ARCHIVES 2014 / The Fountainhead

Based on the novel The Fountainhead, which became a bestseller in the United States upon its publication is 1943 and has encountered a growing success in Europe over the past few years, Ivo van Hove's play asks the question of the status of the artist in a capitalist society. The artist seems to be faced with two possible paths: he can either listen to the public to satisfy their most immediate desires, or listen only to himself and develop his own creativity, at the risk of being misunderstood. Ayn Rand opposes two characters, one of whom seems to have been largely inspired by “revolutionary” architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and clearly comes down on the side of art against commercial prospects. If in her novel Ayn Rand picks the side of rugged individualism against a collectivist State that supports all kinds of entitled parasites, Ivo van Hove is more interested in questions than in judgments. He lets the audience hear both sides' arguments, at a time when the question of artistic production within a system dominated by economic liberalism is particularly relevant, when a new world is being built right in front of us, when new relationships of power are being established. Once again, Ivo van Hove's theatre appears to be made of subversive questionings and disturbing dilemmas.

A director and artistic director, Ivo van Hove began by writing his own plays before taking an interest in dramatic literature and beginning to adapt screenplays. William Shakespeare, Marguerite Duras, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Sophocles, Eugene O'Neill, Albert Camus, and Heiner Müller stand alongside John Cassavetes, Ingmar Bergman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Luchino Visconti, with the avowed aim of letting his audience hear different languages and worldviews, both classic and modern. In 2008, for his first visit to the Festival, Ivo van Hove presented Roman Tragedies, combining three of Shakespeare's plays: Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. Paying particular attention to the performance space, to light, and to multimedia, the Belgian director has always been interested by a theatre that would be more subversive than strictly political, where one can “experience one's deepest fears and highest hopes.” Convictions shouldn't be moral but questions have to be dangerous in order to reveal the scars of the system and force us to reassess our positions. Since 2001, Ivo van Hove has been the director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam, one of Europe's most creative companies.

Born Alissa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg in 1905, Ayn Rand left Russia with her family after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. After a stay in Crimea, they emigrated to the United States in 1926, where Alisa changed her name to Ayn Rand and worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter, a playwright, and a novelist. Her first major success was The Fountainhead in 1943, followed in 1957 by Atlas Shrugged, the story of a group of entrepreneurs struggling against a pre-totalitarian socialist society, which has since become the bible of American libertarians.

Jean-François Perrier, April 2014