Saga of the Wet Hens

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One night in the Promised Land of the North of the Americas, at the centre of a fabulous vortex, four women—Laure Conan, Germaine Guèvremont, Gabrielle Roy and Anne Hèbert—meet, and perform six tableaux. Onstage, the women talk and gallop, they sit and rock; they descend from the heavens like angels, they menstruate, they sing; they bake bread, they eat, they say Mass; they trade secrets, recite poetry, share their hopes and fears, their dreams and private terrors; they look into history, decide to collaborate, they write; they become hens, they support and give birth to each other—and to all women everywhere. Saga of the Wet Hens is Jovette Marchessault’s first full-length play and a major poetic dramatic literary work.

AUTHOR

Linda Gaboriau

Linda Gaboriau is a Montreal-based dramaturge and literary translator. She has worked as a freelance journalist for the CBC as well as the Montreal Gazette, and worked in Canadian and Quebecois theatre. Gaboriau has won awards for her translations of more than 100 plays and novels by Quebec writers, including many of the Quebec plays best known to English Canadian audiences. She is the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre.

AUTHOR

Jovette Marchessault

Born in 1938 in Montréal, Québec, Jovette Marchessault is a novelist, a playwright, and a sculptor. Self-taught, her poignant work is marked by the harsh realities of her working-class adolescence. As a visual artist, Jovette has had over thirty solo exhibitions of her work in Québec, Toronto, New York, and Brussels. She is the winner of the Prix France-Québec, the Grand Prix Littéraire Journal de Montréal, and the Grand Prix Littéraire de la ville de Sherbrooke, and the Governor General’s Award. Like a Child of the Earth (1988), The Magnificent Voyage of Emily Carr (1992), Mother of the Grass (1989), Saga of the Wet Hens (1983), and White Pebbles in the Dark Forests (1990) are available in English translation from Talonbooks.