Tom at the Farm

By Michel Marc Bouchard

Lambda Literary Award, Drama: Michel Marc Bouchard, Tom at the Farm, translated by Linda Gaboriau (Winner)

Following the accidental death of his lover, and in the throes of his grief, urban ad executive Tom travels to the country to attend the funeral and to meet his mother-in-law, Agatha, and her son, Francis – neither of whom know Tom even exists. Arriving at the remote rural farm, and immediately drawn into the dysfunction of the family’s relationships, Tom is blindsided by his lost partner’s legacy of untruth. With the mother expecting a chainsmoking girlfriend, and the older brother hellbent on preserving a facade of normalcy, Tom is coerced into joining the duplicity until, at last, he confronts the torment that drove his lover to live in the shadows of deceit.

The lover – the friend, the son, the brother, the nameless dead man – has left behind a fable woven of false-truths which, according to his own teenage diaries, were essential to his survival. In this same rural setting, one young man had once destroyed another young man who loved yet another. Like an ancient tragedy, years later, this drama will shape the destiny of Tom.

In a play that unfolds with progressively blurred boundaries between lust and brutality, between truth and elaborate fiction, Bouchard dramatizes how gay men often must learn to lie before they learn how to love. Throughout 2011 and 2012, Tom at the Farm was produced in Quebec and France, as Tom à la ferme, and in Mexico, as Tom en la granja. Award-winning Quebec director Xavier Dolan adapted the play for the screen in 2013, with Caleb Landry Jones in the leading role.

Cast of 2 women and 2 men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Talonbooks
• Release date: Apr 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780889227606

Michel Marc Bouchard

Québec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard emerged on the professional theatre scene in 1985. Since then, he has written twenty-five plays and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious National Order of Québec for his contribution to Québec culture in 2012, and the Order of Canada in 2005. He has also received le Prix Littéraire du Journal de Montréal, Prix du Cercle des critiques de l’Outaouais, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, the Dora Mavor Moore Award, and the Chalmers Award for Outstanding New Play. Talon has published his Christina, the Girl King, The Divine, The Madonna Painter, and Tom at the Farm, all of which have been translated by Linda Gaboriau. Translated into nine languages, Bouchard’s bold, visionary works have represented Canada at major festivals around the world.

Book preview

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Contents

Cover

First Production Notes

Preface

+ TABLEAU ONE +

+ TABLEAU TWO +

+ TABLEAU THREE +

+ TABLEAU FOUR +

+ TABLEAU FIVE +

+ TABLEAU SIX +

+ TABLEAU SEVEN +

+ TABLEAU EIGHT +

+ TABLEAU NINE +

+ TABLEAU TEN +

+ TABLEAU ELEVEN +

+ TABLEAU TWELVE +

About the Translator

About the Playwright

Copyright Information

For François Arnaud, the muse

For Louis Gravel, the source

For Claude Poissant, il maestro

The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of CEAD (Centre des auteurs dramatiques), who organized a workshop supervised by Elizabeth Bourget, directed by the author, and with the participation of François Arnaud, Évelyne Brochu, Sébastien Delorme, Christiane Pasquier, Étienne Pilon, and Lise Roy.

Tom à la ferme was first presented on January 11, 2011, at Théâtre ­d’Aujourd’hui, in Montreal, Quebec, with the following cast and crew:

Tom: Alexandre Landry

Agathe: Lise Roy

Francis: Éric Bruneau

Sara: Évelyne Brochu

Artistic director: Marie-Thérèse Fortin

Director: Claude Poissant

Preface

Losing someone suddenly is a thread that snaps, breaking the ties to that other person, the man who is no longer there. The survival instinct takes over and the unravelled pieces of life try to piece themselves together with other unravelled pieces. It hardly matters with whom or with what. Other people – a brother, a son, a lover – become synonymous with the one who is no longer there.

Following the accidental death of his lover, trying to get his bearings, Tom goes to the country to meet his in-laws, who are perfect strangers to him. In this austere rural environment, the neophyte in life finds himself tangled up in a story where synonyms are merely a declension of lies.

The lover – the friend, the son, the brother, the nameless dead man – has left behind a fable woven of false truths which, according to his own teenage diaries, were essential to his survival because, in this same rural setting, one young man had once destroyed another young man who loved yet another. Like an ancient tragedy, years later, this drama determines the destiny of Tom.

Adolescence is the period in which an individual’s personality evolves from that of a child to that of an adult. This evolution begins with sexual maturity and ends with social maturity. This is the crucial point in life when the diktats of normality have the most devastating effect on those who are marginal.

Every day, gay youth are victims of aggression in schoolyards, at home, at work, on playing fields, in both urban and rural environments. Every day, they are insulted, ostracized, attacked, mocked, humiliated, wounded, beaten, taxed, soiled, isolated, tricked. Some recover, others don’t. Some become the mythmakers of their own lives.

Homophobia is not the obsolete subject some would like to believe it is, especially those who are tired of hearing about it or those who believe that if the media are covering the issue, like so many others, someone must be taking care of it.

I experimented with several happy endings for this play, but stories of reconciliation too easily relieve us of our responsibility to find ­solutions to conflicts. The moral of those stories is prefabricated.

Let me propose that we can all lend an ear to the pain of love, somehow, in some way, every day.

Homosexuals learn to lie before they learn to love. We are courageous mythomaniacs.

Michel Marc Bouchard

Montreal, October 11, 2010

Characters

TOM

A sophisticated ad man from the city. Mid-twenties. Lover of the ­deceased.

AGATHA

A farmer’s wife. Devout and affectionate. Mother of the deceased, and of Francis.

FRANCIS

A farmer. Violent, a loner. Thirty. Brother of the deceased.

SARA

A stylist. Colleague of Tom’s.

Setting

A dairy farm somewhere out in the country. Kitchen, living room, bedroom, barn,