About Juste la fin du monde

PHILIPPE DELAIGUE: "On becoming acquainted with this play, Juste la fin du monde - and this doesn't mean any more than what I'm going to say - I was literally engulfed by tears. It's quite amazing, but I was struck by my reaction. If I say this was strange, it's because it was something that had never happened to me before. It's happened of course with music, with some moments in some plays, but this play … for example, I can't read it out loud without trembling and crying. And, the same thing happened when I heard the students at E.N.S.A.T.T. read it, I was struck in the same way again (1). So there are things in this text which touch me profoundly. Obviously, I have to distance myself from it sometimes and this is why it is sometimes complicated for me to speak about it, because, being struck by it to this extent, I find I can only speak about the "form" of this play which touches me, about the way the word works, that's all I can speak about. In fact, what moves me, what touched me is, quite simply, that these people can speak about all that. That anyone can speak about it and "do theatre" with it. Because that is what is categorically astounding!
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If we begin to recount certain scenes, we seem to be, on the face of it, bogged down in a certain triviality: when the sister-in-law is speaking about her children and regretting, for example, that they're not present, or attempting to explain why she called her son "Louis", like both the protagonist and her father-in-law, we inevitably describe a certain kind of insignificance.
Lagarce's writing, however, is neither minimalist, nor naturalist. His aesthetic project is probably to speak of a "common place", or, more precisely, of a place "of" the common. Here, the question is not only to know if we recognize ourselves or not, but also and above all, that if there is one thing that we definitely have to share, it is "family ties". Whether we deny them or whether we accept them. If Lagarce hadn't been a true author, a demanding author, his writing could very quickly swing over into a theatre of the "everyday" or a somewhat "televisual" naturalism. In his grammar of the real, he makes use of the same words, the same situations that we find in a TV film, for example. In any case, there are no slipped-in elements of clearly displayed modernity or anything that could refer to a fantasy style. He doesn't cheat with what he makes use of. He uses the grammar of the reality of the family circle. With Juste la fin du monde, we are never totally disconnected from the real.
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The real "overwhelmed" by the language

The real, however, is in the words, and only in the words. And, even if no reference is made to any place, to any particular setting, the project is clearly situated - from the very first stage direction - in a somewhat impossible theatrical project, that is, both during one Sunday and over a whole year. The project of this play is not that of this particular Sunday or that particular year, but very much both of them at the same time! As a result, we can watch the play, hear the text, or work the acting by the yardstick of the reality of a day in the country, the reality of a family, of a relationship with a brother and so on. But we can also read the text from another angle, as if there were two levels: a "realistic" theatre (though above all not naturalistic), and on a level - most probably attached to the character of Louis - that is dream-like and epic at the same time, that is, it crosses time in a much larger way than the space of a single day. This dream time is even clearly present in the play. As a result, all the time, on all the questions that we are led to ask ourselves about this play and about this writing, we are in a sort of "in-between", where we can still refer to a reality, but where the real is constantly "overwhelmed": the language itself traverses these two perspectives. If it recounts the procrastination of the language or what makes it up, of the difficulty of speaking, it also creates the essence of the word. It is of this difficulty of speaking, that it itself becomes the language. Thus, we begin again several times, we take up the same terms, we work on the "right" time to use, does this time belong to the past, the present or the future perfect? This whole difficulty of speaking therefore becomes the language itself and that's what interests me. …

Thus, it is both a realistic language and, at the same time, very literary, extremely crafted.
In each of Louis' monologues, the problem of the time and the place he's speaking from is posed. Is he speaking from these people's house or is he at his home at another time? and so on.
And what he is coming to question is the "common".
He poses the problem in an extremely awkward way in the prologue, when he says, "I'm coming one last time to give myself the illusion of being master", thus, to control, to master right to the end … but to master … what? He says, in any case, "I'm coming to announce my death to give myself the illusion of being master". Thus, it's not the announcement itself that he's claiming to master! What is it? The question is asked: is it to master a path in life? Is it to master his family ? His relationship with his family? To master the relationship the others will have with his illness? But the relationship of otherness that he offers to have with the others is a relationship of mastery, and in any case, he denounces it out of hand as being an illusion, but this is what his project consists of: right to the end, to have a sort of attitude of mastery: " I left home, I wanted to, I was in control, and here, ill, I'm going to announce my death, I'm going to announce my illness": it is definitely this illusion of wanting to master, to channel what is the province of the human, of exchange and of sharing. It's a little the denial of the alive, of the moving. And what is precisely so alive, so moving is the fact that the project fails! For me, in Juste la fin du monde , there is exactly the same thing as what he says when he describes his battle against death, and it's as if it is Louis speaking when the artist says, "Dying is just the end of the world". Thus, there is something both cataclysmic and restrained in the word "just", the trace of an English sense of humour of someone who is going to die and who says, "Dying? It's nothing! It's just the end of the world!" Because one dies, one no longer sees the world, one no longer invents it, and that's what collapses and the others collapse too, and at the same time, he speaks to us of something terrible about this element which totally resists otherness: to die is, after all is said and done, just the end of the "others"! Such vanity …
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Thus, Louis has already said goodbye to his relationship with others, and to the place he leaves to exchange and to the possibility of exchange: this is what seems even more deathly to me, more morbid than the death itself he bears within, which also makes him say magnificent things when he is alone. His lucidity is at the same time his inability to go to encounter the other … the impossible project is not only the impossible project of speaking a death, of announcing it, it is the fundamentally impossible project of encountering the other! And it is of this failure that he speaks with such great lucidity. This is what I consider worthy of interest: there is both failure and, at the same time, the reasons for the failure! And he speaks the impossibility of achieving this exchange, he blames himself; he speaks of his illusion from the beginning, of his project that he knew was a little bit vain, but if we manage to perform the play correctly, it must be seen that this failure is not only the failure of a word, but the failure of all words! It is that to make the encounter impossible is, in fact, to not want it!
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In addition, Louis has put his family on stage: it's a bit terrible, this absolutely rapacious, cannibal relationship of an artist towards his family and the artistic use consequently produced! And I would very much like to show this angle in the stagework. This element interests me, staging this cannibalisation of the real, the intimate, with successive elements of great lucidity and great perversion, that is, at the same time as he magnificently gives the word to the other, he also proceeds to confiscate it. Then we say to ourselves that the levels become blurred, imperceptible, abyssal …
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Listening to the word: a semblance of shared happiness?

Louis' personal project is also, in a way, Lagarce's project, and we therefore wonder about the nature and the precise purpose of this return within the family, which is perhaps none other than to try to retell "the pitiful and infinite part of the World"! "to scarcely construct, once again, the flash of lightning, the hardness" (2). For me, the near and the far are located in relation to a fixed, hypothetical, fantastical point, that of absolute sharing, of the encounter, of absolute otherness. In other words, "At exactly what point in time do we speak FOR REAL?" and this is a question that is both theatrical and human. What is the exact instant of an encounter? And, by the same token, "At what instant does the word reach us?", "How do we listen to the word?", "When listening to the word, don't we think above all of ourselves?" etc. This tension, of the encounter, of otherness, that is perhaps also an abandonment, "an infinite calming", gives this impression of near and far, because it is indeed a question of finding the right, exact measurement of the relationship, as if an absolute, ideal place existed, where the encounter could take place. Perhaps it would be geographic, spatial, locatable? As if, by imagining that we could place ourselves - let's say - 4 ft from the other, we could say everything to them … But two inches too far or too close, bang, we totally miss each other, we have a row and we lose touch with each other for ever.
As a result, the language is constantly striving for the accuracy, the exactness of the possible relationship. Thus, everyone must make an impossible effort - for it is a genuine effort, it is tension, labour, difficulty, it wears down, tires out - to run after this thing which might be a semblance of shared happiness, a place of encounter where we would be perfectly understood.
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I don't think that anyone in this play speaks casually or without committing themselves completely. I think that in this play, each person is wholly committed to his word. Unlike other languages which, for various reasons - either linked to situations, or to the type of characters brought together - don't necessarily invite the actors to be totally involved in what they say.
With Lagarce, it seems to me that the word not only serves as the exchange, it is a desire for exchange, although it does not consist of it as such, the exchange is elsewhere. There is a pressing need to talk to each other, to listen to each other, to understand each other, while, at other times, for other plays, for other languages, this pressing need does not appear. It may be imperative to speak, but not to listen! - this is perhaps even what happens most of the time in theatrical writing. The text can be kept just a little way out in front. Here, it's impossible: there has to be an immediacy, an immediate presence of speech and the word and what is felt.

This is generous writing for generous actors ....