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Lilies (play)

play written by Michel Marc Bouchard

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 11, 2025
Entity authorityQ6530150
Source-derived summary

Lilies or the Revival of a Romantic Drama (French: Les Feluettes ou la répétition d'un drame romantique) is a play written by Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard, which premiered in 1987.

Plot

The play concerns the confession of an aging prisoner to a bishop. Through the confession, and the staged scenes acted out by the male prisoners in the prison chapel, we learn that the bishop and the prisoner were part of a gay love triangle, and that the bishop was responsible for the death of a young man many years ago.

Adaptations

The play's English translation by Linda Gaboriau was published in 1990 by Playwrights Canada Press and staged by Théâtre Passe-Muraille in 1991, winning Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding New Play and for Outstanding Production.

The play was also made into the 1996 film Lilies, which was directed by John Greyson.

The play was later adapted as a French-language opera, Les Feluettes, with music by Kevin March and libretto by Bouchard. Co-commissioned by Opéra de Montréal and Pacific Opera Victoria, Les Feluettes premiered in Montreal in May 2016. The opera was staged in Victoria in April 2017 and at Edmonton Opera in October 2017.

Editorial summary

“Lilies (play)” enters the record as play written by Michel Marc Bouchard. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lilies, play and written can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1987, 1990, 1991, 1996—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1987, 1985—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Lilies, play and written.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Lilies (play)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lilies, play and written provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6530150. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1990, 1991 and 1996.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Lilies (play)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lilies (play) primary sources, Lilies (play) archive and Lilies research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lilies (play)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Lilies (play)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.