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R. S/Z Impromptu Spectre
Joseph Danan
R. S/Z Impromptu Spectre
Actes du théâtre n° 21.[ imprimer ]
There’s Roberto Succo, who killed. It’s a well-known story. There’s the Writer, who wrote a play about Succo and in doing so succeeded in tearing himself from the mother he had never managed to leave. There’s the axe-wielding Writer who makes the Playwright furious by chopping down what he has built. Try finding some sense in all that.

“Parallels have often been pointed out between Koltès the mythical playwright (a romantic angel) and Succo, the dark angel who is no less romantic. Danan has constructed counter-proof of a writer who was anything but romantic and was faced with the raw material of writing. […] The news item is re-examined and separated from the myth. […] He moves from the subject of this quest to a potential relationship between the playwright and Roberto, as if by frequenting the murderer – even in fiction – there developed a bond, a closeness and questioning of his own path as playwright and, indirectly, that of the reader.”
Jean-Pierre Ryngaert, in the “Tout contre le réel. Miroirs du fait divers” conference at the Université de Lyon 2, May 2004

Staged reading dir. by Michel Cochet at the Théâtre de l’Ephéméride on 4 May 2002, during the Festival Corps de textes. Reading dir. by Joël Jouanneau at the Théâtre du Rond-Point, 19 October 2002, as part of the Lire en fête event.

Characters : 14 women - 17 men - a chorus (to be performed by 4 women and 8 men according to the director’s choice).
Éditions Tapuscrit-Théâtre Ouvert.

ROBERTO’S MOTHER Stop it, Roberto, drop that knife. Get the car keys and let’s forget this stupid argument. All right?
ROBERTO You don’t know where they are.
ROBERTO’S MOTHER No, but we’ll look for them together, and we’ll find them eventually. Give me that knife. Give me that knife and I’ll give you the keys.
ROBERTO My father took them with him.
ROBERTO’S MOTHER What are you doing? What do you want?
ROBERTO I’m fighting the dragon.
ROBERTO’S MOTHER What did you say? Let go of me. Please, let go of me.
ROBERTO I won’t let go of you. I think I’m going to kill you, Mum.
They struggle, or rather he holds her against him and she struggles.
WAITRESS Don’t do it, Roberto, don’t do this. There’s still time.
WRITER Yes, there’s still time to erase everything, from the beginning, like a nightmare that hasn’t occurred, and to send it back to the nothingness from which it should never have been drawn out.
ROBERTO Can you feel that weapon against your belly?
WRITER Yet I can’t tell you not to do it, because of course you must do it. In some way you must do it. But not like this. You’re mixing everything up, all the shots.
ROBERTO I could see it all in front of me like a film
WRITER he would say later on
ROBERTO and myself, as if it were someone else doing it. Did all that really happen? You must tell me, to convince me of it. It’s like an accident that occurred outside of time.
WRITER he would also say
ROBERTO and even now, what I’m saying and my being here in front of you might all be just a dream. As if I had gone on outside of time.
WRITER And someone inside him will say to the judges and to the chaplain: I don’t regret it.
WAITRESS Tell him again.
WRITER What?
WAITRESS That he’s making a mistake.
WRITER I told you many times, Roberto. You heard that voice in your ear. It isn’t mine. It’s a human law that never goes silent, a thin voice that never stops. I shall leave Annecy.