On Saturday afternoon, Bowdoin French majors in Alexandre Dauge-Roth's senior seminar will present a show about Franco-American and Francophone voices in Maine. The show is the culmination of the efforts of the seniors' interviews with Francophone and Franco-American people.
The performance is based on more than 60 hours of interviewing Franco-Americans from several generations. The students worked in pairs, interviewing and videotaping one person each for a total of three hours. The interviews were conducted in three parts, each delving deeper into the person's history.
Interview subjects were discovered through various Franco-American networks. Dauge-Roth contacted La Maternelle, a French immersion school in Winthrop, the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services in Portland, Les Bavards, a group of French speakers in Waterville, and the Franco-American Cultural Center at St. Mary's, among others. Dauge-Roth was careful to choose representatives of both the private and public spheres. He defined the public sphere as people making strides to keep the Franco-American culture and language alive in the community, while the private sphere is made up of "ordinary people" who are making their contribution by rearing French-speaking children.
Dauge-Roth explained that during the 1950s and 1960s, the goal of assimilation made these people invisible, and they do not always get the support they deserve. However, he said, "[French] is taught as a foreign language; maybe it's not as foreign as we think."
Students were given the option of creating a documentary based on their film footage or writing and presenting a play. The ten students who chose to make a documentary will have their work on display at a laptop station in the VAC gallery.
The endeavor required that the students learn about the finer points of interviewing and documentary making. Ben Levine, producer of the documentary Reveil, which was shown at Bowdoin earlier this semester, ran an interviewing workshop and also taught the students about techniques like voice-overs.
Twelve students chose to produce a play exhibiting their discoveries. Natalie Handel '04, director of last fall's La Cantatrice Chauve, directed the play. Dauge-Roth said he could not have done the project without her.
Handel is in the unique position of having French-Canadian grandparents. She said, "I just never knew before and it surprised me. I have family tied with that history, and I had no idea what it was."
Dauge-Roth said one of the themes students explored was the extent to which recent Francophone immigrants can redefine culture. He said, "Immigration symbolizes globalization. Therefore, it changes the context in which you think about language. In globalization, being bilingual is an advantage and results in greater ethnic diversity."
The play picks up on recurrent themes like education, religion, cultural transmission, work, experiences of immigrants, generation gaps, and which French should be spoken.
Dauge-Roth noted that interviews consistently revealed a double constraint that both Francophones and Franco-Americans face. They want to be integrated into society but allow their children to know where they came from. He said, "The parents are vectors: culture is both reproduced and put aside. This creates conflict with hopes, regrets, and tough decisions."
The project is bilingual; approximately 80 percent is in French. However, so as not to deter audiences, an English synopsis of each scene will be included in the program. Handel cited the use of French in the play as "important to the meaning." She said, "It does what it talks about. It brings French to life in Maine."
"It's not everyday you get to see a play in a foreign language," Handel added.
The play is structured as dialogues and monologues within a framing narrative. Part of it takes place in the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services and the other in the Heritage Center in Lewiston. The actors play characters inspired by actual people that were interviewed. Dauge-Roth said, "Some subjects will be in the audience, facing this other self on stage who is put in a dialogue with a person they don't necessarily speak to."
The inspiration behind the play is the idea that it is "something in the public sphere that captures testimonies in private and through these brings [issues] into the public sphere."
Handel said, "It's a question of if what we wrote will achieve its goal of bringing certain issues to light and causing discussion." She said that the students had no playwriting experience but did their best to create characters with "meaningful, emotional interactions."
However, the play is only a small piece of the puzzle. Most of the year was spent building up background information and interviewing subjects. Therefore, the play had to be written and practiced within tight time constraints. Beyond the classroom, the play can also be seen as an archive of testimonies made public to the community.
The play attempts to go beyond the specific French language and finishes by challenging people to think of themselves of being bilingual or multilingual in a comfortable way. Within the class itself, Dauge-Roth said, "There was a response between people in bilingual heritage and other people who have never had to ask themselves this question. This shows there is work to do as some areas are homogenous to the point of being exclusionary."