The artistic project
In the art of drama, like in the art of dance, there lies an awesome power. This is probably because on the stage the body is shown like nowhere else and because on the stage speech remains an unpredicted event. There the world is overexposed. Our new season is guided by this thought and will therefore tread new paths, venture into new forms of representation with the help of artists who renew our ways of seeing and feeling as they take us towards unchartered territories.
The Théâtre de la Ville is a place open onto the world, where artistic experiments can be shared. It is a place founded on the alliance of the different arts, dance, theatre and music. With artistic rigorousness always in mind, we have tried to invent a programme that would be true to the project we have been always dreaming of, to allow these different artistic forms to yield the very best of their soul. To achieve that, we have chosen several directions.. Creation It is mandatory. It demands that art permanently renew itself in ceaseless experiments, not for the sake of novelty at all costs, or for the sheer pleasure of contradicting and provoking, but to wrest oneself from one’s sedate routine, “to wrench oneself from oneself”, as Michel Foucauld would say. We thus want this House to be first and foremost a haven for creative novelty. This may read like a hackneyed phrase. Yet it implies that one cannot be content with showing things already seen, that one must feel compelled to reveal new works, to take risks – aesthetic as well as ethic – to initiate productions that reflect the present times and also the way authors react to them. Artistic creation still is an act of resistance against any form of cultural standardization.
For the coming season, therefore, we have chosen to expand our collaboration with the Festival d’Automne à Paris, in our common desire to host meaningful, internationally renowned and multidisciplinary artistic works.
We also have to think of ways to extend the reception of drama, dance and music by a wider audience both within Paris itself and in the suburbs, close or farther off. We need to address new spectators, launch new projects with schools and universities, which are too often neglected. We shall devise new ways for the productions created or presented at the Théâtre de la Ville to be circulated and shown elsewhere thanks to new links with other theatres both in France and abroad The masters There must be no opposition between creation and the exploration and recollection of the past, between creation and History. I believe that the current trend in theatre circles is to detach oneself from the History of the theatre, the memory of its tradition. Drama, whose action always takes place in the present, seems to do without any recollection of the past; yet Antoine Vitez kept claiming that great actors ,albeit unawares, embody the memory and the history of their roles.
Only time allows artistic achievement. Thus the long-standing trust in artists hinges on the respectful acknowledgment of the Great Masters of the past and therefore also the Masters of today. Consequently in our coming season, ample space will be given to a number of Masters in drama, music and dance for us to benefit once again from their lessons. This is not meant as a homage - the word carries funereal overtones; it will be an encounter or a reunion, in the full sense of the term, between an artist on the stage and the audience in the house. Young artists and new horizons Just as we wish to stand up for the masters and the long-term tradition, we wish to promote young companies, meet new artists, discover new talents and remain focused on new experiments, ideas and forms.
Our consumer society relentlessly demands a constant and swift renewal of forms: make haste, give us fresh meat, yesterday morning’s game is already too high. I do not share that view, even if I advocate experimentation. We give young artists a chance and put our stakes on them, not as a matter of statistical evaluation but with a view to open up a common route with them. It is a story of love, not of accountancy. Intersections I am happy to support the artists (there is a fair number of them these days) who have the capacity to modify the boundaries between the arts by finding new modes and forms for their encounters. A true artist is perfectly capable of devising new grounds for his domain: dancers speaking, musicians acting, performers staying mum to give silence its full value, to fill in space and exalt time. I would like our project to go along with reflections on the present state and the future or destiny of these diverse artistic fields. Thus, Heiner Goebbels’ invention of the Stage Concert will present in unusual settings a series of texts by T.S. Eliot, Maurice Blanchot, Kafka and Beckett, sung in English by the Hilliard Ensemble. Guy Cassiers, whose trilogy last year was greatly successful, will stage an adaptation of Malcom Lowry’s celebrated novel Under The Volcano. Angelin Preljocaj will boldly set out to say/dance Jean Genet’s magnificent Funambule. Jan Fabre will present a solo of his own composition. With Maguy Marin, Aurélien Bory, the Chilean company Teatrocinema, Jan Lauwers and so many others, we have a crowd of artists who draw new charts, move partitions about, open trap doors, dig burrows or spread their wings in new areas between stage, bodies, objects or still and moving pictures… The poetics of foreign languages and companies “One shouldn’t be afraid of foreign languages, quite the contrary; I have always thought that if we look carefully and at length at people when they speak, we can understand everything. I myself speak to you in a foreign tongue and so do you. So we’ll soon be on the same wavelength.” We wish to endorse this sentence uttered by Bernard Marie Koltès’ Léone in Combat de nègre et de chiens [Black Battles with Dogs]. Accordingly, David Lescot will direct L’Européenne [Europeana] and will bring together a company of French, Italian, Portuguese and Slovak actors. Similarly the Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata is working at an adaptation of Michel Vinaver’s Par-dessus bord [Overboard] which Arnaud Meunier will stage with a French-Japanese company.
We shall thus continue to voice the poetic tones of those languages, to convene in a common space those who speak and those who listen to them, to foster the coming together in the house and on the stage of different linguistic communities.
The Berliner Ensemble is coming back to the Théâtre de la Ville and that is also an outstanding event. They haven’t been here since 1960. The presentation of Brecht’s Die Dreigroschenoper [The Threepenny Opera] bears witness to the skill of the great actors of a major company who can sing and can therefore bring the art of the opera or that of the musical closer to the art of drama rather than the other way round.
Robert Wilson, as everyone knows, is one of the masters who handles to perfection the visual stage construction and the musical tempo; the vocal performance in this Threepenny Opera reaches summits in artistic achievement. Claus Peymann, head of the Berliner Ensemble, is a director who is too rarely invited in France; his staging of Shakespeare’s Richard II does credit to his company and this is yet another sign that the German and French stage have shared for decades a deeply rooted complicity. An artistic Ensemble The dramatist, the writer, the scenographer, the musician and the group of actors in whose company I work form the Théâtre de la Ville’s “artistic Ensemble”. Indeed you succeed in pulling off a production not only because you surround yourself with talented artists but mainly because you manage to work and invent in harmony with a team. Which implies that the place where the artists work be not only premises for performances, but also the seat of continued thinking, a home for research and questioning about authors and modes of representation. To ensure that the Théâtre de la Ville be a place on the move, a place of intense artistic vitality, the “artistic Ensemble” will play a major role; it will initiate workshops with high school youngsters, students and also amateur groups or individuals. It will venture on new grounds to go and meet new audiences. Children "Wer zeigt ein Kind, so wie es steht?” [‘Qui nous indiquera la place de l’enfant’ /Who shows a child just as it stands?] asked Rilke.
One can always conclude with children. Acting, after all, is common to actors and children. I would like the Théâtre de la Ville to turn to them as often as possible.
So they will be able to see Wanted Petula by Fabrice Melquiot, associated playwright, who evokes in this work some of the new myths cherished by children as well as some of their idiosyncratic questionings. But they will also see a puppet show from Kerala in Southern India, which picks up the ancient legends of the Mahabharata with its fabulous stories and unknown heroes.
We must attempt, through our daily experiences, to catch a glimpse of tomorrow’s theatre. Ours is a time of crossroads, political but also artistic. What will tomorrow’s culture be made of? It is up to us, directors and actors, choreographers and dancers, to keep on searching for new paths.
Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota
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version Française
