New play at Le Pays de la Sagouine teaches Acadia 'no matter your language'

Visiting Le Pays de la Sagouine successful Bouctouche has been connected Kendra Silliker's bucket database for years. 

As an anglophone from Puisville, P.E.I., who teaches French, Silliker was looking for ways to learn more astir the civilization adjacent though it's not her own.

The Acadian theatrical village's caller play, Acadictionnaire, gave her and her hubby the clang people successful Acadia they needed earlier visiting the remainder of the sprawling humanities tract past week.

"I didn't cognize immoderate of the past astatine all," she said. "It was a large mode to present Le Pays de la Sagouine and recognize what each portion of adjacent the sanction … means."

The play is the archetypal of its benignant since the tract opened successful 1992. While astir shows are presented successful French and others lone successful English, Acadictionnaire is bilingual.

"It's precise New Brunswick," Joe Nadeau, who plays Flo, 1 of 2 comedians successful the show, said. 

It's translated earlier the audience's eyes arsenic Flo, and their co-star Ellie, bounce betwixt the 2 languages for a dynamic, 25-minute debrief of Acadian past and meaningful taste terms.

WATCH | Here's what a play with unrecorded French-English translation sounds like: 

Josiane Benoit, known astatine the colony arsenic Ellie, said it's an accessible mode to stock the backstory of her descendants with radical from the Maritimes, Quebec and beyond who whitethorn ne'er person stepped ft successful Acadia before.

The play runs each season and has 3 presentations regular from Wednesday to Sunday.

"Whether they cognize the Acadian civilization oregon not, I deliberation you're inactive going to learn thing from this show," Benoit, who is primitively from Dieppe, said.

"I've worked present for 4 years and portion moving connected the show, we learned immoderate things arsenic well."

A is for Acadie … B is for Bouctouche

The communicative is told successful a tiny barn, which audiences locomotion past arsenic they transverse the invited centre doors into the village.

At the centre of the signifier connected an aged woody array is simply a huge, achromatic publication that serves arsenic a manual to this clang course.

"A dictionary is simply a large mode to spell done information, and truthful we commencement with A, for Acadie, and B, for Bouctouche," Benoit said astir what's wrong the book. "Each missive represents thing important related to Pays de la Sagouine."

Acadictionnaire blends the French words for Acadia and dictionary.

"There are a batch of visitors that would travel and not needfully cognize who la Sagouine was, who Antonine Maillet was, what l'Acadie was," Jac Gautreau, who created the show, said.

The missive A comes with a three-minute rap astir the archetypal Acadians successful New Brunswick, what led to their expulsion successful 1755 and what remains of their legacy.

"That was benignant of the assignment, like, erstwhile they permission present 25 minutes later, they should person capable to truly person discourse erstwhile they sojourn the remainder of the site."

Later successful the play, the actors besides flip to the missive M.

It's dedicated to the late Antonine Maillet, the writer whose well-known quality of la Sagouine, an Acadian cleaning woman, served arsenic inspiration for the humanities site.

LISTEN | Remembering Antonine Maillet, the Acadian literate unit who created la Sagouine:

Benoit, who utilized to sojourn the tract arsenic a child, said sharing the civilization with radical who are not Acadian is much important than ever.

"It's besides precise important to support that bequest going since Antonine Maillet passed distant recently," she said. "I consciousness similar we transportation thing precise important and precious to the Acadian culture."

'We privation to link with people, not make separations'

To Monique Poirier, the creator manager of the site, seeing the enactment betwixt anglophone and francophone taste experiences blurred by this amusement is simply a measurement successful the close direction.

"The much we tin person experiences that … nary substance your language, nary substance your cognition of the culture, you person a consciousness of connection, that's the goal," she said.

She said it's besides wherefore the site's nighttime experience, called Akadi Lumnia, doesn't trust connected dialogue. Rather, it brings visitors done a amusement of lights, sounds and euphony successful the woods.

 As the writer of Acadictionnaire, Gautreau said helium wanted to defy what audiences expected from a bilingual performance.

"Often we person bilingual shows wherever it's truly a duplication, wherever you perceive it successful French, you perceive it successful English," helium said. "That was not the bid here."

Gautreau relied connected words that are akin capable successful some languages truthful the actors would not person to repetition themselves. He besides incorporated a ample surface which hangs supra the signifier to show ocular cues.

"There's specified a gap, I find, betwixt the francophone arts and civilization assemblage and the anglophone, truthful I consciousness similar it's a uncommon accidental to premix some in," Nadeau said. "I deliberation that's precise peculiar to play."

Although determination whitethorn beryllium much anglophone elements incorporated into the site's future, its fierce advocacy for the French connection and Acadian dialect won't relent, Gautreau said.

"That doesn't mean we person to not talk astir who we are arsenic Acadians, that's the bosom of the communicative and it'll enactment the bosom of the story," Gautreau said. "But I deliberation our situation is … to find ways to fto radical in."

That's precisely the accidental the amusement gave Silliker's husband, Paul, who does not talk French.

"It's important due to the fact that erstwhile you deliberation of Le Pays de la Sagouine, you deliberation French," Silliker said. "For him to beryllium capable to instrumentality successful a mates pieces of Le Pays de la Sagouine successful English was truly bully for him."