Two North Bay notables — the Dionne quintuplets and shadflies — inspire a play about memory

Chances are you’ve heard of the Dionne quintuplets even if you don’t remember the famous Canadian babies.

The first identical quints known to survive infancy, the five sisters born in 1934 near the village of Corbeil, Ont., became a tourist attraction and Hollywood stars, and their story has since become a cautionary tale of media exploitation. Two of the sisters, Annette and Cécile, are still alive.

Playwright Alain Doom, born in Belgium, grew up knowing nothing about the Dionnes. But his discovery of their story became the spark of his play “Le Club des éphémères,” or “The Shadflies Club,” currently being co-produced by the Théâtre français de Toronto and the Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario.

Doom first became aware of the Dionnes on regular drives from Ottawa to Sudbury, where until recently he was the head of French theatre at Laurentian University. “Along the highway near North Bay, there was a small cottage with a picture of the five quints on it,” he said. “It was the Dionne museum. I was intrigued.”

When he asked friends in Northern Ontario what they knew about the Dionnes, “the answer I got was always a little bit anecdotal or partial,” he said, “I always wondered why. If there was a museum, these quints must be famous.” He wanted to find out more about “why we never seem to talk about the Dionne quints when we talk about Franco-Ontarian culture or identity,” he said.

He discovered the central conceit of his play in Lincoln, Neb., where his father-in-law was entering a retirement home. He met a group of women in the home who were bonded by their love of the arts. When he told them that he was thinking about a play based on the Dionnes, “their eyes became full of tears. It was like I was talking about their own babies. It was a little bit like we were talking about ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ None of them knew exactly where North Bay was or anything about Northern Ontario,” he said.

Doom perceived that for these older American women, the story of the Dionnes was a way to “fantasize a better life,” he said.

He landed on the idea of a play about five women in a retirement home who share a fascination for the Dionne quintuplets and happen to have the same names as them: Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie and Marie.

The next conceptual breakthrough came in a conversation between Doom and his friend Joël Beddows, who was until recently the artistic director of the Théâtre français de Toronto and who is from Sturgeon Falls. “Joël said to me, ‘Don’t talk to me about what’s mythological about North Bay!’” and went into a monologue about what makes the area particular, for better or worse: from the NORAD headquarters to sturgeon caviar to the infamous shadflies.

Doom didn’t know what shadflies were and started to research them. The smelly bugs swarm out of Lake Nipissing for a few weeks every summer. “They have no mouth. They cannot eat anything so when they fly out, attracted by the light, they die in a few hours,” said Doom.

Doom seized on the idea of a filmmaker coming from Toronto to North Bay to make a documentary about the shadflies, visiting the retirement home and meeting the five women. They “don’t understand why some journalist coming from the city is interested in flies in a place where there were so much more important things,” said Doom. They dress up like the quintuplets and perform a play for him. Doom hopes that the play-within-a-play will be a humorous high point in a story that becomes “something deeper and darker,” he said.

In the end, the Dionne quints became a pretext “to write a story about memory … to be afraid to lose your memory, to be afraid that nobody will ever remember you.” The French-language title “Le Club des éphémères” references the name for shadflies in France (as opposed to Quebec, where they’re called “les mouches de mai” or mayflies) and communicates this theme of transience.

This co-production opened at the Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario in Sudbury on March 8, 2020 and made it through just a few performances before the COVID-19 pandemic shut it down. Doom said he feels “extremely lucky and grateful” that the two theatres retained their commitment to the play and have remounted it this season. Unlike the shadfly, “Le Club des éphémères” lived on.

Smartglasses make their debut

Théâtre français de Toronto is breaking new ground by making French-language theatre accessible to hearing-impaired spectators as well as Anglophones.

Spectators may now watch productions wearing smartglasses through which surtitles are projected as video: only those wearing the glasses see the text. The technology will eventually replace surtitles projected above the stage, which the theatre introduced in 2005.

“We would get emails from hearing-impaired patrons thanking us for giving them the opportunity” to experience live theatre, said Manuel Verreydt, director of communications and marketing.

But projected supertitles also cause complications: they can be visually distracting for those who don’t need them; designers and directors have to work around them; and they’re not equally visible from every theatre seat.

And so, when Théâtre français de Toronto heard about the smartglass technology piloted at France’s Festival d’Avignon, it jumped at the chance to bring them to Toronto. To its knowledge, it’s the only Canadian arts organization currently using the glasses. “When people who are curious get a look, they’ll realize the potential,” said Verreydt.

Plans include options for the glasses in English, French and, where relevant, the original language of a play in translation.

Supply-chain problems have meant that only 10 pairs of glasses have arrived in time for “Le Club des éphémères”; audience members may reserve a pair when purchasing a ticket. The theatre will continue to project surtitles this season and expects that by June it will have 50 pairs of glasses on hand.