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It is a shocking little manifesto, shining by its economy. It unfolds in front of us showing all its seams, this is part of the project, because The Reprise, History (s) of the theater is a show about all that can, and should, the theater, and how he achieves it. A project summarized poetically by the appearance, in quasi-preamble, of the ghost of the father of Hamlet whose monologue is declaimed in English with a stentor's voice by the marvelous Johan Leysen ("a a tale whose every word would plow your soul, chill your young blood, make your eyes come out of their spheres like two stars "…). Here we are at the roots of the tragedy: the theater is what makes the dead talk, and it is also what is played to their attention.
In an hour and a half, Milo Rau and his actors, four professionals and two amateurs, will make live the idea, question it, offering a radical demonstration of the potentialities of the performance, and that the director of 41 years, which has just taken the direction of the NTGent, Belgian national theater of Ghent , understood by "the fundamentally solidary act" to which he intends to elevate his practice. His Histoire (s) du théâtre of which this is the first part, and whose title borrows from Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire (s) du cinéma are intended to be a "Long-term performative inquiry into the oldest art form of humanity"
Suburbs, Unemployment and Lightness
After a long investigation, Milo Rau, with the help of the troupe, wrote the text of The Reprise which is inspired by a dreadful news item that took place in Liège in 2012: the murder, one evening in April, of a young homobadual, Ihsane Jarfi, beaten by a group of guys he did not know, and left naked and dying on the edge of a road at the edge of the forest. The story was "brought" to Milo Rau by one of his companions, Sébastien Foucault, who, while on leave, "finally, unemployed" followed the trial of the murderers obsessively. Unemployment, the suburbs of Liege plowed by the economic crisis, its blazing furnaces, all this is the setting, if not a character, of La Reprise . But the spectacle is not an elucidation, rather a long interrogation, where each part, each question posed, by the play or in petto by the spectators, will add a stage to the impalpable edifice building itself between participants – public, comedians, protagonists of the crime convened on stage.
Everything goes lightly though: the big silhouette of Johan Leysen comes into the scene wondering how to enter the stage (laughs in the room) and to what moment does an actor become a character? In a room of such density, every word counts, and has the power to come back to haunt the show at one time or another – that word understood. The questioning leads to the representation of the cast of the play, fundamental step of the creation, especially since two of the postulants, the two amateurs, were taken from the soil of Liège – which already gives an idea of the way Milo Rau is considering his work. "At least two of the actors can not be professional actors" trumpeted his declaration of principle Manifesto of Ghent published on his arrival at TNGent in May 2018.
See also
Milo Rau, the great manitou
For what purpose, this proposal? It is understandable as soon as these amateurs start to talk. One of them, Fabian Leenders, was a mason in Liege for thirteen years, then found unemployed, followed a training storekeeper – "but I have the impression that in Liege everyone his driver's license ". Wicked in the eyes, stocky figure, borrowed gestures, he will play one of the murderers, went to meet him in prison, and be surprised that they knew, at least until the fateful day, almost the same course. There is also Suzy Cocco, who improves his little retreat by walking dogs, and will play the mother of Ihsane Jarfi with a weary and poignant discretion. And then there is a professional, Tom Adjibi, already marking in his role of doctor in Two days and a night of the Dardenne brothers, French of Beninese origin to whom one always proposes of "Play origins, not characters" and who will embody the victim. The Dardenne brothers return as a running-gag throughout the play, their films being, it seems, the only professional horizon offered to aspiring comedians in the area.
In an interview at the tone sometimes very personal ("Have you ever played naked? Have you ever hit someone on stage?") asked them all: why the theater? "Because there is a freedom in there", answers Fabian Leenders. It is a record of competence that had revealed to him that he had "an artistic profile" (laughs in the room, still, annoying those). To the same question, Tom Adjibi offers another answer, citing a text by Wajdi Mouawad about an actor hanging on stage, and thus calling a reaction from the audience. "Otherwise the character dies. The actor dies. " All these phrases will return to us like boomerangs, tickling at various times the depths of our consciousness.
The after tragedy
Then engages the narrative strictly speaking, which n is not chronological, and runs simultaneously on the board and on a screen just above. The result is the direct shooting of what is happening before our eyes, as well as a previous shoot, whose scenes are similar to what we see. What to remember from the deployment of the news item? In the first place, it is his sidelines, moments of great tenderness, which move to tears and mark, much more than the reconstitution of crime. Like this scene played by Johan Leysen and Suzy Cocco, both naked, who replay the anguish felt by the mother without news of his son, the night of his birthday. This moment that follows, where the father says he asked if his son was aware when he was left to die in the rain. And this other confession, played by Sébastien Foucault in his own role, which admits to constantly thinking of Ihsane Jarfi, want "to share his terror" "to accompany him" .
As for the "Recovery" of the crime, necessarily inaccurate since based on the statements and memories of the killers, its unsustainable elements, blows, nudity, humiliation, were partly defused by what preceded: they lost not their charge, but all sensationalism. And of this reconstruction, it is especially the duration, the endless journey of the car where Ihsane Jarfi was embarked and beaten, all these occasions that had the types to wake up from the nightmare in which they embarked their victim, these temporal perches stretched with the burst of consciousness, which strike. We wait for them in vain, against all logic. It is here, in the gap between what could have happened and what was not the raw material of any tragedy, that the play is poignant and extraordinarily successful, but also, in the form that Milo Rau gave him, resolutely contemporary and political
And if one of these killers, one wonders fleetingly, for example the double of Fabian Leenders, had crossed the road of a director theater, too? Has the destiny of all been changed? The Reprise is also the title of an essay by Soeren Kierkegaard evoked by Milo Rau, in which "remembrance ahead" is discussed. The patient construction that brings us to this kind of remembrance engages us all – to which also returns us this very beautiful number of dance uniting the characters of the executioner and the victim, and these quotes of the poetess Wislawa Szymborska, decidedly always so right, from Theater Impressions on what happens after a tragedy, once the performance is over. They form the answer to a question formulated by Milo Rau and chanted by the play as a whole: "Why is there no idea of a collective, a clbad, a humanity with a common destiny? "
The Reprise, History (s) of the theater, Gymnasium Lycée Aubanel until July 14, and touring, including September 22 to October 5 at the theater Amandiers in Nanterre in the part of the Autumn Festival and from January 9 to 11, 2019 at Lieu Unique in Nantes.
Elisabeth Franck-Dumas
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