L'avant-scène théâtre – Monsieur Miller

2022-07-012022-07-07

Vole Eddie, vole !

The current issue of L’avant-scène théâtre (dated 15 April 2022 — they are still catching up from Covid disruptions) features the play Vole Eddie, vole ! by Léonard Prain. Rather than put it on the pile to be read in due course, I uncharacteristically picked it up as bedtime reading the night it arrived, and finished it in a single gulp. Prain has picked an unusual subject for a French play: the story of British ski jumper Michael Edwards, aka “Eddie the Eagle”. Eddie competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and made history despite finishing last, as he was the first British athlete ever to qualify for the Olympic ski-jumping events. His efforts to qualify for the Olympics by completing a 70m jump in a formal competition attracted a cult following worldwide, and he became a star of the 1988 Olympics despite his guaranteed losing status (top jumpers reach 120m).

The story is well documented (on Wikipedia and elsewhere): Eddie came to skiing late, did not have the typical body type for skiers, and wore thick corrective lenses. As a teenager he tried out unsuccessfully for the British national downhill ski team, so switched to ski jumping where there was no British competition. Eddie self-funded a quixotic campaign to reach the Olympics (self-funded, as the British national sports organization ignored him). He spent years living in his car and eating meager rations to save all his money for travel and skiing fees. According to the play, at least, his parents had little to offer him, and his father was dead set against Eddie’s folly.

Given the events recounted are relatively recent, I found myself asking “Does the play add anything to the tale ?” I’m not looking for novel details or scandalous revelations, but rather some insight or human exploration of Eddie’s character and odd journey. Alas, I find myself answering “No”. The dialog is smooth and the language descriptive. The play is designed to be performed by just three actors: one plays Eddie, one plays all the other male parts, and one plays all the other female parts. We see Eddie’s mother and father, his teachers and school coaches, his school peers (both dismissive and competitive), and eventually journalists, sports-casters, and race officials. The character of Eddie is presented as forever a child, with a good natured humor and more than a touch of buffoonery. He is never angry, though he does argue with his parents about his choice to ski rather than follow his father into the family plastering business. In all, not a lot dramatic or thought-provoking.

But it was a pleasant exposure of a fun story, a bit of an amuse bouche as it were. Speaking of which, I’m off shortly to travel to Avignon for the annual theater festival there. I hope I will have lots of blog posts for that!

Updated (2022-07-07): Check out this photo from Avignon:

La distribution à Avignon: Léonard Prain, moi, Sophie Accard, et Benjamin Lhommas

That’s me with the cast of Vole, Eddie, Vole ! I randomly came upon the three of them on this opening afternoon of Festival Avignon. They are here performing the show as part of the Festival OFF. We chatted a bit and I said I’d come see the show. I’ll update my review if I manage to make it to a performance.

2022-02-06

Jacques et son maître, par Milan Kundera (à Diderot)

Yesterday I read the play Jacques et son maître: Hommage à Denis Diderot en trois actes. The play was written (in French) in 1971 by Czech writer Milan Kundera. It is a «variation – hommage» on a novel that I haven’t read, Diderot’s Jacques le Fataliste et son maître, which was started in 1765 and published in installments from 1778 to 1780. The novel is apparently a series of philosophical dialogues between a servant and a master, including numerous digressions, bawdy stories, and presentations of new fables (e.g. La Gaine et le Coutelet).

The play is much the same, although Kundera fiercely corrected anyone who called it an “adaptation” of the novel. Instead, it honors Diderot’s original but uses modern theatrical devices like breaking the fourth wall from the opening lines, having characters openly question the talent of the (absent) playwright who is scripting their lines, and staging multiple plays-within-a-play. For all that, though, it remains light-hearted and easily accessible, more entertainment than social commentary. At a guess, it has updated the dialogue of Diderot and dropped most of the philosophy.

To the extent that is philosophical investigation remains, it centers on whether our destinies are our own to shape, or whether «ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas est écrit là-haut». If our fates are already written, then what sense does it make to hold others responsible for their actions, good or bad? In the case of Man and God, this question has one import, but of course Jacques and his master consider it in the context of Character and Playwright, where the answer is (perhaps?) more clear. However as his master asks, «est-ce que tu es un salaud parce que c’est écrit là-haut ? Ou est-ce que c’est écrit parce qu’ils savaient, là-haut, que tu étais un salaud ? Quelle est la cause et quel est l’effet ?» Kundera doesn’t offer much by way of answer, but the audience doesn’t really care.

The bulk of the play is telling and retelling variations of the same story of love triangles (well, really lust triangles) gone wrong: man dallies with woman, then manipulates his friend into marrying his pregnant mistresses; woman is spurned by man, then manipulates her former lover into marrying a disguised prostitute; man offers to help friend hide a secret tryst with a woman, then sleeps with her himself; man offers to arrange a night of debauchery for his friend, then tips off the authorities to expose friend in compromising position. Throughout it all, Jacques tries to tell his master the story of how Jacques lost his virginity, and how that lead to his falling in love with a different woman. There’s lots of ribald details about the sizes of the women’s breasts and butts. It’s a little cringy, but the women are triumphant and the men ruined often enough that it’s still possible to produce this play in 2021 (Théâtre Montparnasse) without attracting too much opprobrium.

The play reminded me a bit of Fin de Partie by Beckett, which was written 14 years earlier. Each has the central dynamic revolve around a servant and a wheelchair-occupying master. Each has a lot of recurrent bits of dialogue and stories that are lengthened each time they are told. And each questions what controls and is controlled by the world we see on stage. But Beckett’s work is far more brooding and gloomy while Kundera’s is whimsical and ironic. None of Kundera’s characters take themselves all that seriously. Moreover, the Kundera dialogue is far more familiar and free than Beckett’s, which is turgid and formal. Perhaps it’s just easier for a Czech to write in French than an Irishman?

Some Vocabulary I Learned

There were a number of words and colloquialisms I learned while reading the play:

faire la noce – faire une partie de plaisir ; mener une vie de débauche.
un bambocheur – Personne qui aime faire la fête.
se toquer – Avoir brusquement un vif engouement pour quelqu’un ou quelque chose
un ardillon – Pointe de métal d’une boucle de courroie, de ceinture.
un tendron – Très jeune fille (d’âge tendre).
une grue – Populaire. Femme de mœurs faciles et vénales ; prostituée.
se fourrer – S’engager dans (une situation embarrassante).
une crécelle – Moulinet de bois formé d’une planchette mobile qui tourne bruyamment autour d’un axe.
- voix de crécelle – aiguë, désagréable.
une raclée – Volée de coups.
- filer (= donner) une raclée à qqn.
pouilleux – Misérable et sale.
une jante – Partie circulaire à la périphérie d’une roue de véhicule.
un essieu – Pièce transversale d’un véhicule, dont les extrémités entrent dans les moyeux des roues.

2022-01-19

Un Prince, pièce d’Émilie Frèche

Now that I’m done with Camus, I can catch up on some back issues of L’avant-scène théâtre. Last night I did a quick read of their July 2021 issue, which featured the play Un prince by Émilie Frèche. Weighing in at just 21 pages it’s barely more than an extended scene, an unbroken monologue by a single character (“un homme”) played by Sami Bouajila. The play first made an appearance at théâtre d’Antibes in November 2020, then had a much delayed and then abbreviated run at the same theater in July 2021. I had heard of Antibes, but didn’t really know where it is until I looked it up on a map (it’s in the far south east of France, between Cannes and Nice, just 60 miles from the Italian border).

The play shows a French man of Algerian descent, now homeless (as the the French say SDF = sans domicile fixe) and living in an abandoned construction site. The man’s father moved from Algeria to France in search of a peaceful life with economic opportunity, but the man’s own life didn’t work out that way. After 20 years of growing up poor and another 20 years of working at low wage jobs, he finds himself destitute after the factory he spent years at relocates to Algeria (!) in search of cheaper labor. The man sits among the piles of sand and gravel, somewhere between half- and fully-deluded about the nature of his situation, speaking of his goats and his fields of agranier.

We learn in bits and snatches the story of the man’s father, his own childhood, his life as a young married person, his economic dissipation, and his multiple refusals to accept help from the French social services. In the end the man concludes that France is not a land of peace at all, but one of constant economic warfare. Throughout the tone seems wistful rather than harsh, and at times a bit playful.

The solo actor Sami Bouajila is apparently quite famous; he’s appeared in over 50 feature films since 1991 and garnered 2 César awards, including the 2021 prize for Best Actor in the film Un fils. I’ve never seen him in film, but you can get a small taste of his stage performance from this teaser promotion for the July 2021 production of Un prince.

https://vimeo.com/596663608

Not a bad play, and one which I would have enjoyed more live than reading. But nothing that makes me want to go seek out more by this playwright.

2021-01-232021-01-23

Tertullien – a theatrical monologue against theater

Cover photo of Tertullien, by Harvé Briaux, published by L'avant-scène théâtre

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…