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Denis Bernard and Michel Dumont: a friendship of four decades

“I’ve been doing this job for 40 years this year, and Michel Dumont has been in my life for 40 years,” Denis Bernard drops with emotion, on the other end of the phone, the day after his death. accomplice Michel Dumont.

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The many tributes to the late comedian, who was artistic director of the Jean-Duceppe Theater for 27 years, continued to flow on Friday. Michel Dumont died Thursday by throat cancer at the age of 79.

Denis Bernard knew Michel Dumont four decades ago, when he came to see him play one of his first important roles at the Théâtre du Trident in Quebec. “He’s someone with whom I had a lot of hooks,” he said. We were very sensitive and grateful to each other. ”

A few years later, Michel Dumont wrote the soap opera Robert and company, broadcast on Radio-Canada at the end of the 1980s, in which Denis Bernard played the main role. They then met at Duceppe’s and performed together in a few pieces, including The death of a salesman and The dresser, “Two great memories of the theater” for Denis Bernard. On screen, they also gave the cue in Marylin and Yamaska.

“It was a beast of the stage, remembered the actor. From the top of his 6 feet 4, he was heavy, he was strong. It was something to play with him. I have incredible memories of the energy that we could share on stage. ”

“Michel had no children and his real family first went to Duceppe’s. It was his house. He worked there for 27 years, that’s no small feat. The rehearsal room, with the actors and actresses … we were his brothers, his sisters, his children, ”he added.

Like many of his colleagues, Denis Bernard remembers Michel Dumont’s close proximity to the public and his love for Quebec theater, which he made a point of putting in the foreground in his programming at Duceppe.

“He worked so that our national identity is present through the works that we do, and that we do not work like colonized people. That is the great legacy that Dumont leaves. ”

A legacy to the youngest

Michel Dumont also leaves an important legacy to a young generation of actors whom he has worked with throughout his career. Benoît McGinnis is one of them.

For McGinnis, meeting Michel Dumont, with whom he worked for the first time in 2004, was significant. “As a young actor, Michel was a reassuring, heartwarming male figure on whom I could count,” he said.

Benoît McGinnis played Michel Dumont’s son twice on the boards, in the plays Excuse me, by Serge Boucher, and They were once my sons. “From the first contact, we immediately knew we loved each other. So, on stage, it was not complicated, ”he said.

“At one point, we had a father-son scene where he had to tell me with emotion that he loved me. From the rehearsal, it was good. So I had no choice but to give back and live up to it. But he reassured me and he was able to tell me that we were working well, ”he said, underlining in passing the great sensitivity of Michel Dumont,“ despite his stoutness, which could make us believe that he was serious. and authoritarian ”.

Benoît McGinnis wants young people to remember from Michel Dumont all the love he had for his audience. “His openness and his love of the public. If you only knew how much theater subscribers adore Michel. I have rarely seen that, in a theater, an artistic director so loved. People subscribe to it. He kept saying that he was playing for those he called “his world”. Respect for the public, that’s what I remember from him. ”

Several testimonials

Sacred monster of the Quebec theater, Michel Dumont was an extremely appreciated man, as evidenced by the dozens of testimonies which swept over social networks on Friday.

“So many characters who go with you, wrote Pierre Yves Cardinal on Instagram. And the end of an era. Rest in peace, comrade. ”

What they said on social media

“I keep a memory of shared pleasures, of complicity and rigor, of human warmth and tenderness of the heart. And what about that sincere smile. Thank you for the moments shared on the set of the series Emergency in 1996. You are in my heart forever. ”

– Marina Orsini

“Statuesque in all aspects of his theatrical passion, Michel Dumont was also a gentleman of great generosity. Each of our meetings was pure pleasure. ”

– Winston McQuade

“For many young people, it is Michel Dumont who opened the doors to the theater, making them accessible. It was my case. I loved it when my father took me to Duceppe, where I discovered as many Quebec designers as there were classics from the US and elsewhere. ”

– Annie-Soleil Proteau

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