The pseudonymous writer of this book, the son of a patrician family of Zurich, was what is known as a well-mannered child. In the magnificent house on the edge of the lake reigned perfect harmony. Also a certain boredom, stemming from decorum. With humour, Zorn describes the little failings of his parents. Humour? The word is not strong enough. Rather, let us say the black irony of a young man who, on learning that he has cancer, immediately thinks, "Of course."

Why revive Mars today ?

In the first place, there was Jean-Quentin Châtelain's wish to revive this monologue. He spoke about it to Daniel Jeannet, director of the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris, thanks to whom the play was produced and publicised in France, and to Alex Broutard, director of the Théâtre de la Coupe d'Or in Rochefort. Both agreed to back the adventure: the play would be re-created in Rochefort, and presented in Paris at the end of a tour around France. Also, there was a lucky coincidence in the calendar: Daniel Jeannet was to leave his position a short time after the last performances of Mars in June 2002. The circle was complete.

And then we decided to give a new creative impetus to the project, to give new energy to rehearsals, by removing the set and by creating new lighting and sounds. This would give a different play with different movements, different acting intentions, different images.

And as for the text, is it still relevant to today? And above all, is this the right question?

I think it's relevant to today from the moment when the cultural partners and the performers come together to launch the adventure. But you could also say that this "Zorn", which means "anger" in German, certainly does still have things to say today, when there are more and more reasons to get angry in the face of the stupidity of people who believe they are immortal, in the face of increasing inequalities, of all kinds of waste, of coercive education systems. You could even say that this disease, the cancer eating away Zorn's body and which makes him speak, is, metaphorically, a disease of society, of the world, some of whose vital organs or main functions are seriously threatened or even already destroyed.

I could say more .....

As a participant in this now common form of the monologue or the solitary speech, Mars has provided the theatre with a particular oratorical mode, that of the sermon. A rare function and a new mission for a dramatic art which, while not giving itself the goal sought by preachers and sacred speakers, namely the catechisation, conversion or evangelisation of the faithful masses, acts, nonetheless, on the spectator as an efficient metaphysical revelation.

This text aims to reach the meaning of the human condition through sensitivity: the actor, like the preacher according to Bossuet, attempts to speak "to the heart of hearts" of those listening to him. Neither dogmatic, nor offering any solutions to the problems it poses, this text only imitates the sermon, obviously, in its form and the authoritative effect it produces.

The structure of Mars (we are speaking in particular of the version edited by Darius Peyamiras, who tightened and refocused Fritz Zorn's story, turning it upside down chronologically and removing the repetitions) is that of a funeral oration written by the dead man himself, offering to those who follow a lesson taken from his own existence: an autobiographical story, biblical examples and moral teaching - or should we say, highlighting an ethic of life or death, Zorn vigorously rejects this traditional, middle class, Christian morality, this "proper" (way of doing things) that he summarises by the term "God" and that he assassinates.

The word of Mars, divided into large slabs of speech, which the staging emphasises with even more violence and clarity, and made up of the account, the trial, the entreaty, etc, methodically pursues the unbearable misery of man linked to his mortal condition. Analysing in a cruelly clear-sighted way the physiological evil that is gnawing at him, Zorn expresses it as an illness of the soul. He tracks down its causes, familial, social, educative, and he uses his deeply felt suffering to widen his thinking. Starting from the individual, he indirectly reaches the universal, the cosmic.

It is through the voice and the body of the actor that, on the theatre stage, this word takes on this remarkable sacred accent. Confronted solely with the word and not the theatrical character - Jean-Quentin Châtelain is not Fritz Zorn but the bearer of the views of Fritz Zorn - he approaches the art of the preacher.
The philosophical task never completely erases the dramatic, almost playful aspect of the performance. To prove this, from all this stirred up grief comes laughter. Zorn, who has never laughed because "that" didn't laugh within him, brings to his own tragedy an ironically devastating view which causes laughter. And the additional distance imposed by Jean-Quentin Châtelain, through his own laugh this time, increases the comic power even more.