Françoise Loranger

Loranger, Françoise

Françoise Loranger, dramatist, novelist (b at St-Hilaire, Qué 18 June 1913; d 8 April 1995). Her novel, Mathieu (1949), a gloomy portrayal of Québec society in the DUPLESSIS era, received critical acclaim, but it is chiefly on her dramatic texts, many televised nationally, that her reputation rests. Hers is a constantly evolving theatre, reflecting changing social realities in her province. She began writing radio scripts in 1939, but her first published stage plays date from the 1960s. Une Maison ... un jour (1965) is a psychological study of the intense pressures destroying a middle-class family; Encore cinq minutes (1967) is one of the earliest texts to treat feminist concerns in French Canada.

Contemporary political events are the focus of plays such as Le Chemin du roy (1969) written in collaboration with Claude Levac, a savage satire depicting, in the guise of a penalty-filled hockey game, the confrontations between Québec City and Ottawa provoked by French President de Gaulle's visit in 1967, and Médium saignant (1970), dealing with conflict over language rights in the atmosphere of Québec's controversial BILL 63. Most of Loranger's plays have been successfully transposed to television, and works such as Une Maison ... un jour have been well received abroad.