Drifting Upstream ou Between Salt and Sweet Water

Claude is a songwriter. Just as Quebec was at the time, he’s looking for himself. Trapped between tradition and modernity, like the porpoises of the Saint-Laurent as seen by Cartier, “white as the driven snow […] great numbers of them in the river, living where the sea and freshwater meet”. In this naïve era, the Québécois were white as the driven snow, still calling Indigenous people “Indians” and cursing job-stealing immigrants. With both hands plunged into the dirty city, both feet destroyed and a heart ripped to shreds, simultaneously enchanted by the siren song of modernity and cursing the end of insouciance, it’s time for Claude to enter the real world. To sink into the world’s grime and reclaim his existence even in the cold of winter, sharing a bed with his brother. Brault tells the story of the end of innocence. Claude sings of his lost country. Geneviève was fooled once, but won’t cry for long. The heart hardens, trapped where the sea and fresh water meet. Will giving themselves a country be enough to soothe the pain?

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk's Artistic Director