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Je tremble (1)
Joël Pommerat |  | | Elisabeth Carecchio |
| | | « These days I feel that you can only become a true playwright by combining – or tying in really closely – the writing and staging of a play.
I think it’s a mistake to see these two phases as being naturally separate from one another.
Of course you can make a distinction between the writing and staging processes. And in certain circumstances it’s even imperative (the death of the playwright being one quite valid instance), but it seems false to me to say that it’s natural or logical to separate these two phases.
… Because writing involves words, but also meaning.
And words are unfaithful, floating objects just waiting to dissolve into sometimes contradictory meanings.
Starting from that observation, how can you agree to be just the author of the words and allow the director to become the author of their meaning?
How could anyone profess that certain issues – interpretation, an actor’s inner alignment and relationship to the space, his stance towards the other actors and the audience, ideas about characters and non-characters, the actor’s imagination, what he draws upon when speaking or being silent – are not essential ones for the playwright?
How could you accept this division – of labor and terms – between writing and staging?
Writing the words, and only the words, is not enough for me; I want to write the meaning too, to write something with a bit of meaning (even if that meaning isn’t always as clear as the audience would like it to be).
…
I don’t think the theatre is the ideal place for expressing the finer feelings.
The theatre is a place to examine and experience what it means to be human.
Not a place for being told what we already know, but a place for seeing what could be possible and challenging what is taken for granted.
It is a place where we are not afraid of getting hurt, since it is a place for pretending, and the wounds we inflict on each other are nothing like the ones we might have to endure in life outside the theatre.
Art and life should never be confused.
When writing, I try to situate the audience in a precise, concrete time.
A time that brings the audience and the actors together in one place.
A time that creates powerful bonds between people, like with a group all facing the same danger.
I try to recreate the intensity of time passing, second by second, like at the most crucial times in our lives, during an experience that brings us face to face with the deepest part of ourselves.
But I also choose ordinary situations, and look for the greatest tension and intensity within that ordinary setting. »
Joël Pommerat in Théâtres en Présence
Actes Sud-Papiers – Collection Apprendre 2007 |
| Je tremble (1) by Joël Pommerat:
Theatre that is both anthropological and poetic*
In a world where “art” is practically a dirty word – and “dramatic arts” even more so – there are playwrights who still proclaim a need to write and a fierce determination to speak out and communicate. Since 1990 Joël Pommerat has been one of those trailblazing playwrights, someone who has taken the road less travelled, ignoring fashions and insisting on his own independence and the right to the kind of “urgent necessity” invoked by Vincent Van Gogh. Pommerat has embarked on a true artistic path of discovery, creating an authentic « body of work » with the Compagnie Louis Brouillard since the early ‘90s when he decided to write and stage his own plays, such as some illustrious predecessors Shakespeare and Molière, not to mention our contemporaries Jean-Luc Lagarce and Olivier Py.
.
From that vantage point he presents Je Tremble (1), a new stage on the path of his collective adventure.
The audience is invited to a cabaret, to watch a series of numbers, to laugh, smile and groan before this display of humankind that ranges from the wonderful to the pathetic, the laughable to the tragic. This is our everyday reality being talked about, the world of showbiz shown on stage in a traditional cabaret style which slowly veers off on a different tangent. Instead of watching “the bearded lady”, “the comedian” – coarse or not – and ”the conjurer”, you see “the sorry-looking lady”, “the richest man in the world” and “the man who didn’t exist”. While it is disturbing, Joël Pommerat’s new work retains its appeal, placing the spectator at the centre of one of the major contradictions we face at the start of the 21st century: how to reconcile our fascination with images and the need to confront “true” reality outside the context of illusory images
This has been Pommerat’s approach as a playwright from the beginning – writing so that bodies and voices could appropriate the words and make them resonate in a way that confronts the spectator with their truth, sometimes their violence, and always their power. One has the feeling that every word has been chosen and every phrase constructed with great precision. In Je Tremble (1) the playwright seems to take on the challenges of a more fragmented text, inherent in the satirical-political-poetic cabaret genre, as well as a tableau structure which he had already experimented with in previous shows, especially Les Marchands and Au Monde. The precise language in the series of tableaux is mirrored by the actors’ equally precise gestures, in an attempt to approach as intimately as possible the characters as they move about the voyeuristic world of the stage. This is probably the essential characteristic of writer-director Pommerat’s work – his mastery of the stage, precise construction and demanding aesthetic in which light and sound are also involved in expressing the spoken word, all of which nurtures and enriches the audience’s reverie rather than hindering it. In a certain manner, Joël Pommerat tears away the curtain of illusion, and constantly, drawing us closer to our own reality
Pommerat is a storyteller, a writer of fables, of short stories, a dreamer, a poet of the present and future who rejects didactic theatre and looks for what is “sensitive”, focusing on the “physical” and his right to use narrative form (a right often abused on our stages). He is a moralist who tries to unmask all those who hide the evil of their own reality under the greasepaint and disguise of the spectacle.
He employs the spectacle of theatre in order to confront the fraudulent spectacle of images which bombard us daily; he uses cathartic poetic images to destroy manipulative and anaesthetizing images, and deliberate shams to expose covert ones.
This is the purpose of Joël Pommerat’s writing – talking about today’s world without resorting to binary reductions; “telling stories without slipping into anecdote”.
Philippe Heinen, 27 October 2007
* from the programme for Je Tremble (1) at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord
Je tremble (1) got a Fonds SACD 2007 support.
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| Characters : 4 women - 3 men -
Actes Sud Papiers - http://www.actes-sud.fr |
| | Sorry, no extract for this play. |
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