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Olivier Py: A Poet of the Stage: Analysis and Interview

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10267160500119028

1477-2264

David Bradby,

Historical and Literary Analyses

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Joyce McMillan, ‘Lured by Spun Satin’, Scotsman (18 August 2004). Tim Ashley, ‘Le Soulier de Satin’, Guardian (18 August 2004). Barrault revived this production in 1958, as well as adding a number of other Claudel plays to his repertoire. Finally, in 1980, he gave the first performance of the complete text, his last production before he was evicted from his Théâtre d'Orsay to make way for its transformation into the present Musée d'Orsay. This production opened in Orléans on 22 March 2003 before going on to play at Caen, Strasbourg and the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. It was revived, with the same cast, music and design, for the Edinburgh Festival on 16 and 17 August 2004. Anwen Jones, ‘The Drama of Ultimate Acceptance’, Programme essay, Edinburgh International Festival, 2004. The first is a Portuguese proverb: ‘God writes straight with twisted lines’, and the second is a quotation from Saint Augustin: ‘Etiam peccata’ (Even sin [serves God's purposes]). The play contains characters drawn from a wide range of geographical and ethnic groups – Chinese, Japanese, American, African, as well as European – but it casts all non-Europeans in the roles of servants or clowns. ‘Il faut que tout ait l'air provisoire, en marche, bâclé, incohérent, improvisé dans l'enthousiasme! Avec des réussites, si possible, de temps en temps, car même dans le désordre il faut éviter la monotonie. L'ordre est le plaisir de la raison: mais le désordre est le délice de l'imagination.’ Paul Claudel, Le Soulier de Satin (Paris: Gallimard, 1957) (‘Folio’), pp. 11–12. See Py's comment on this scène in the interview that follows. ‘L'image bleuâtre du Globe terrestre’ – see, e.g. p. 259, Claudel, Le Soulier de satin. Olivier Py, Théâtres (Besançon: Les Solitaires Intempestifs, 1998). The dramatis personae are listed as: ‘Moi-Même, Mon Bourreau, Mon Père, Ma Mère, Le Bouc’. Olivier Py, La Servante, histoire sans fin (Arles: Actes Sud, 1995), first performed in July 1995 at the Avignon Festival; Le Visage d'Orphée (Arles: Actes Sud, 1997), first performed in June 1997 at the Centre Dramatique National Orléans-Loiret-Centre before going to the honour court of the Popes' Palace at the Avignon Festival, July 1997. See Caridad Svich, ‘“A Process of Perception”: A Conversation with Bill Viola’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 14:2 (February 2004), 72–81. Viola's sequence entitled Catherine's Room, in its cycle from morning to evening and birth to death, and in its semi-abstract quality, is very reminiscent of the aims and methods and evocative theatricality employed by Olivier Py. Olivier Py, Le Visage d'Orphée, p. 7. In the programme note for Nous, les héros, by Jean-Luc Lagarce, staged by Olivier Py in April 1997, at the Ferme du Buisson, Marne-la-vallée, he stated: ‘I deeply despise the job of direction’ and in the interview that follows here he again states that he is ‘against director's theatre’. See, for example, David Whitton, Stage Directors in Modern France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987); Nicole Fayard, ‘A Last Bastion of Resistance: Georges Lavaudant's Theatrum Mundi’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 13:3 (August 2003), 37–46. Two prime examples were seen at London's National Theatre in 1976: Molière's Le Tartuffe directed by Roger Planchon and Marivaux's La Dispute directed by Patrice Chéreau; both productions originated from the Théâtre National Populaire at Villeurbanne. Interview held in Paris, 4 May 2004. Original French translated into English by Joël Anderson. Véronique Hotte, ‘L'Eternité PY’, Coups de Théâtre, 2 (1995), 11–14. Olivier Py, ‘Marcher sous une étoile’, interview by Georges Banu in Alternatives Théâtrales, 52/3/4 (1998), 105–7 (p. 107). Perhaps this insight helps to explain the comment by Bernard-Marie Koltès that he wanted actors to speak his texts at great speed, like a child reciting a lesson while dying for a pee (see Bernard-Marie Koltès, Quai Ouest (Paris: Minuit, 1985), p. 104). Ibid. E.g. Les Aventures de Paco Goliard (Besançon: Les Solitaires Intempestifs, 1992); La jeune fille, le Diable et le Moulin (Besançon: Les Solitaires Intempestifs, 1993).