PLAYWRIGHTS CORNER |
 |
A whimsical author who talks about serious things | Alain Gautré, the 'masked' playwright | A face to face talk |
« Sabine Bossan This season you are staging two of your plays, La Chapelle-en-Brie at theThéâtre du Rond-Point and Impasse des Anges at the Théâtre de la Tempête. And you have just written another play, Les Amis du Président. All three plays feature themes that are familiar in your work: family, sex rather than love, and politics, against a backdrop of dissatisfaction, hatred, betrayal and, despite all that, some humor too. Are you writing contemporary tragedies with a touch of humor, or comedies with a serious take on everyday life?
Alain Gautré Both.
[...] I’ve always said I have a 'masked' style of writing, one that comes from the tradition of masks. By which I mean that ultimately, especially for La Chapelle-en-Brie, there’s a kind of false naturalism; but in terms of pace for instance, you’re dead in the water if you start playing it like a TV movie. The epic nature of the play can’t be embodied in that way - literally speaking - because it’s the actors’ bodies that first give meaning to the play even if words precede them. [...] » |
| |
 |
|
| |
INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL PROJECTS |
|
 |
 |
About Place : Translating Issues of Locality
Lancelot Hamelin |
| « This May I spent three days at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh to discuss the translation of my play Alta Villa with Katherine Mendelsohn, dramaturg at the Traverse Theatre, and Christopher Campbell, translator and dramaturg at the National Theatre in London. [...] It seemed to me that the translation issue raised another issue – that of place. Perhaps that is my idea of writing: talking about place. Working on localities... [...] » |
| Traverse Theatre |
|
|
|
 |
Does England remain an island ? Caroline Ferreira and Marianne Badrichani |
| « [...] 6 plays were chosen. And if you had to find a common denominator among them, you might evoke the following words: rawness, dark humour, and despair hidden behind a certain levity [...] » |
|
| |
National Theatre Studio |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
