LILIES, or the Revival of a Romantic Drama, by Michel Marc Bouchard

LILIES, or the Revival of a Romantic Drama is about love and revenge and also manages to include a commentary on truth and on theatre. The play is set in 1952 in the church of a prison where it has been arranged that the jailed Simon Doucet will make confession to his old friend Bishop Bilodeau. The Bishop, however, is imprisoned by Simon and some fellow convicts who act out before him scenes from a play.  It is no jolly entertainment that Bilodeau is forced to watch, but the gay love scenes from The Death of San Sebastian, which in turn are revealed to be only a part of the script that is to be presented by the convicts.  The prisoners' play takes the action back to the Quebec countryside of 1912 where Simon, Bilodeau and the Parisian newcomer, Count Vallier De Tilly, were young contemporaries involved in a love triangle. In acting out the circumstances that occurred immediately prior to Simon's incarceration, it is intended that Bishop Bilodeau will be the one to confess what he did four decades earlier that resulted in Simon's wrongful imprisonment.