D-Day by Stéphane Roy and Serge Denoncourt

When you experienced the 1939-1945 war, it was impossible to set foot on the beaches of Normandy without having a heavy heart.

However, almost nothing there recalls the thousands of Allied soldiers who were mown down by German fire on the sand of Utah Beach and Omaha Beach, a stone’s throw from the villages of Sainte-Mère-Eglise and Isigny- on sea. As surprising as it may seem, two Quebecers born several years after the war, Stéphane Roy and Serge Denoncourt, will be the masters of an unprecedented multimedia show that will soon recall the horrors of the 1944 landings.

If Denoncourt is known as Barabbas in the passion in Quebec and in several European countries, such is not the case of Stéphane Roy. This one, a modest man if ever there was one, nevertheless signed the scenography for several Cirque du Soleil shows. It is to him, for example, that we owe the magic of Seaweedof Zumanity or of Kyrios. As for Serge Denoncourt, the last shows he staged in Montreal, Miss Julie at the Green Curtain and Annethe musical presented at the Théâtre St-Denis, would be more than enough to establish his reputation as a director.

AN EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCE

The show Tribute to heroeswhich will open on June 6, 2025 for the 81^e anniversary of D-Day (which the French persist in calling “D-Day” in English!), is a historical fresco of unparalleled ambition. The show will cost 100 million euros (C$130 million) and is estimated to take ten years to become profitable.

It will be presented five times a day from April to October in an amphitheater that can accommodate 1,000 spectators.

If the two Quebec creators are to be believed, the spectator experience will be unique. Thanks to audiovisual advances and the means provided by artificial intelligence, spectators will be able to relive the horror and the fire of the fighting, as they were felt by the soldiers themselves in 1944. For the moment, the two creators are deep in thought and they are quite discreet about the show itself.

According to the little that they have revealed, the spectators will first be confronted with very realistic archive images, then giant screens will light up one after the other on hyper realistic paintings of the hell of the landing. The amphitheater, which will shelter spectators from the elements, will move approximately two feet per second, giving spectators the impression that they are always in the very heart of the action.

THE ECOLOGISTS THROW THE HIGH CRIES

As nothing is simple in France, the devil is on the cows in Carentan-les-Marais, the small town where the amphitheater is to be built.

Ecologists are worried about the few agricultural lands that will disappear in favor of this new place of memory, whose construction should begin in October.

As in Quebec, ecology is the first argument invoked to oppose any new large-scale project.

And there are the concerns of those who exploit the few places of memory that already exist, such as the Mémorial de Caen which was inaugurated on June 6, 1988. It is the most visited museum in France outside Paris. Memorial officials fear that the enormous spectacle created by the two Quebecers will end up draining the majority of tourists in search of history.

Their fears may be justified, because I have no doubt that Serge Denoncourt and Stéphane Roy will create a spectacle just a stone’s throw from the famous beaches of Omaha and Utah that will have the whole world racing.