In which year will you turn 65? Within the next forty years, one in three Quebecers will have reached their ‘golden years’, which ends up being a great deal of people. A very great deal. In the second part of the play Tout Inclus, playwright and actor, Francois Grisé invites us to open our eyes wide to this reality: the old people of tomorrow are us. Where will we live? What will our living conditions be like?
The first edition of the play, which opened a mere few months before the pandemic hit, takes place during Francois Grisé’s voluntary one-month stay at an old people’s home in Val-d’Or. Why? Having encouraged his own ageing parents to make the move to a retirement home, he is then plagued by doubt as he helps to move them in. Will they be happy in this alien and impersonal environment? He decides to investigate.
Tout Inclus starts with an intimate introduction not just to Francois’ parents, but also to some of the senior citizens that he meets during his stay at their residence in Val-d’Or. An array of funny, distinct, and indeed playful characters share with us anecdotes of their lives, recounted during the familiarity of daily routine.
Change of pace
In the second and final edition of the play, François Grisé moves into high gear. Obviously, the pandemic puts a screeching halt to all performances of Tout Inclus, but above all, it slams shut all access to retirement homes. It becomes impossible to record the lives of seniors without putting them at risk. Yet the pandemic amplifies the very questions François is grappling with.
Undaunted, in early March 2020, the playwright takes action, and the days are almost too short to pack everything in! He participates in a string of interviews with public health officials, experts in demography, economists, advertisers, leaders of community organisations, doctors… François wants to get to the root of how we ended up with our current system, and what future we can hope for in the short to medium term. But that’s not all. Amidst dozens of interviews and days of research, whilst also caring for his increasingly ailing parents, he nevertheless inaugurates a unique citizens discussion: the Habitat Forum.
François is currently putting the final touches on the second part of Tout Inclus, supported in this endeavour by his fellow actors and the playwriting team at Porte Parole, Annabel Soutar and Agathe Foucault.
Stay tuned for the first on-stage, live performances!
Want to know more about what’s ahead of us? Check out the charts and demographic projections from the Institut national de santé publique (in French): https://www.inspq.qc.ca/le-vieillissement-au-quebec
