Yesterday’s mail brought a new issue of L’avant-scène théâtre, dated 1 Décembre 2020. It features the full text of the play Un pas après l’autre by Fabio Marra. I’m not sure why it came just now, six months after the cover date, but at least the website is consistent: it declares that the product is available to purchase only starting 2021-07-02.
Theaters in Paris reopened with limited capacity on May 19, after a six month closure. With nothing new on stage, L’avant-scène théâtre suspended publication of new issues but allowed subscribers to request items from the back catalog. I recently received and read the February 2020 issue containing Marie des poules: Gouvernante chez George Sand, but haven’t had time to write up a post about it. In the meantime, I’ve started another Maigret novel, so the play will have to wait. I’ll get to it though – vacationing for several days over the July 4 holiday should give me plenty of time for reading. As they say, un pas après l’autre…
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.
I saw an unrelated show at Théâtre de Poche-Montparnasse in 2014. A cozy space.
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…
Paris shut down all its live theaters for several months during the Covid pandemic and the period of confinement. It has been gradually unwinding the shutdown (déconfinement), and today live theaters are announcing their reopening plans. It made me very happy to receive the email shown below in my inbox.
That’s right, five separate plays by Alexis Michalik showing in five separate theaters in Paris. He’s 37 years old, and inarguably the most popular French playwright of the 21st century. I have seen three of these plays on stage, and have read the other two. The script of each has been published in book form, and I have all five on my shelf. Heck, I even have framed posters for two of them sitting in my living room, waiting to be hung on the wall.
As you can tell, I’m a fan. I’ll write another post some time about the plays themselves and why I like them so much, but for now I just wanted to share the fact that they are reopening in August. Here in the US we are still in the “50,000 new Covid cases a day” phase of the pandemic, so seeing French theaters reopening is a reassuring source of hope. Michalik’s most recent work, Une histoire d’amour, won a Molière award for best director (he directed it himself), and I have read and enjoyed the text.
I’m looking forward to the day when Covid is behind us, France lifts its ban on US travellers, and I can make it back to Paris to see Une histoire d’amour.
Received 2020-07-02:
Nous ouvrons enfin ! Après tous ces mois d’attente nous sommes tellement heureux et impatients de vous accueillir pour cette rentrée 2020 !
