One of Théâtre français de Toronto’s recent selling points has been its use of opera-like English surtitles for the city’s significant contingent of French-impaired francophiles. This is not the case with L’homme invisible/The Invisible Man, a 2003 bilingual work produced by Ottawa’s Théatre de la Vieille 17 in collaboration with the French Theatre of the National Arts Centre, which will be presented without any surtitles at all.

It may not be an easy night, for L’homme invisible/The Invisible Man (based on Patrice Desbiens’ 1981 acclaimed autobiographical poem of the same name) does not relate identical ideas in its two tongues. The point of Desbiens’ work is his own crisis of identity as a francophone from Timmins: someone outside the mainstream of English Canada and also alienated from nationalist discourses emanating from Quebec, the purported voice of French Canada. This crisis is reflected by actors/co-creators Roch Castonguay, who performs in French, and Robert Marinier, who performs in English; the two perform on high chairs, side-by-side, behind a variously lit scrim.

“Sometimes the story just diverts into two different lines,” says Marinier, on the phone from Ottawa. “You can sense [bilingual] people at some points taking pleasure in the translation — in one view of an event, the English, and then in another view, the French. And when the story splits, you can sense how well people are able to follow both sides of [Desbiens’] life.

“We’ve played in Quebec, to more-or-less unilingual audiences, with a smattering of English, and then in Vancouver, where we’ve had the reverse,” Marinier explains. “It’s funny, as it’s a similar feeling, just not in the same parts. Of course our best reactions are when we play places like my hometown Sudbury, or Moncton. In Edmonton, all of a sudden we could feel the spectators were bilingual, and following both sides of the story. It was wonderful.”

There is definitely an audience, however small, for bilingual events in Toronto (anyone who went to the Jane Birkin concert last month at Danforth Music Hall will attest to this, and to how magical and fluid such events can be). Marinier notes that Desbiens is, essentially, the poet laureate of franco-Ontario — an odd, liminal sort of fame to be sure, but one that continues to resonate. Marinier himself, as a Sudburian, identifies closely with some elements of life in the province that Desbiens explores, though he makes sure to say that “there’s a whole side to the story that has to do with love and living and finding your place, which goes beyond linguistic dualities.”

Desbiens’ disposition is not solely alienated, then, but uniquely primed to interpret human experience through two ways of being: to be an actor and observer at the same time. “When you’re bilingual, franco-Ontarian like me, you’re kind of three people,” says Marinier. “There’s the person you are when you’re speaking only French, the person you are when you’re speaking only English, and then that other one — the one who jumps from one language to another, following the path of least resistance.”