When will yew stans get a play about yew?

[Kim]

MONTREAL - Olivier Choinière’s Bliss, a play about Walmart employees obsessed with Céline Dion, translated into English by Caryl Churchill (Top Girls), is about to make its North American professional theatre debut, in English, at the Wildside Festival.

The play, known as Félicité in French, was a huge hit when it surfaced at La Licorne in 2007. It was subsequently picked up by the Royal Court Theatre in London, where its Churchill-translated version premiered in 2008.

Bliss has since played Scotland, Australia and Switzerland, plus a Spanish translation is in the works.

This production of Bliss wouldn’t be at the Wildside, on its way to a slot in the regular season at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto, were it not for a remarkable young man named Steve McCarthy.

McCarthy, raised in Sault Ste. Marie, graduated from the National Theatre School in 1997 as an actor. But he branched into music as well, heading a funk rock band called the ElastoCitizens in Toronto. Later, following a horrific ski accident, he altered his vocation. In 2009, he founded a theatre company called Candles Are for Burning dedicated to site-specific ritual theatre and, in 2010, he returned to NTS to study directing.

McCarthy chose Bliss as his NTS project. The student production was so successful it went on to win accolades at the SummerWorks Festival in Toronto and McCarthy won the Canadian Stage Award for direction.

“The school has become part of my life cycle,” McCarthy explained in an interview this week. “I come back and have these very intense experiences.”

Now, his Bliss is back, with a professional cast that includes France Rolland, who just won the Best Actress MECCA Award for Scapegoat Carnivale’s Medea, Trent Pardy, who has spent several seasons at the Stratford Festival, Jean-Robert Bourdage, and Delphine Bienvenu.

“In a way, Céline Dion is the goddess of the play,” McCarthy said.

To her fans, she is the sun, moon and stars. One of them is a horribly abused young woman, based on the tragic life story of the late Isabelle Côté, who was repeatedly raped by her father and brothers. In the play, Côté’s story runs parallel to that of Dion’s well-known miscarriage and birth narratives. The cashier doubles as an oracle with a direct spiritual connection to the goddess.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Walmart+plus+C%C3%A9line+equals+pure+Bliss/5959429/story.html

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omg I am totally going to see this.

[Kishi]

It's giving me creepy stalker vibes, but it might be cute.