Clémence DesRochers

Clémence DesRochers, actress, humorist, singer and author (b at Sherbrooke, Qué 24 Nov 1934). Daughter of the poet Alfred DesRochers, she is the most famous female monologist of her generation in Québec. Her often biographical and anecdotal texts, delivered in a confident tone and frequently by telephone, hover somewhere between an actor's wink and a lucid stare at Québec society.

Entering the Conservatoire after an education at the École normale and a very brief teaching experience, she took her first steps with Paul Buissonneau's La Roulotte company. In 1958, she wrote her first monologue, Ce que toute jeune fille devrait savoir, ou Mon entrée à Radio-Canada. Oddly, satire opened the doors for her to the emerging medium of television and also assured her a place with the Bozos (1959), a cabaret troupe that included Claude Léveillée, Jean-Pierre Ferland, Jacques Blanchet, Raymond Lévesque and André Gagnon. In 1964, she wrote the libretto for the first Québécois musical revue, Le Vol rose du flamant, later followed by several others: La grosse tête, Les girls, C'est pas une revue, c'est un show. Her greatest recording success came in 1975 with the chanson Le monde aime mieux Mireille Mathieu.

Clémence DesRochers appeared on television in La Famille Plouffe, and other series, and portrayed Mademoiselle Sainte-Bénite in the youth program Grujot et Délicat, for which she wrote alternating scripts. She was also the host of two popular daily shows, Les trouvailles de Clémence, from 1976 to 1979, and Les p'tits bonheurs de Clémence in 1995. In 1983, she received the Jacques-Blanchet medal, and in 1994, she was named docteur honoris causa at the Université de Sherbrooke.