I thought I was done writing for today having churned out three articles this morning already. But apparently my after-lunch coffee propelled me through the all-but-latest issue from L’avant-scène théâtre. They are still catching up from a roughly six month hiatus, so this issue is labeled «1er janvier 2021» despite having arrived in late July 2021, and despite featuring a play that had its opening run in late June.
Je ne cours pas, je vole! (“I don’t run, I fly!”) is another show that had a run at the Festival d’Avignon Off. I have no idea if it will get picked up by a production company for a subsequent Paris engagement. On the one hand, it was written by Élodie Menant and directed by Johanna Boyé, the same team that created the successful Est-ce que j’ai une gueule d’Arletty?, winner of two Molières in 2018. It was also sponsored in part by Théatre 13 and La Pépinière Théâtre, Paris outfits both. On the other hand, it’s not a great show (in my opinion) and is topical enough to give it a short shelf-life.
The show’s debut was perfectly timed to coincide with the Covid-delayed 2021 (né 2020) summer Olympics in Tokyo, as its subject is the motivations, obstacles, and psychologies of Olympic athletes. The main character is a fictional French track hopeful Julie Linard, but real-life personalities Usain Bolt, Haile Gebreselassie, Laure Manaudou and Rafael Nadal all appear as supporting characters with substantial air time.
Je ne cours pas, je vole! has decent mechanics, with interlaced scenes of training session, family discussions, tensions with her coach, internal monologues of self-doubt or dedication, and play-by-play narrations of competitions. The story line avoids being predictable, as it’s neither a straight shot to a cathartic payoff after all that hard work, nor a tragic downfall stemming from some fatal flaw. Julie has some setbacks in the 2008 Olympics, overcomes some difficulties with more than generic particulars, and ends up blowing past her best previous times while still falling short of the 2012 Olympic podium.
The opening and final scenes feature Julie as a sports reporter covering the 2016 Olympic games. In the press conferences she asks various established champions questions that are a little too obviously aimed at herself as much as at those who are still competing. But the answers they give are varied, amusing, and original, and the answers that she eventually gives to herself are original and communicated to the audience with some subtext.
Overall there’s just not that much new or interesting here. By the very nature of their enterprise, track athletes are easily stereotyped as one dimensional, and this show doesn’t do much to move the audience off that preconception. Sure, Julie has a family, and a history of asthma, and some psychic dialogue with other great athletes of her time. But fundamentally, she runs in a straight line. She trains, she runs, she tries to run faster, she wins or she loses. Julie may feel that she flies, but this play never gets beyond just running.