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Topic spans: 1968 - 2000
Michel Tremblay: L'enfant Terrible of Canadian Theatre
Michel Tremblay exploded on to the stage in 1968 with his highly acclaimed and controversial play Les Belles-soeurs. His brutally honest portrayal of the Montreal working class revolutionized Quebec theatre. Writing in a street dialect called joual, Tremblay's beautifully flawed characters resonated beyond borders and languages. His works have been translated and performed in more than 20 countries, making him one of Canada's most prolific writers.
6 television clips
8 radio clips
Growing up on the wrong side of town
Broadcast Date: Sept. 8, 1975
Michel Tremblay was born on June 25, 1942, on Rue Fabre in Montreal's east end. It was a working class neighbourhood where it wasn't uncommon to have three families living in a single apartment. Tremblay was raised exclusively by women since most of the men were away at war. Being the youngest in an extended family of 12, Tremblay remembered how he would spend hours spying on the women in his life in this CBC TV clip.Tremblay discovered his passion for writing at an early age. He would rewrite new endings to popular TV shows such as La Famille Plouffe. He was smart and received a scholarship to attend a prestigious school but dropped out after three months. Tremblay later said he was disenchanted with the school's snobbery. He then followed the family trade and became a linotypist.
In 1964 Tremblay won first prize for his play Le Train in a competition for young writers sponsored by Radio-Canada. The play was about two men, a bourgeois and a revolutionary, on a train. The win gave the young playwright the courage to pursue a career in writing.
Growing up on the wrong side of town
• Tremblay comes from a family of linotypists. A linotypist is someone who operates a typesetting or printer machine that produces lines of words as single strips of metal. It was used for printing newspapers. The word comes from the phrase "line of type."• Tremblay worked as a fabric buyer for Radio-Canada's costume department from 1966 to 1968.
• Tremblay has always been open about his homosexuality. The writer told CBC the discovery came around the time he was 11 years old. Tremblay was watching a movie called Babes in Toyland when he found himself yearning to be the girl who ended up kissing the boy.
• In 1968, Tremblay went to Mexico on a Canada Council grant. He wrote the fantasy novel, La cité dans l'oeuf and worked on La Duchesse de Langeais, a play about a gay transvestite.
Growing up on the wrong side of town
Medium: Television
Program: People of Our Time
Broadcast Date: Sept. 8, 1975
Guest(s): Michel Tremblay
Duration: 3:31
Last updated:
July 7, 2009
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14 clips in this topic . page
Television
26:33
June 12, 1972
Hugh MacLennan, writer and professor at McGill University, talks about his life and work.
Radio
10:54
Michel Tremblay discusses The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant with Don Harron.
Growing up on the wrong side of town.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last updated: July 7, 2009.
[Page consulted on Feb. 15, 2012.]