Antonine Maillet tribute set for Moncton's annual Frye Festival

Isabelle Leger · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 15, 2025 1:00 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 infinitesimal ago

Moncton's annual literary will honour precocious Acadian novelist and playwright Antonine Maillet with a peculiar literate show, showcasing the extent of her writing.

Ariane Savoie, enforcement manager of the Frye Festival, told CBC Radio's Shift that Antonine Maillet, who died successful February, helped animate the thought to make the festival backmost successful 1999. 

At the time, Maillet was co-organizing a bilingual league successful Moncton with writer John Ralston Saul, Savoie said.

"That thought of the Frye Festival benignant of generated from that lawsuit specifically," she said. "Having a bilingual literate league present successful Moncton brought up the information that Moncton needed these activities." 

Still today there is the Maillet-Frye Lecture arsenic portion of the festival, which began successful 2006 and has go significant event. 

"The captious facet of lit was brought up specifically done these lectures," said Savoie. 

The literate tribute, Le expansive Peut-Être, volition beryllium staged May 4 astatine the Université de Moncton and was written by Georgette LeBlanc, the festival's creator director. 

It volition impact a blend of lectures, with excerpts from Maillet's books and plays, performed by histrion Mélanie LeBlanc, said Savoie. 

LeBlanc took inspiration from 2 of Maillet's much idiosyncratic books, Clin d'œil au Temps qui passe and Mon testament, to make a quality that represents Maillet to archer the communicative of her life.  

"[LeBlanc] basically went done those 2 books and took retired pieces and fragments of her thoughts, of her writing, that were precise idiosyncratic to Antonine Maillet and created a quality that goes done her beingness connected a truly intimate level," said Savoie. 

Before her death, Maillet was heavy progressive successful the conception of the tribute amusement and took portion successful an hour-long interrogation arsenic portion of that.

"We're going to reuse that successful the amusement arsenic well, to bring her backmost to the public," Savoie said.

The rubric of the show, Le expansive Peut-Être, is from a punctuation successful Maillet's book, Mon Testament, and translates to "The large maybe." It speaks to Maillet's accordant connection that determination are infinite possibilities successful life, she said.

Maillet died connected Feb.17 and the property of 95. Her ceremonial volition beryllium held astatine Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption Cathedral in Moncton on April 12 astatine 11 a.m.