marry her.

'In order to avoid her death, her particular death, with wrung neck and swollen tongue, she must marry the hangman. But there is no hangman, first she must create him, she must persuade this man at the end of the voice, this voice she has never seen and which has never seen her, this darkness, she must persuade him to renounce his face, exchange it for the impersonal mask of death, of official death which has eyes but no mouth, this mask of a dark leper.'

So goes the poem. Yet the theatre company's offering is a departure to that of Atwood's.

"Margaret Atwood was interested in her as a victim," said Cayley of Laurent. "We were interested in her as triumphant, a dangerous and fighting figure."

Both Atwood's poem and a Quebecois short film made in the 70s both focused on what happens in prison.

"Our question was, who was this woman this servant girl was working for? There's a whole other story to be told about class, gender and the relationship between the two women," said Cayley. "That was a really interesting point to explore."

People's most common reaction to the story, once they read the play's synopsis, is disbelief.

"'That's not true,' they'll say, but actually, this is a true story," said Cayley, a Brocton Triangle resident. "It's pretty rich yet theatrically difficult because the relationship between the two women exists in one room so we're dealing with intense physical confinement."

The theatre collaborative wanted to explore the physicality of the women's relationship, said Cayley.

"The way you dressed and undressed - you couldn't do it yourself in those days. You literally couldn't live without your servant, who knew your body like no one else," she said. "The master versus servant relationship was intimate, but formal."

Stranger Theatre delves into the heavy topic of class while immersing themselves in 18th century dress, like learning how to lace corsets. The other aspect that proved challenging was depicting Laurent's and her soldier's relationship that develops by conversations through a tiny hole in their cell wall.

"What were the fantasies between them? How did she seduce him? Did she frighten him? There's a lot of room for interpretation and ambiguity," said Cayley.

This play is a departure for Stranger Theatre, she said, certainly an adult show. There is a lot of music, also a lot of fun, singing and dancing, storytelling and even a little magic.

"It does have a happy ending in the sense that she convinced him to marry her," said Cayley. "We hope the audience will leave the theatre deeply wondering, grappling - who was she? Who was the woman who employed her?"

For ticket information, visit www.summerworks.ca/2010/tickets.php or www.artsboxoffice.ca