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Olivier Py
Philippe Sireuil
Jean-Luc
Lagarce Nous, les héros
direction Oriza Hirata et Frédéric
Fisbach
Présentation par Frédéric Fisbach : The origin of theProject / Why we chose Nous, les héros / The production
The origin of the project |
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In June 1998, for the "Lectures du Monde Entier" at the Théâtre Gérard Philipe in Saint-Denis, I adapted for the stage Oriza Hirata's play : Tokyo Notes , which is a lengthy text for twenty actors. On that occasion, I met the author. One month later, I visited him in his theatre, in Tokyo, I followed him during his rehearsals. He introduced me to his crew, he took me off to the theatre and during these two weeks, we kept talking about our own methods, about the current situation of theatre in our respective countries, about what we wanted to do. Soon, we began to dream of a collaboration in two stages.
In April 1999, I will leave for Japan with a scenographer, a light designer and two actors who are my most loyal theatre fellows, in order to work on a play with Oriza Hirata and Japanese actors. We decided to work on Jean-Luc Lagarce's text : Nous, les héros which will be translated into Japanese on that occasion. The two french actors will not talk in Japanese. They will intervene during the show to play scenes or extracts of French theatre repertory, so that the public can hear the language, in agreement with the subject of Jean-Luc Lagarce's play. We will co-direct this production and the play will be performed at the Toga Festival and in Tokyo in May 1999. This will be our first experience of work in collaboration, as well as for the crews.
In June 1999, we will choose together, in Paris, the actors likely to participate in this project. Then, I will go back to Tokyo for a few months in order to work with Oriza Hirata on Tokyo Notes. This lengthy stay in Japan will be within the context of a "villa Médicis hors les murs du Japon".
In december 1999, Oriza Hirata will come back to France with his scenographer and two actors. Together, we will rehearse Tokyo Notes, which will be performed in January 2000 at the Quartz in Brest, then in Saint-Denis and on tour.
In both cases, it will be a "co-direction". Our cultures being so different, it seemed necessary to enter into partnership. Indeed, how to "read" actors' signs when in everyday life, the expression of the most innocent feeling is different in a very subtle way.
Between France and Japan, codes and ways to express feelings seem radically different. Without a "translator", we would be lost rapidly.
| Why we chose Nous, les héros | top |
Everything went very fast! In 1999, Oriza will be the manager of the Toga Spring Festival. he offered me to take part in it. He is one of the most gifted author of his generation, and one of the greatest leader of Japanese theatre. He is also the representative of the authors association and fights for the implementation of a system equivalent to copyrights that do not exist for theatre in Japan. As a director, he makes a lot of interventions throughout Japan. he is the manager of a small theatre in Tokyo in which he settled with his company of fourty persons.
This image of the author/director relates directly to the great tradition of Western Theatre that, from Molière to Shakespeare and until now with figures such as Didier Georges Gabily or Olivier Py, "stimulates" and gives life to theatre. Poets, and especially the latter, are the ones pushing theatre forward.
Jean-Luc Lagarce is that kind of person who writes for a company and who comes on stage to finish the play with the actors. According to me, there is an obvious connexion between Jean-Luc and Oriza. I decided to choose Nous, les héros because I love this play and I think that the tale might move the Japanese public.
Nous, les héros shows in a subtle and touching way the life of theatre people. After a performance, the company gathers in the wings to celebrate the engagement of two actors. Jean-Luc Lagarce is amused and cruel in his way to relate the fate of these people, which reminds us of plays of the beginning of the century such as Les ratés by Le Normand. His fragmented writing, like a storyboard, allows to edit the play like a movie, with a work on space that enables the simultaneity of the speech and the superposition of situations. This is a writing that calls for space, that needs to fill up space.
It is rare to find a text that is about theatre life. It is a difficult exercice, we flounder and sink into stereotypes. Jean-Luc Lagarce's talent is to use common situations and slowly, just like that, he manages to make that life more touching even for people who do not know it. Theatre opens up and exposes itself without shame, we can see what is usually hidden. The operation leaves it a bit "shaken" and no doubt, makes it fall from its pedestral, but also makes it more human and meaningful. Theatre is within life, right in the middle of life, and like any art, is created by human beings. We leave the museum. The writing that came from set ideas turns back to open our eyes on a reality which, I hope, allows us to bring Art back in life. The feeling brought by the play is close to what we feel when we watch La Nuit américaine by François Truffaut.
Highly inspired by the reading of Kafka's diary, this fiction goes through the century. In the course of the conversation, the story comes to life with wars, political ideals, evolutions in the organization of social life and especially working rights of this century.
This text also fits with the particular conditions of that work : a plain and readable text which will not be affected by the translation. I think that this story of a company on tour is very close to one of Ozu's films (Herbes flottantes, I believe). I think that it will make my relation with the Japanese actors easier. We all have the same past, those common memories linked to life on tour.
| The production | top |
I did not want to go to Japan alone because this adventure must also feed the one we live in France. So I asked four of my accomplices to come with me. A scenographer, Emmanuel Clolus, a light designer, Daniel Lévy and two actors, Claire Aveline and Jean-Charles Dumay, because I want the music of French language to be present on stage.
They will also be of great help for the communication and transmission with the Japanese actors. In the "corps à corps" of the stage, information will circulate better and faster!
Lagarce's play is interspersed with musical interludes, during those interludes or at other times, Claire and Jean-Charles will play pages torn from the repertory (Garnier, Racine, Marivaux, Claudel...). They will be, as in Nô or Kabuki stage servants, "invisible" to the spectators, ghosts.
Nous, les héros starts with actors leaving the stage for the wings at the end of a show. I want Japanese spectators to take their seats while a play is ending. We chose the end of a play by Molière, probably the last three scenes of L'avare. An ending "à la Molière"; completely incredible and unlikely where filiations solve everything. I would like the play to start like that and the public to hear the first words of Nous, les héros while the actors take off their stage clothes . Oriza wanted to work on Molière's text with his actors before our arrival, so that this part of the play would be like a gift to welcome us. I will not change anything, we will start from that.
We will bring French period costumes. It will be a way to pay a tribute to the magnificent Nô Theatre in Toga, in which the show will be played and that usually lends its stage to somptuous traditionnal Japanese costumes.
In November, I went back to Tokyo to cast actors and to start working with them. At that time I began to realize that we had offered ourselves an adventure that went far beyond the simple fact of coming and directing a play. An adventure that, for almost a year, will lead us to live theatre through discovery and experimentation, in two languages, in two countries and with two different casts.
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