It was after seeing the film Molire that Roy Dupuis decided to become an actor. Roy loves the atmosphere in the wings, the rehearsals, that type of madness that allows him to let himself go.

After 4 years' absence from the theatre, Roy Dupuis returns in the play True West by Sam Shepard, with Brigitte Haentjens as director.

Roy has lived in Amos from the age of 13. He has one brother and one sister, and is the middle child.

While I was interviewing Roy Dupuis, I thought of Maria, Melissa, Melanie and all the girls who would have wanted to be in my place: talking with Roy Dupuis, sitting beside him looking into his eyes. I have to tell you that those eyes are unforgettable. There is such an intensity in his look. A look which takes the time to observe and analyse. And who knows? To trust or not.

Roy Dupuis is a simple guy who doesn’t like a complicated life, and who doesn’t appreciate those that complicate it for him. Acting is his passion, his ‘raison d’être’. The rest he would be able to do without. It’s well known that he doesn’t talk much. Except if he is talking about the theatre. For it’s with the theatre that everything began.

After four years’ absence from the stage, the actor returns to the New Theatre Company in the play True West by Sam Shepard. Brigitte Haentjens, artistic director of the NTC, will direct. This is not their first collaboration. "What I like about Roy is his understanding of the theatre. He is a creator. He has enormous generosity and a great accessibility. He does what he has to do and sets about the work spontaneously. He doesn’t succumb to narcissism. He’ll play any part."

You need to see Roy’s smile at this moment. Then he looks Brigitte steadily in the eyes and replies, "I act with my instinct, my conscious and my subconscious. I believe in being what I am, in channelling my intelligence and energy into the right place." Roy loves the atmosphere of the theatre, the rehearsals, that type of madness that allows him to let himself go. "What is the point of living if you don’t go to your limit, if you don’t go crazy?"

At the NTC Roy Dupuis will be playing to a public of young people who have never been to the theatre. "I remember the first time that I played here. The director René-Richard Cyr said to us, ‘Don’t worry if they don’t applaud.’ At the finish of the play the curtain calls were never-ending." For Roy this was a marvellous experience. And he also knows how it feels to attend your first theatrical performance, since his first experience was at the NTC. At the beginning you talk and joke with your neighbour. Then you let yourself be taken over by the acting, by the story. At the end you can’t stay in your seat any more. "The first play that I saw was by Molière. I loved it so much."

Roy Dupuis owes his career to Molière. In fact, after seeing the film Molière everything turned upside-down. Roy gave up his physics studies to enrol in French Theatre. He was in secondary 5. "Molière and his age - adventures and journeys without limits. The atmosphere in the wings, the company, the scale of the characters." Molière still didn’t stop following him. In fact the first play he performed in was The Hypochondriac by Molière. It was in secondary school in Sainte-Rose. His mother still thinks it is the best part he has played. "A mother prefers to see her son play the role of a clown than that of a son who kills his father."

Roy never actually chose acting as a profession. From the moment he entered the National Theatre School, he was with the people he loved, he was enjoying himself, and he carried on without asking questions. "The people fascinated me - it had to be the place for me. I don’t know if you really decide. What is important is to feel good where you are. If you love what you do it’s easy to get caught up."

Then the parts followed, and the people took to him. He is particularly well known for his role of Ovila Pronovost in the television series Les Filles de Caleb, then as Michel Gagné in Scoop. He has also appeared in the cinema in Cap Tourmente and Being at Home with Claude. And now he is really eager to return to the stage with Brigitte.

For Brigitte Haentjens, a director is like the Earth. "A fertile land where the ground is ready to blossom. The person who plays a character is a free being, but there is no freedom without roots. The director is the one who provides the roots that make the freedom bloom. This job is about the interaction between people. The intensity of that rapport is my drug. It’s like a love affair."

For Roy, the theatrical activity happens during rehearsals, when you make the big decisions about how to move, how to say certain lines. The performance is only the result of what has gone on before. "I remember the first time I acted, it took me at least two minutes to be able to say my first line." And now, after four years, the actor confesses to having butterflies in his stomach. As a child, even though he played the part of the fox in the play Le Petit Prince by Antoine de St-Exupéry, he little suspected that he would make this his career. He was much happier playing Zorro with his friends or laughing at the antics of Gilles Latulippe on television.

Shepard instinctively belongs to Brigitte Haentjens’ world . "His language and his settings touch me, resonate with me. His writing is accessible, the dialogue violently funny." The duality of the American West - the West of achievement, of the cowboys and the reality of the suburbs. The father who is absent but always present. A sort of feeling of interdependence between two very different brothers, but which can never take place between them. Those are the ingredients of the play True West. Roy Dupuis plays the character of Lee, while Norman Helms is Austin.

True West : Two brothers; Austin, a scriptwriter with a very organised life, and Lee, who’s into burglary, dog fighting and who knows what. Their reunion in their mother’s house is marked by friction, until the arrival of a producer who is more interested in Lee’s ‘true stories’ than Austin’s fiction. Then everything goes to pieces …