Variations / Lagarce
D'après Jean-Luc Lagarce
Mise en scène Julie Brochen
© Franck Beloncle
The poetry of lies
After the stage of formal presentations comes the moving time of settling in. The Cherry Orchard is Anton Chekhov’s last play, his swansong, his testament. I wanted to open the new artistic residency of the TNS with this play to surround it with the particular light and energy inherent to all beginnings.
For me, the first sparks of joy that anchor and settle each theatre project has always generated another desire, another ambition: to have a company. Here and now, with The Cherry Orchard and those first four faces – Muriel Ines Amat, Fred Cacheux, Gildas Milin and Cécile Péricone – I begin the story of this new company.
Having Olivier Chabriange by my side is a great joy and an opportunity to benefit from – and have you benefit from – the great knowledge of the whole world’s theatre that he gathered from his years at the Autumn Festival in Paris.
Together, we have built a season along the lines of three key-ideas:
Bearing in mind that the TNS is a wonderful tool that must be shared, we wish to give prominence to favor co-productions – starting with four of those this season. This will highlight the creative resources we possess here: the talented men and women in our walls, the teams that conceive the sets and the costumes, the endless possibilities that the three auditoriums offer in their specificities and in the particular rapport they construct with the audience.
We will sustain the TNS’s ambition to be a platform for artists from all over Europe and the rest of the world.
We will preserve and intensify – always one step further – the ties that bind the theatre to its school through workshops and other exchanges between visiting artists and the TNS students.
I like all projects to entwine and develop a web of resonances and echoes and a common language. For me, the triangle that frames the three letters of the name of our theatre and its school point to a new geometry and new twists of meaning; it figures our institution’s architecture, its triangulation, but also the wooden panels of an Italian floor, Hanjo’s platform or the central piece that holds a circus tent together. It is our DNA structure, a composition and a kite.
I like the notion that a chain might actually free us rather than bind us and I already imagine some new combinations and variations .
Antoine VItez claimed that in Paul Claudel’s L’Échange, Louis Laine’s lies constitute his poetry. The art of lies, the poetry of the theatrical lie can be reclaimed and shared, it can offer salvation and find its own truth in the present moment as it encounters an audience.
I wanted this 2009-2010 season to open with Pinnochio, for here is a production of manifold interpretations that addresses children as well as adults. Let us regroup this season around artists that have mastered the art of inhabiting the stage and approaching authors from various angles, be it in
Pinocchio’s nightmare, written and directed by Joël Pommerat,
Pessoa’s poetic thrust as perceived by Claude Regy (who will work with the students at the school),
Mishima’s shimmering embers by Jacques Vincey,
Muller’s tortured and potent verses by Jean Jourdheuil (who will also conduct a workshop and classes at the school),
The unveiling of the theatre’s constructed illusion in Yann-Joël Collin’s Midsummer-Night’s Dream,
The unfolding of a curse in Joël Jouanneau (who will be in charge of the third year students’ graduation workshop).
I look forward to the presence of the Sfumato Theatre Laboratory from Sofia with their Strindberg Trilogy and to our students’ visit to their school in Bulgaria (a public presentation of the work done there will take place in march in the Kablé Hall).
The TNS enables me to pursue old companionships, as will be the case with Pierre Meunier, who will present two of his wonder-filled spectacles, and with Grégoire Callies, who will write material for the school and conduct a workshop after presenting his Machine without a Target.
Last, I am delighted and proud to announce that the TNS is able to host a world première and another show’s last performance: in association with Paris’s Autumn Festival and the Wiener Festwochen, New York’s Wooster Group will indeed be creating Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carré in the walls of the Gignoux auditorium. In Koltes hall, we will be granted the very last performances of William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Theatre Company’s mythical production, Woyzeck on the Highfeld.
I take this opportunity to salute and thank our partner on this project – Grégoire Callies and the team of the TJP – as well as Bernard Fleury and the Théâtre du Maillon for the passionate relentless work we have done for the Première festival whose 6th edition is already underway. I also look forward to our partnership with Jean-Dominique Marco and the Musica festival for the opening of the season.
The series of debates that we have initiated last year with Jean-Luc Nancy and François Tanguy about “Money” and with Yves Clot, Patrice Barret and Fred Cacheux about “Work” will continue with Jack Ralite on the theme of “the Public”.
And we are indeed committed to the public with many projects like amateur theatre workshops, public meetings and readings. We wish to develop these exchanges to fully experience our time together in this theatre, our “house”, a house that is anchored in a city, but opens onto the world.
Julie Brochen