Play explores women and aging

Every woman of advancing age fears becoming invisible. It is a hard-hitting simple truth that wrinkles and flabby skin discourage the admiring glances many women need to reinforce their sense of worth and femininity.

And for many such as Ă©lisa, the protagonist of Montreal playwright’s Carol Frechette’s La Peau d’Ă©lisa, the prospect of dealing with a mature, changing body that diminishes passion shakes her to the core.

Wanting to be the woman she once was, Ă©lisa (Holly Turner) sits at a cafĂ© telling stories of amorous adventures — her own and ones that others have passed on.

Opening at L'UniThéâtre tomorrow night, this delicately-told story weaves Frechette’s keen understanding of human nature and powerful poetic voice layered with erotic lyricism.

Directed by St. Albert son Daniel Cournoyer, artistic director of L'UniThéâtre, the poignant two-hander explores Ă©lisa’s struggle with fading youth and love coupled with unstoppable advancing loneliness.

“Ă©lisa has been told that if she tells stories of past loves with a passion that bring goose bumps to the back of your neck, her skin will stay youthful,” says Cournoyer.

But rather than painting a portrait of a desperate woman, Frechette manipulates a fragile skein of threads to create a fully realized human being. “Each tale she tells with passion and beauty and she lives each one in the moment.”

But behind each tale, a ticking clock fuels Ă©lisa’s sense of urgency. “She has a very difficult journey. It’s bewitching, fun, touching and cruel.”

The genesis of Frechette’s play was conceived during a trip to Brussels for a writers’ conference in 1998. While riding a train, Frechette looked at many younger couples and realized she often travelled with an empty seat beside her.

At the conference, she asked organizers if they could arrange times when writers could meet and share intimate stories of their youth. Later in Brussels, Frechette sat on a park bench with an 80-year-old woman who delighted in spending several hours speaking about her youth.

“Carol tied in the elderly woman’s stories, her own sense of getting older and the passionate stories heard in Brussels.”

One story is of Siegfried, a crazy romantic who first took a blowtorch and cut the roof of his car off to make convertible for her. And in a moment of pure impulse, he cut a hole in the roof of his bedroom so she could see the sky while they made love. “Who would not be touched by this?”

Ultimately, La Peau d’Ă©lisa is about believing in oneself. “I may not be what I once was, but I still have love and passion and still live life to the fullest.”