Two plays, one cry

I didn't know Jean-Luc Lagarce very well. One fine but brief encounter at the Jardin d'hiver after the reading of his play "Retour à la citadelle", a look or a handshake exchanged by chance during a theatrical performance, just the simple respect of rituals, and that's it. Then, at the Athénée, when I was in the small auditorium directing Samuel Beckett's "La dernière bande", with David Warrilow, it must have been in 1992, I think, he, Lagarce, was in the Louis Jouvet auditorium, working on the revival of his production of Marivaux's "L'île aux esclaves". David and he were both at that time confronting the same incurable illness. And it was after he saw "La dernière bande", and after we spoke about it at length (he already had the look and the voice of those who are no longer completely of this world), the following night, I had this strange dream: I was in a forest, exhausted, an axe in my hand, and he, this sick man, with the appearance one can only have in dreams, took the axe, and with a huge laugh and boundless strength, he felled the trees, rapidly opening a clearing before me. David Warrilow has since died, and Jean-Luc Lagarce too, the same year, but even today, when I see a photo of him, I still see the man with the axe.

In February, 1997, the Theatre Vidy-Lausanne and the Poche of Geneva offered me the chance to direct a dramatic poem by this same playwright, "J'étais dans ma maison et j'attendais que la pluie vienne" ("I was in my house waiting for the rain"), a small tragedy about waiting. Five women whisper the story of a young man, a young son or a young brother, whom, after his departure a long time before, when his father threw him out, they had been waiting for ever since, and who then returned without a word, simply to die. This pavane for five voices, where complaints, anger and mutterings alternate, was a mourning ritual which ends with a question: did he really come back, this young man whom we neither hear nor see, or did they, these women, just imagine his return? Were they dreaming the return of this young Ulysses from his wars? It's possible, wrote the author in his postface. During rehearsals, we decided to never answer the question, and thus, the work done on this script became, for the five grief-stricken beauties, and for me, an intense moment of sharing and of theatrical research for which I would be nostalgic for a long time afterwards. Since then, this play has often been staged, both in France and abroad.
It was only after, let's say a year, that I received from François Berreur, Jean-Luc Lagarce's assistant for fifteen years and now publisher of his works, an unpublished play, "Juste la fin,du monde" ("Just the end of the world"), written before "J'étais dans ma maison et j'attendais que la pluie vienne". Reading this play was a deeply moving experience. In his prologue, Louis, the main character, addresses the audience in these terms:
"Later, the year after
-it would be my turn to die-
I'm nearly thirty-four now and that's how old I'll be when I die…
I decided to go back to see them, to follow my path back, to retrace my footsteps, and to make the journey, to announce,
to say, just to say, my death is approaching and irreversible, to announce it myself, the unique messenger, and then this same Louis, after seeing his family without saying anything to them, on the way back, and still to the audience, says this:

What I think
(that's what I meant)
is that I should cry out, a huge great shout,
a long and joyous shout which would ring out through the whole valley,
I should give myself this pleasure,
one good yell,
but I don't do it,
I didn't do it. "

That's it. It seemed to me, from the moment I read it, that I had to produce "Juste la fin du monde" and to follow it with "J'étais dans ma maison et j'attendais que la pluie vienne", that these two plays formed two panels of a diptych, that they were exploring the same problem, that of loss, learning how to mourn. That they were, coming from a playwright who knew he was condemned, an astounding gift of himself to those who survive, a disconcerting sign of love. And then I thought of the comments of Claude-Louis Combet: "The text, from the beginning, was nothing else but the preparation of a cry and its restraint. And all the detours taken by the phrase on its path, made up a way to come close to the point where the cry would burst out and a way to keep this point and this cry at a distance.
This cry was true for all that it was hiding and first and foremost for that cry from the depths of childhood which had never been made for there had never been an ear to hear it."

It is thus in the same setting, with the same group of actors, that I am inviting you to come to encounter a piece of writing which, although coming out of darkness, opens a clearing like in the dream I had.

Joël Jouanneau