Les Belles Soeurs [Sic]' Tient Presque Du Chef-D'oeuvre," Échos- Vedettes, 7 September 1968
Modulating Popular Culture: Cultural Critics on Tremblay's Les Belles-Soeurs Michèle Martin la compagnie des deux chaises rions es be es-soeurs 'ÙM de gauche * droits : Madeleine Langlols, Christine Olivier, MU Lafontalno, Mlrlelle Lachance, Carmen Tremblay, Danlèle Lorain, Déniée Filialrault, Juliette Huol, Monique Mercure, Fredénqu» Collln, Denise Morelle, Pauline Martin, Sylvie Heppel, Eve Gagnier. Les Belles-Soeurs's cast at L'Espace Pierre Cardin, as shown in L'Espace's programme re leased for the play in Paris. Missing in the photograph is Odette Gagnon. National Library of Canada (hereafter NLC), Fond Michel Tremblay, 1991-1, Box 1. With the permission of Michel Tremblay. Michèle Martin, "Modulating Popular Culture: Cultural Critics on Tremblay's Les Belles-Soeurs;' Labour/Le Travail, 52 (Fall 2003), 109-35. 110 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL Modulating Popular Culture: Journalistic Theatre Critics on Tremblay 's Les Belles-Soeurs THIS PAPER DISCUSSES the appropriation of a work of popular culture as a tactic in a politics of cultural hegemony. The work in question, a play by Michel Tremblay called Les Belles-Soeurs, is particularly interesting as it is the first working-class theatre production, written in joual, shown in public in the "new" Québec of the 1960s. It thus illustrates a project of cultural critique in newspapers that appealed to class- and culturally-specific audiences. Tremblay's play, first produced in 1968 and later translated into more than twenty languages including Yiddish and Japa nese, is a work of popular culture, not only because of its object, which is to relate a moment in the everyday lives of fifteen working-class women, but especially for the language it uses.
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