ARCHIVES 2014 / Mai, juin, juillet

The Théâtre de l'Odéon is under siege. Dozens of angry youths have decided to occupy this temple dedicated to a bourgeois culture—for proof, one need only look at the gilded décor, the red curtains, even the repertoire. Jean-Louis Barrault, the theatre's director, tries to understand the situation, torn between the anxiety caused by the attack and the empathy he feels for those passionate youths. Using Denis Guénoun's text as a starting point, Christian Schiaretti recreates the events of 1968. He shares with us the recent history of French theatre, marked by two other founding events: the meeting in Villeurbanne of the directors of the various Centres dramatiques and Maisons de la culture, and a particularly eventful Festival d'Avignon. Jean Vilar in Avignon and Jean-Louis Barrault in the Théâtre de l'Odéon are, for Guénoun, the united and conflicting poles of French theatre at the time. The future will have to find its way between them. Played respectively by Robin Renucci and Marcel Bozonnet, those two figures are surrounded by a number of young actors whose number and energy convey the ebullient spirit of May, the studious elation of June, and the rebellious enthusiasm of July. With May, June, July, Schiarreti gives us a political saga in which allegories, choirs, and prosody serve poetry as much as they do the understanding of those events and of what was at stake.

Named director of the Théâtre National Populaire in 2002, Christian Schiaretti has since put on over twenty shows there. An ardent defender of theatrical companies and of the concept of repertoire, he'll put on classics (Molière, Cervantes) as well as more modern plays (Paul Claudel, Aimé Césaire). The question of power is often at the heart of his work, especially in his adaptations of Shakespeare (Coriolanus, King Lear), Victor Hugo (Ruy Blas), and Michel Vinaver (Overboard). But it is first and foremost his passion for language and poetry that motivates his creations and his political engagement. A poetry he gives us to hear through the voices of some of the greatest actors—Nada Strancar, Marcel Bozonnet, Serge Merlin, Laurent Terzieff—and which he offers as an exercise to the youngest. A winner of numerous awards (Molière for best director and Molière du Théâtre Public for Coriolanus in 2009, Grand Prix du Syndicat de la critique for his direction of Michel Vinaver's Overboard in 2008), Christian Schiaretti returns today to the Festival d'Avignon, where he directed Alain Badiou's Ahmed le subtil (Ahmed the Subtle).

Doctor in philosophy, professor, poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, actor, director; for a long time Denis Guénoun considered those activities connected but distinct. Three creations by his company, L'Attroupement, played at the Festival d'Avignon in 1981, including his directions of Eugène Labiche's Chapeau de paille d'Italie (The Italian Straw Hat) and Patrick le Mauff's Temps de guerre, Temps de paix (Time of War, Time of Peace). In 1990, Denis Guénoun did not renew his mandate as director of the Centre Dramatique National de Reims, and instead dedicated himself to academia and research in the fields of philosophy and theatre. Those two disciplines have become inextricably linked recently as, having come back to the theatre with his company Artépo, he aims to give a voice to ethical and political philosophy on the stage. In charge of the “Expériences philosophiques” (“Philosophical Experiences”) collection for the publisher Solitaires Intempestifs, author of the essay Hypothèses sur l'Europe (About Europe: Philosophical Hypotheses) and of the memoir Un sémite (A Semite), Denis Guénoun now understands the multiplicity of his modes of thinking and of expression as a resource to replace theatre in a larger worldview.

Renan Benyamina, April 2014