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Suzanne Joubert
Jamais de la vie, Olga History The fact that a Russian actress was to be used in the project "La peau de la grande ourse" is based on a set of different and intimately mixed determining factors. There are those of childhood. Declined as in a text by Georges Perec, they can be expressed thus: I remember the "Great Russian" look of my grandfather, even though he was only a quarter. My great-great-grandmother, interior decorator, great traveller and liberated woman had conceived my great-grandmother during a liaison with a minor Russian nobleman whose stately home she was decorating. I remember the portrait of Stalin over the fireplace in my parents' bedroom, as well as the little book about childhood, even though I was given it at the age of six. I remember that a great-aunt (she, too, a quarter Russian) married a gentleman from Simar de Ségur de Pitray, thus also having Rostopchine blood in his veins. He had a son from a first marriage, Yvan, who also had a very Russian look. I remember helping sell Humanité Dimanche in our neighbourhood where my mother was branch secretary. I remember projections of Soviet films after the festival of Cannes organised by France-USSR, of which my father was president, and of thus having seen up close (!) Tatiana Samoïlova and Nikolaï Cherkassov during the receptions which followed. I remember the poem I wrote at the age of ten, in support of the entry of Russian tanks into Budapest. There are those of adolescence, more complicated of course: A multitude of readings, in the alarming need to devour books which had taken hold of me long before, but which increased with the years : Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Tourgueniev, Lermontov, Pushkin, Gorky, Mayakovski, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Tynianov, Boulgakov... Films, of course, since at the time, I wanted to become a film-maker : Eisenstein, Dovjenko, Pudovkin, Dziga Vertov... The laborious learning of a few rudiments of Russian, as second foreign language in high school, and the ensuing need to hum (horribly badly), at any time, the few Russian tunes that were in my head, going so far at times as to sing at the top of my voice (horribly out of tune), replacing the words which I couldn't remember by a frightful mumbo-jumbo, the sounds of which, nevertheless, delighted me. And finally my first trip to Russia at nineteen and the violent disappointment which ensued, such as one feels at that age. And then, almost silence for more than twenty years. On opting for the theatre, my cultural geography shifted towards Germany. And this despite Tarkovsky and Paradjanov, one or two jobs directing Lioubimov, caviar (not too often) and vodka of course..., and then a few lines by Vitez concerning "physical actions" with Stanislavski which had intrigued me greatly. Finally, suddenly, seven years ago, everything started up very quickly: the encounter with the Okolo Doma Stanislavski theatre and their peculiar way of extending Stanislavski, at the very time I was re-reading "War and Peace" twenty years on and when I was discovering the plays of Tsvetaïeva. Then began our collaboration, through receiving the performances of Youri Pogrebnitchko, workshops, trips. Since 1994, I have now been to Moscow eight times and each time, I learn a little more, that beneath the Soviet Moscow that I saw thirty years ago, there is still that of Chekhov and of Gogol, and that it continues despite everything to be the same, despite the mafia, the limousines and all the destructive shock of uncontrolled liberalisation, severely testing an entire system of extremely strong and engaging social links. For five years now, I realise that I could easily feel as though I come from "there", as if the philosophical discussions in the kitchens, over a bottle of vodka, a samovar, some pieces of cheese, sausage and smoked fish, had always been part of my daily life. As if the active indolence shown by the people that I see there corresponded to my natural rhythm. As if beneath my apparently placid surface beats the heart of a "Russian soul" traversed by nostalgia, by sudden brightness, by despondency, by effusion. Alain Fourneau © 2001 "Théâtre-contemporain.net". Tous droits réservés. |