Montreal’s Main Drag: At the Intersection of Queer and Immigrant Identities in Michel Tremblay’s Theatre

This article examines four works by Michel Tremblay — one of Quebec’s most prominent gay authors and, more recently, a chronicler of Montreal’s urban landscape — to consider the intersectionality between Montreal’s queer and immigrant communities. This intersection can be mapped onto a quite literal geographic crossing, that of Boulevard Saint-Laurent (focus of Montreal’s rich immigrant history) and Rue Sainte-Catherine (long a hub of sexual activity in Montreal). The article contrasts the account of this intersection presented in La Traversée de la ville (2008) with three older plays — Sainte Carmen de la Main (1976), Hosanna (1973), and Damnée Manon, sacrée Sandra (1977) — in which sexuality plays a more prominent role and which showcase this geographic intersection mid-century, when it was the epicentre of the city’s Red-Light District. Although ‘ethnic’ Montreal has gained in prominence in Tremblay’s more recent writing with a concordant shift away from the obviously queer storylines of his earlier works, close readings of the earlier plays reveal that the intersection between immigrant and queer identities has (to varying degrees) always been staged in Tremblay’s plays.