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The Madonna Painter

By Michel Marc Bouchard
Translated by Linda Gaboriau

At the end of the First World War, to protect his village from the Spanish flu epidemic brought home by returning soldiers, a young priest recently arrived in the Parish of Lac St-Jean commissions a wandering Italian painter to decorate the walls of the local church with a fresco dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The painter is to choose, among four local women all named Mary, a model for his work. The presence of the foreign artist, his choice of a local virgin to serve as a model, and the frighteningly strange nature of his work will upset the lives and change the fate of the entire community. The town’s doctor, meanwhile, has his own prescription for what is ailing the villagers. As superstition collides with desire, The Madonna Painter unmasks a bouquet of lies disguised as a fable.

Loosely inspired by the events surrounding the creation of the fresco that still adorns the nave of the church in Saint-Coeur de Marie, the author’s native village, the language of the play is not that of its current inhabitants. Bouchard’s characters simply echo the medieval beliefs that coloured the imagination and shaped the destiny of all Québécois, especially those living in its many rural townships until very recently, and inspire this story with their gossip about their neighbours, foreigners and the mythical marital spats between God and Satan. That fresco depicting the Virgin Mary’s ascension was the author’s first encounter with art, with a foreigner and with lies, and Michel Marc Bouchard has said: “In order to portray that fresco, I became a liar and the people from my village became saints and martyrs, artists and models, lovers and misanthropes. I presented their legends the way a flea market hawker displays sacred objects that have been stolen and disguised for resale.”

ISBN 13: 9780889226418 | ISBN 10: 889226415
5.5 W x 8.5 H x 0.29 D inches | pages
$16.95 CAN / $ US
Rights: World
Frontlist | Drama | Bisac: DRA013000

About the Contributors

Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard has written 25 plays, and he is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including: le Prix Journal de Montréal, Prix du Cercle de critiques de l’Outaouais, the Governor General’s Award, the Dora Mavor Moore Award, and the Chalmers Award for Outstanding New Play. The Vancouver productions of Lilies (1993) and The Orphan Muses (1995) also garnered nine Jesse Richardson Theatre Awards. Bouchard is also the author of Written on Water, Down Dangerous Passes Road, The Coronation Voyage, which was performed in 2003 as the first Canadian-authored play at the Shaw Festival in 25 years, and The Tale of Teeka, all available in English from Talonbooks.

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Born in Boston, Linda Gaboriau has been active in Canadian and Quebecois theatre for over twenty years as a critic, journalist, broadcaster, consultant and dramaturge.

Awards and Recognition*
Governor General’s Translation Award, Finalist (2006) Bonbons Assortis / Assorted Candies by Michel Tremblay
Governor General’s Translation Award, Finalist (2002) Impromptu on Nuns’ Island by Michel Tremblay
Governor General’s Translation Award, Finalist (2000) Down Dangerous Passes Road by Michel Marc Bouchard
Chalmers Award (1999) Orphan Muses by Michel Marc Bouchard
L’Académie québécoise du théâtre, La Soirée des Masques, Best Translation or Adaptation (1997) Orphan Muses by Michel Marc Bouchard
Governor General’s Translation Award (1996) Stone and Ashes by Daniel Danis
Chalmers Award, Nominee (1995) Stone and Ashes by Daniel Danis
Chalmers Award (1993) The Queens by Normand Chaurette
Governor General’s Translation Award, Finalist (1991) Lilies by Michel Marc Bouchard

> Go to biography…