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Date of birth: Place of birth:
Callings:
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Photo : Grégoire Photo avec la permission de l'Agence Goodwin
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Michel Tremblay was born in a
working-class neighbourhood of Montreal. He
realized while still very young that he had a
passion for writing. At high school he wrote poems,
plays and novels. At 17 he was writing fantasy
stories that he later published under the title
Contes pour buveurs attardés. At 19 he
enrolled in the Institut des arts graphiques to
train as a linotypist, which was the trade he
supported himself at from 1963 to 1966 while
writing on the side. In 1964 he submitted a play,
Le train, to Radio-Canada's competition for young
authors -- it won the jury's first prize and earned
Michel a Canada Council grant. The following year
André Brassard staged some of the best
Contes pour buveurs attardés in a show
devoted to fantasy literature, Messe noire. In
1968, the Théâtre du Rideau Vert put
on a Michel Tremblay play that was an instant hit:
Les Belles-Soeurs. It was to be revived many times,
in Quebec and elsewhere, and has become a classic
of the Quebec theatre. In 1973 it was acclaimed in
Paris as the best foreign play of the
season.
But Tremblay's success did
not end there. He is a prolific writer, and in 1972
he wrote a film script that was made into a movie
by André Brassard, Françoise
Durocher, Waitress. It won three Genies at the
Toronto Film Festival. Also in 1972 came his first
feature film, Il était une fois dans l'Est.
In 1976 he and Brassard produced Le soleil se
lève en retard, and he created his most
intense play, Sainte-Carmen de la Main. Then came a
series of major works: Les chroniques du Plateau
Mont-Royal; La grosse femme d'à
côté est enceinte (1978);
Thérèse et Pierrette à
l'école des Saints-Anges (1980); La duchesse
et la roturier (1982); Des nouvelles
d'Édouard (1984); Le coeur découvert
(1986); Le premier quartier de la lune (1989); and
in 1990 an essay on the films that had marked his
childhood, Les vues animées. Since 1990, he
has published autobiographical pieces.
Michel Tremblay's body of
work is extraordinary. A number of his plays have
been acclaimed abroad and almost all have been
published in English. A six-time recipient of
Canada Council grants, Tremblay has received some
20 awards and honours, including the Ordre des arts
et des lettres de France, the Prix du Québec
(Athanase-David), the Grand Literary Prize of the
Salon du live de Montréal (for Le premier
quartier de la lune in 1990), and the Victor-Morin
Award from the Société
St-Jean-Baptiste.
Michel Tremblay's writing is
among the most daring and original in Quebec
literature. He shocked the establishment of 30
years ago by being the first author to use "joual".
He shines his spotlight, with tenderness and
humour, primarily on the struggles of working-class
Montrealers since 1940.
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