Bloody 1969 naked avicide traumatized 600 theatergoers

Loranger, Gratien Gelinas and Mousso  at the launch party

 Bubbly flowed and the most beautiful and hip actors were on hand at a party in mid-January 1969 at the Comedie-Canadienne, the theatre at St. Catherine and Clarke originally known as the Gayete and currently called the Theatre du Nouveau Monde.

 Double jeu was a psycho-drama penned by Francoise Loranger (1913-1995) that included a section which invited audience members onstage to do their little improvisation skits.  

 The play launched on 17 January 1969 and was seen as an audacious examination of theatre as a medium. 

Actors included Gerard Poirier (1930-2021), Louis Aubert (1937- ), Jacques Galipeau (1923-2020), Lionel Villeneuve (1925-2000) and Dyne Mousso (1930-1994).

 The play carried on without event until Saturday 15 February when a horrific act took place that left many shocked and horrified in the 600-person crowd. 

Performers Luc and Lise Cousineau, left, and Gerard Poirier and Dyne Mousso, right at the pre-party

 The section of the play reserved for audience performances began. Three men and two young women took to the stage, carrying three boxes. 

 The performers proceeded to strip naked and then produced a rooster and two doves. To the horror of all seated, the actors then killed the birds. They then either drank some of the birds' blood or merely smeared it on their bodies. 

 The crowd screamed their disapproval. Up to half of them walked out. 

 The five actors then methodically got dressed and walked out a side door. The professional actors were also disturbed, with actors Lionel Villeneuve and Dyne Mousso openly weeping in shock at the horrific and bloody display. 

   Villeneuve attempted valiantly to make sense of the event to the remaining crowd members. "We get upset by the death of those doves but we remain indifferent to deaths in Vietnam. I can't continue this show. It would be insigifncant," he said.

 Montreal police reportedly tried to locate the mystery performers who put on the grisly display. Their search was futile and the anonymous shock performers were never found.   

 A newspaper reporter managed to interview two of the five who took part in the show, although no names ever emerged.

 The unnamed performer said that the three men were all aged over 30 and consisted of two professional sculptors and a math teacher. The women were a 20-year-old student and a 24-year-old unemployed woman.

 The man told the interviewer that they had seen the show previously and returned to protest what they considered an inadequate show.

 "We wanted to tell our truth through this act of cultural terrorism," he said. "The play perpetuates the humiliation of the Quebecois as an impotent voyeur and brute and feeds the myths of the sublimation of free love. The other audience performers offered platitudes and fake scenarios."

 The identity of the stage subversives was never made public, although surely many Montrealers from those social circles were surely privy to the mystery. One might begin an investigation by looking into the relatively-small sculpting community of Montreal, which included stars Robert Roussil (1925-2013) and Armand Vaillancourt (1929 - ). 

Quartier Latin photo accompanying article referencing the outrageous show

 Art magazine Quartier Latin discussed the incident in an article immediately following the event, referencing 18 women and 43 men who suffered a "violent nervous shock" by witnessing the bloody nude avicide ritual.