Flesh and Other Fragments of Love

By Evelyne de la Chenelière

When Pierre and Simone planned a vacation to the Irish coast, they were hoping to revive their failing marriage. What they weren't expecting was to stumble upon the body of Mary, a drowned woman, during a walk along the beach. It's not long before curiosity and obsession take over, and the couple begin to piece together Mary's history using both facts and their imaginations. As her story comes alive, Mary's presence integrates itself into Pierre and Simone's lives, resurrecting their memories and regrets, fears and obsessions. Now they must struggle more than ever to revisit the past in order to write their own story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781770912403

Evelyne de la Chenelière

Playwright and actor Evelyne de la Chenelière has written several plays, including Des fraises en janvier, which was produced in Montreal by Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui and remounted at Théâtre Jean-Duceppe. Her play Au bout du fil was produced by Théâtre de Quat'Sous; as a writer she was involved in Les hommes aiment-ils le sexe, vraiment, autant qu'ils le disent?, at Espace Go and L'héritage de Darwin at la Maison Théâtre. Her theatrical home remains Le Nouveau Théâtre Expérimental, where she has premiered three plays: Henri et Margaux, as well as Nicht retour, Mademoiselle, conceived with Daniel Brière, and Aphrodite en 04, conceived with Jean-Pierre Ronfard.

Book preview

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Other works by Evelyne de la Chenelière

Strawberries in January

Feet of the Angels

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Flesh and Other Fragments of Love © Copyright 2014 by Linda Gaboriau

French text copyright © 2012 by Evelyne de la Chenelière. All rights reserved. Adapted from Une vie pour deux copyright © 1978 Éditions Grasset et Fasquelle

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No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, or used in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca.

For professional or amateur production rights, please contact: Marie-Pierre Coulombe, Duchesne Artists Agency

6031 Parc Avenue, Montreal, QC H2V 4H4

514.274.4607 x105, [e-mail]

Cover art, Sans titre (drawing), 1964, by Hans Bellmer © Estate of Hans Bellmer / SODRAC (2013)

Cover and book design by Blake Sproule

The Alegreya serif typeface used was designed by Juan Pablo del Peral. The typefaces is used under the SIL Open font license version 1.1.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Chenelière, Évelyne de la, 1975-

[Chair et autres fragments de l’amour. English]

   Flesh and other fragments of love / Evelyne De La Chenelière

; translated by Linda Gaboriau. -- First English edition.

Electronic monograph in multiple formats.

Issued also in print format.

ISBN 978-1-77091-240-3 (epub).--ISBN 978-1-77091-239-7 (pdf).--

   I. Gaboriau, Linda, translator II. Title. III. Title: Chair et

autres fragments de l’amour. English.

I. Title

PS8555.H44526C4413 2014   C841’.54   C2013-907997-1

C2013-907998-X

cip

We acknowledge the financial support of the National Translation Program for Book Publishing for our translation activities and the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC)—an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,681 individual artists and 1,125 organizations in 216 communities across Ontario for a total of $52.8 million—the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

FOREWORD

Why adapt a novel by Marie Cardinal for the stage today?

Before speaking about Marie Cardinal’s writing and more specifically about her novel, Une vie pour deux, I must say that the decision to write an adaptation rather than a new play has great significance for me.

I feel the need to excavate, extract, assemble and respond, rather than to be inspired solely by my own imagination, education, culture and experiences.

This need is complex, because it has forced me to explore an approach to writing that was unfamiliar to me, an approach I’ve been discovering over the past few months.

Not to write a new play

Adapting a novel for the stage has led me to question many things and to take a stand.

What is the role of literature and playwriting in society today?

What does it mean to incorporate someone else’s writing into one’s own?

What, in the writing that I am appropriating, is familiar and what is strange to me?

Why deconstruct one story rather than create another?

Why revive Marie Cardinal?

Can writing free the dead?

For the time being, I don’t want to lay claim to new ideas.

I prefer to find my subject matter in existing ideas.

Consume them, digest them, recycle them in the most noble and most humble sense of that word.

Yes, I prefer cultural recycling