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Every evening at sunset, Bernard and Viviane gaze across their boundless estate maintained by Jérémie, the ex-convict gardener. Their daughter Léna returns after running away yet again, but the couple acts as if everything is normal. The scene replays in variations, shifting with the uncertainties of the night. Trapped in a loop of bourgeois malaise, Léna and Jérémie can only picture one escape: to murder Bernard and Viviane and burn everything to the ground.
Against the Night is a fractured, fevered descent into familial collapse and the erosion of identity. Evelyne de la Chenelière’s haunting tragicomedy conjures an absurdist dreamscape where language fabricates reality and everything is up for reinvention. Darkly funny and endlessly fascinating, Against the Night dares us to look into the darkness to see ourselves more clearly.
Writer and actress Evelyne de la Chenelière is an essential figure in the Quebec theatre and playwriting scene. Her plays, translated and performed in Quebec and Canada as well as elsewhere in the world, question the limits of language and the experience of writing. In 2017 she was a finalist for the Siminovitch Prize for excellence and innovation in Canadian theatre. Her play Bashir Lazhar was adapted into a film by director Philippe Falardeau under the title Monsieur Lazhar and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Her most recent play, Le traitement de la nuit, was directed by Denis Marleau in Montreal, and produced in Frankfurt in a German translation. It was also presented in a staged reading at the Comédie Française in Paris.
Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator and dramaturg based in Montreal. She has translated over 150 plays and novels from the French. Her translations of works by Quebec’s most prominent playwrights have been published and produced across Canada and abroad. She has directed numerous translation residencies, and from 2002 to 2007 she was the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Her drama translations have garnered many awards, including three Governor General’s Literary Awards for Translation. In 2015 she was named a member of the Order of Canada, and in 2023 an Officer of l’Ordre national du Québec.