Yannick Mercoyrol, the French cultural attaché in
Chicago, wrote in issue no17 of Actes du Théâtre
about establishing, de facto, the first festival
of contemporary French theatre in the United States.
Playing French, which was held between October and
December 2004, was a great success, thanks to the
fabulous energy he was able to communicate to people
before and during the event. The festival was rewarded
and saluted by the public and the press.
With his characteristic enthusiasm and sharp analysis,
Yannick Mercoyrol shares a few thoughts with us
here, inspired by his tribute to contemporary French
playwriting on Chicago’s stages.
The idea of launching Playing French, the first
French theatre festival ever held in the United States,
in Chicago, grew out of something that was obvious
to me. With over 200 companies, Chicago is an extraordinarily
active hub for theatre troupes, ranging from the
little black box to the large-scale Broadway-style
machines, mainly focusing on the American repertoire.
Our contemporary plays are virtually absent here,
a direct consequence of the total lack of knowledge
about any French playwrights since the days of Beckett.
In this new and favourable context we decided to
contact several companies we thought might be interested
in taking up the challenge. The idea was to orient
the festival of current French theatre around new
kinds of playwriting, and to confront people with
a way of staging plays that is completely different
from the usual European tradition. The intention
was for the festival to create a new dialogue between
current French playwriting and how the plays would
be transposed onto American stages, perhaps adding
a new twist in the process.
After a preliminary selection of contemporary playwrights
whose work had been translated, we worked closely
with sacd and Entr’Actes to put together a
list of 70 plays likely to arouse the curiosity of
our local partners. The plays aptly represented the
diversity of the contemporary French repertoire,
from the more well-known playwrights to younger talents,
as well as a wide range of authors from other French-speaking
countries. The outlines of Playing French gradually
took shape as the companies’ reading committees
got acquainted with the plays. The list was open-ended,
even infinite. It showed the different aspects of
the current French scene, with a majority of plays
by our most well-known playwrights, still unknown
here (Koltès, two plays by Minyana, Novarina,
two by Lagarce, Vinaver, Sarraute and Haïm),
and a variety of more recent playwrights (Spycher,
Py, Melquiot, Israël-Le Pelletier, Darley),
as well as authors from wider afield in the French-speaking
world, always sought after in the u.s. (two by Césaire,
and Arrabal first and foremost, then two by Visniec,
Pliya and Ghazali). The new language in theatre being
the very basis of the festival, Playing French had
decided to finance the productions of work by Novarina,
Chevillard (adaptation of Le Hérisson by Dominique
Frot) and Prigent (a reading of Une phrase pour ma
mère by Jean-Marc Bourg). The plays were the
keystones of a genuine linguistic challenge. It would
be tedious to cite the entire programme here in detail.
Suffice it to say that 23 performances (full productions
and staged readings), a series of 7 films dealing
with the theatre (including the world premiere of
Chant public pour deux chaises électriques
by Gatti, with the author in attendance), a three-day
international symposium, a seminar and twenty guests
composed the wide-ranging, original panorama offered
to Chicago audiences over a two-month period.
Audiences responded well to this innovative programming
throughout the festival. About 5500 spectators attended
the various events. The exceptional coverage by the
press highlighted its success. You have to take into
consideration the unusual nature of the festival
and the huge amount of cultural activities going
on in Chicago at that time of year. The press frequently
spoke about the concept and originality of Playing
French, saluted the effort to open up an unknown
repertoire and the willingness to cooperate with
local partners.
“This is what we need right now: it sounds
prosaic, but we need to hear what playwrights from
abroad have to say.”
The articles written about the festival in the local
press could be summed up in the following statement: “a
massive effort to spread the word about this aspect
of French culture.” One of the most influential
critics was won over, declaring: “this is what
we need right now: it sounds prosaic, but we need
to hear what playwrights from abroad have to say.” That
opinion is a clear allusion to the isolation of the
u.s., particularly on a political level. The theatre
is seen as an ideological opening greatly desired
by cultural circles, which have a majority of Democrats.
However, American theatre today is itself a victim
of that very isolation, and for a long time to come.
Indeed, many people in the theatre are not in the
least interested in breaking out of that isolation,
as attested by their low attendance at the performances.
Some of the reviews revealed how the plays by Minyana
and, more surprisingly, by Koltès, made some
of them uncomfortable. These contemporary French-language
playwrights have had a major impact on aesthetic
ideals in their own countries. Nonetheless, it is
understandable that audiences confronted with their
writing for the first time might be confused. But
this spatial and ideological distortion cannot entirely
explain the difficulty experienced by some, as could
be seen both in the press and on stage.
Perhaps the festival could lead to some interesting
reflections on the thriving and fascinating gap between
these two approaches to theatre. American theatre,
inspired by Stanislavski, is a blend of physical
exuberance, political messages – and entertainment,
on the more commercial side. It’s obvious that
directors can’t have the same impact as in
European theatre under such conditions. The interplay
between words and action, found in different forms
in the works of Minyana, Novarina and Lagarce, is
totally foreign to American theatre, especially in
the way language is used. There may be a few exceptions
(successful ones like Robert Maxwell, for instance).
But for me, playwrights like Bond, Sheppard, Kushner,
and all the others whose work I’ve seen here,
describe in a more or less critical style a “state
of affairs”; whereas French playwrights more
often distort common situations to heighten a crisis,
and think of the stage as a place to be reinvented.
It’s a huge difference. On one side, the language
of theatre seeks its meaning in reality; on the other,
the dramatic structure is enhanced through the use
of a new kind of vocabulary no longer constrained
by reality. In short, they are the two opposite sides
of a political substratum already familiar to the
Greeks, interpreted in its exterior expression in
America and in its inner aesthetic in Europe, or
in France at any rate.
The most convincing experience of all in organising
such a festival
This radical strangeness does not exclude similarities,
and even exchanges, which should be a good enough
reason to hold further events of this kind in the
United States. One of the most moving of these
exchanges happened between André Marcon and
the young American actor performing Novarina’s
Le Monologue d’Adramélech for the first
time in America. The play was first staged in France
in the early 1980s, starring Marcon. Guy Bennett
recently translated the play – an amazing
feat. The two actors worked together for two weeks,
creating a new English-language performance. While
closely following Marcon’s coaching, this highly
talented actor managed to perform the play in a very
personal way. The story is worth telling. The American
actor, Hilario Saavedra, a recent graduate from CalArts,
the famous California drama school, stood in at the
last minute for a fellow actor who couldn’t
perform the part due to a medical emergency. Hilario
took on the part eight weeks before opening night,
displaying a disturbingly calm demeanor, which I
later became accustomed to and recognized as his
exceptional presence and power of concentration.
He dove into the text, working hard and on his own.
He not only memorized the text, but also captured
the exact breathing, punctuating it with as many
seamarks as required by his body to make the words
his own. The audience was flabbergasted by the result,
admiring his performance, and also, beyond the technical
exploit, deeply moved by the quality of this lad,
willingly immersed in a verbal world totally different
from what he had known until then. To me it was a
crucial experience, maybe the most convincing of
all, in organising a festival like Playing French.
It was the kind of event that builds bridges between
cultures – a vital way of communicating
that’s written deeply into the reality of the
performances. Not the trivial, vulgar kind you hear
and see all day long, but the kind that is the expression
of a fruitful marriage of two traditions, experienced
together at the very moment they are created. It takes
talent to achieve that kind of result. It requires
inspiration, and providing what it takes to make
that kind of encounter possible – including
time (and therefore money) first and foremost. The
festival highlighted the strong points in French
theatre, as in the interplay of mirroring and distancing
so brilliantly established by Montesquieu in his
day. While there may be things to change or reform
here and there, it showed the crucial importance
of public funding during the whole process of theatrical
creation in France today. It enables directors like
Nauzyciel (Black Battles with Dogs presented in Chicago),
playwrights like Novarina and others, as well as
companies and actors, to take the time needed to
bring a new work to fruition. And then to share those
strengths abroad in order to expand into different
fields of investigation and open up a new future.
Yannick Mercoyrol
Cultural Attaché in Chicago
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