Nathalie Boisvert has had an impressive career in the world of theatre. With 16 published plays and tours around Canada and Europe, and a long career as a playwriting teacher at the National Theatre School of Canada, she has definitely made her mark. Just before the pandemic started, she began developing a new show, called FACELIFT, which has since been performed around Montreal and in Germany. It is now getting a new life at the Salle Culturelle Alfred Langevin in Huntingdon. Though she grew up in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Boisvert now lives in Sainte-Agnès-de-Dundee.
During her career, Boisvert has had a fascination with makeup. She had a theatre company for a while called Le Dôme and first learned how to do it out of necessity since someone in the company needed to know how to do stage makeup. She trained to be that person. Because of this, she learned a lot about the obsession there is with women’s makeup and achieving a “perfect” face. “Creating beauty on a woman’s face is really precise… it’s predetermined,” she says. At the time, she was also doing tutorials for how to do makeup, and says she was “confronted every day by the insecurities of women.” This is what inspired her to write FACELIFT.
The story is semi-autobiographical, and the character is based on Boisvert. “I’m in my fifties, so I’m entering the era of the invisible women, when you no longer exist,” she explains. The story of the show is a tutorial on how to make a perfect face. But as the play goes on, the character starts to crack. It explores the unrealistic beauty standards that women live with.
Audiences can expect a presentation that is extremely candid and may feel jarring. It is very intimate and “breaks the fourth wall,” meaning the actor is speaking directly to the audience. It is a comedy much of the time but is also occasionally affronting. “It talks about things as they are, and I talk about what the experience of women is and my experience as a 50-year-old,” Boisvert says.
The show had a run at La Balustrade du Monument National last August and at L’Éspace La Risée last November. Both performances featured actor Chantale Cuggia and were directed by Maude St-Denis with artistic direction by Olivier Sylvestre. Boisvert was the original performer, but she much prefers to be behind the scenes than on stage.
The show will be presented in French on April 25 and 26 at 7 p.m. Tickets are available now at www.zeffy.com.