Balconville returns to Montreal's Centaur Theatre for 50th-anniversary season

When Montreal playwright DavidFennario'sBalconvillefirst hit the stage in 1979, it was unusual in more ways than one.

For starters, it was the first bilingualplay in Canadian theatre history, with about a third of the dialogueperformed in French.

This at an English-language theatre company with amajority English audience was revolutionaryat the time, a little more than a year before the first sovereignty referendum, with language tensions in the province arguably at their height.

Fennario's portrayal of a group ofworking-class people living inPointe-Saint-Charles was also a departure from the usual onstage fare.

Fennario'sson, Tom, says that'spart of the appeal.

"I think, back in the day, people weren't that used to seeing themselves represented, at least on the English-Canadian theatre stage," he toldCBC'sAll in a Weekend.

The play has been remounted manytimes since it premiered, under the direction of Guy Sprung, onJan. 2, 1979, at the Centaur Theatre including once at Place des Arts, whenFennariofamously picketed his own play (but more on that later).

Balconvilleis being presented as a staged readingat the end of Septemberforthe company's "Legacy Series," in honour of the Centaur's50th-anniversary season.

The playwright's son Tom, who will bereading the stage directions aloud, isn't the only recognizable name on the list of cast and crew. Director Alison Darcy is herself part of thelegacy of the Centaur Theatre.

Darcy, daughter of Centaur foundersMauricePodbreyand ElsaBolam, has been around the theatre all her life.

"Iprobably spent my whole childhood in the costume department," she said.

BalconvilleisFennario'smost well-known play, but not his favourite, according to his son.

"Ithink if you ask my dad he'd say, 'It's a good play,'" said the youngerFennario. "Hewouldn'teven call it his best play."

"He's proud of it, but it wouldn't have worked as well if it had come out even five years earlier."

The tension of the play emanates from the day-to-day interactions of people ofdiverse backgrounds, all crammed together in tenement housing during a heat wave.

The title of the show,Balconville, refers to a joke that still rings true to this daythatMontrealersdon't go on vacation, they go onto their balconies and fire escapes instead.

Darcy said the play, produced the world over, has come to symbolize a time and place in Montreal's history.

"It's interesting, revisiting it now with a completely different set of eyes on it," said Darcy, "looking at it as a moment of our past, and recognizing that it's not completelyout of our systems."

These tensions around language and minoritiesstill pervade dinner-table discussion inQuebec, even four decades later.

Fennario now 71 and less prolificsince his 2002 diagnosis with Guillain-Barrsyndrome, which attacks the nervous system was known for his left-wing activism as well as his writing and caused quite a stir during a revival run ofBalconvilleat PlacedesArts in 1980.

"He picketed his own production with the ushers on strike in solidarity," saidTom. "I can't cross a picket line,"he recalled his father sayingat the time.

While some in the English arts community bristled at David Fennario'sdecision to join the ushers and picket his own play, Darcy said she has a great deal of respect for what he did.

"That's amazing for an artist to be, like, 'I'm not going to take the grandeur and the beauty and the money or whatever it is that comes with me doing my show. I'm actually going to stick to my political beliefs.'"

Tom Fennario, a reporter with APTNwho has next to no experience in the theatre, said he's just glad to be along for the ride.

"I'm not really a performer," he said, joking:"there's a reason I'm reading the stage directions."

"It's special for me, too, to be able to get involved."

The Centaur Theatre's staged reading ofBalconvilleruns from Sept. 28 to 30.

With files fromCBC'sAll in a Weekend