For my 50th birthday last month, I received a subscription to the publication “L’avant-scène théâtre”. They produce and mail to subscribers 20 issues a year, in a form factor that is more like a small book than a magazine. Each one is devoted to a show that has recently played on the French stage, and includes the full script as well as some articles, interviews, and tidbits about it. Think of it as an extended program from the theater, but bundled with the script. I have seen them on sale at shows I’ve attended in France, and purchased one or two on site (they are not free, unlike most programs in American theaters). The magazine has an interesting history dating back to 1899.
The first issue of my subscription arrived this week in a quaint airmail envelope from Paris. This number is for the one-man show Tertullien, written and performed by Hervé Briaux. It debuted at Théâtre de Poche-Montparnasse, Paris, in January 2018. I guess with the Covid pandemic keeping Paris theaters dark, there hasn’t been much new material to cover of late, so they are going back to second and third tier productions. Tertullien is a thin volume, roughly 4″ x 7″, with 64 pages of plain paper and black-and-white text. There are no pictures other than the front cover. Inside, there is a 10 page preface article about the show, followed by an unannotated text – an uninterrupted monologue by the sole, eponymous character of the work. It was a quick read that I managed in two sittings.
Tertullien the play is actually a modern adaptation of the treatise De spectaculis (“On the Spectacles”) by Tertullien the man. Tertullien was a Roman, born in the 2nd century A.D. into a family of pagans in Carthage. He grew up well educated and became a lawyer before converting to Christianity and becoming a fundamentalist, puritanical zealot. He is known to have written over 40 works, many of which survive to this day. I had never heard of him before, nor read any of his works, but apparently he was unwaveringly severe, an extremely black-and-white thinker.
The play is an attempt to take the argument of De spectaculis and present it in modern terms for the modern audience. The argument is: Theater is demonic, as are horse races, gladiator fights, the Olympic games, and competitive sports. Theatrical productions are the work of the Devil. They corrupt old and youth alike, they feature prostitutes and wastrels, and they reify our basest instincts. They are also idolatrous, because they involve actors pretending to be other people who they are not, and since people are made in the image of God, the actor makes of themself an idol (an effigy of man = an effigy of God). So shun the theater, and instead dream of the glorious day when Christ returns and all involved in the theater — playwright, cast, crew, and audience alike — will be tortured horribly in Hell for eternity. Now that’s entertainment.
Did I mention that this Tertullien guy was a bit extra?
There’s an obvious irony in putting this unbridled denunciation of the theater into the mouth of a character on the stage. But there’s no breaking of the fourth wall here, at least not in the text (a director/actor could add a physical wink, I suppose). No acknowledgement that the listener is in a theater, or the speaker is treading the boards. In an article appearing as a preface in the volume, Daniel Loayza asserts that the play forces us to re-examine why we do go to the theater, why we do find it valuable and rewarding. But there’s nothing about that in the play itself. No second voice offering rebuttals, no self-doubt lurking under the surface of the 40 page diatribe. Nope. Just your routine fire and brimstone.
The closest that you get to a refutation is a strawman that Tertullien-the-character offers (translation mine):
Maintenant, je veux bien admettre, là, devant vous, que parfois, dans certaines pièces de théâtre, on peut trouver des choses simples, douces, agréables, belles même, parfois même honnêtes, parfois même… Mais, inutile d’aller plus loin, j’ai senti, dès mes premiers mots, que quelques-uns d’entre vous ont poussé un soupir de soulagement, mêlé d’une approbation secrète.
Mais au nom du Seigneur! Réfléchissez! Croyez-vous que si je voulais vous empoisonner, je mélangerais mon poison avec de la merde? Non! Je le mélangerais avec des mets savoureux et bien assaisonnés. Je les accompagnerais de liqueurs douces et agréables. Quand on veut empoissonner les gens, on enrobe de douceurs ce qui va les tuer. L’Autre n’agit pas autrement.
Tertullien, par Hervé Briaux
Now, I will readily admit, here, in front of you, that sometimes, in certain plays, there may be found something simple, sweet, pleasant, even beautiful, sometimes even honest, even… Well, no use going on with that: even with my first words, I felt some of you breathe a sigh of relief, mixed with secret agreement.
But good God, don’t you see?! Do you think that, if I wanted to poison you, I would mix my poison into shit? No! I would put it into the most delicious dishes, wondrously spiced. And I’d serve them with refreshing, sweet drinks. When you want to poison someone, you sugar coat the thing that’s going to kill them. The Devil acts no differently.
As an exercise in maintaining my French comprehension, Tertullien was good to read. Beyond that, it’s a bit too didactic for my tastes. It has been 11 months since I last saw a show in the theater, and with Covid still raging it will be many months more until I can go again. When I do, I will relish it greatly, with only a little thought to the possibility that poison lies beneath the overt theatrical goodness. But I do hope the script will be better than Tertullien. Or if not, that it will be in French.
P. S. Literally minutes after I posted this article, the mail brought me two more issues of L’avant-scéne théâtre (the two October 2020 issues, oddly). Guess I better get started on my next blog post…
