What’s the point of doing theatre?
A conversation with Christiane Véricel by Selene Verri and Nicolas Bertrand
What’s the point of doing theatre? That is the question, the big one emerged from a conversation with the two main representatives of Image Aiguë, the theatre company based in Lyon, France, that first conceived the Chôros project. Christiane Véricel is a pioneer: she is the founder of the company and the director of the play The Walking Man which was performed in the countries where the project took place. A very peculiar play, since it involves the public answering questions on the play itself.
Nicolas Bertrand took care of the organisational aspects of the project, and it’s him who first asks Christiane: “What’s the point of doing theatre as you do it?”.
Christiane : What’s the point of doing theatre… well, it’s high time I asked myself that question, after 33 years… However this question implies the opposite of what actually happened. It implies that once it has been done we ask ourselves retrospectively what the use of it is. But it’s not like that. It’s the same for Chôros: we didn’t conceive a European project just because it’s nice, it’s the European project that’s part of an artistic project.
When I founded Image Aiguë, 33 years ago, I wanted to bring together on the stage people of different ages and cultures, and to invent a theatre that didn’t start from the text, so that people could communicate between them, about shared interests, everyday life, the difficulties to survive, to live together, to get fed… A universal method where everyone could express themselves in theatrical form.
The second point was to bring out the value of these people on the stage, especially children, to make the best of their personality and culture. My idea was that the audience, watching all kinds of culture on the stage — I worked in the so-called “immigrant” or “difficult” neighbourhoods — would then be more tolerant towards these cultures.
We started on a local level and then went abroad, very far away, and only later we refocused on Europe, because we wanted to tell the public that this kind of theatre could help understand and build Europe. It helped understand that the Maghreb child or the Asian youth or the German immigrant, or someone from France, all these little bits of personalities were building Europe together, that Europe was not something coming from the outside, but it also expresses the European citizenship, and each of us contributes to it.
Selene : Seeing the results from the outside, it’s hard to imagine how all these people get to communicate and how it’s possible to have them work together. Especially without a text…
Christiane : Yes, there is some text, but it is a text that approaches universal themes, so it can be understood almost just through the tone of the voice, the philosophy is expressed through the theatrical image. Picking up crumbs because you’re hungry, that can be done both by a professional and a 6–7 year old child. Everyone does it in their own way, and then there is the personality of each actor. A child can think of Tom Thumb, while an adult will read this on a symbolical level, where the crumb represents food or money or a means of survival, even a means of power… This is true for the actors, and it’s also true for the audience.
Basically we do the opposite of what is done in traditional theatre: I don’t assign characters to play, I watch my actors play the stories I propose to them, and then I invent the characters. For instance, I realize that a child walks in a certain way, or expresses their joy in a certain way, or desires something in a rather violent way. I find this attitude interesting and we build a character on that. The hard part is making all this coherent with the other actors, with the music and also with the sequence of the stories. That is why we perform short stories, because doing this work for 20 people for an hour would be complicated. There is a logic, of course, but it is not a narrative logic in the traditional sense, it’s more a logic of association of ideas, of theatrical images.
Selene : So, during the Chôros project, were there any difficulties, maybe different from the ones you can find in France, with other cultures living in other countries?
Christiane : Each project is really very gratifying, it allows me to meet new personalities, new cultures immersed in different countries, and each time it’s both a challenge and a gift, it’s very inspiring.
The first meeting is always a source of wonder because we meet new personalities, and at the same time source of fear, because we don’t know if what I propose is going to work. In general, it works, but there might be some resistance, and we have to take into account the relationships between the actors. Do they know each other or not? And can the way I treat each of them produce tensions? At the same time I am interested in the tensions inside a group, which are also social tensions: who has the power, who wants to show off, who doesn’t, which one should I push, which one on the contrary should I stop if they speak all the time… it’s very interesting to make the group function. If there are too many tensions the group is not going to function.
So, when I do this from inside my culture, I can cope, but when I’m working with a different culture, sometimes I need to ask our foreign partners to provide me with the right social codes.
Nicolas : On the organisational level, there is a process we go through with our partners, who have their own issues, their own criteria, their own visions of theatre, and that’s important, because we have to meet our own expectations, and we have to meet their expectations, and find something in common. And there is an extra cultural dimension, because when we work with immigrants in France, at least we live in the same city, we share the same space.
Selene : What about the audience in the different countries of the project?
Nicolas : The reactions have been very different from one country to the other, but it worked because the way we work breaks the conventions the audiences are used to. It was quite well adapted in Morocco, for instance, with the Théâtre Nomade team, who work under tents and have an approach similar to circus, with acrobatics, very popular stuff in Morocco; in Georgia theatre is quite academic, so we created a direct relationship which is quite unusual for them, and the same happened in Sarajevo, where they have contemporary theatre but quite academic.
Christiane : The Walking Man is the pretext for a conversation, and this can be brutal. If I was a viewer I don’t know if I would like to answer questions on a story right after watching it. So it is quite unexpected, and it is interesting for the actors of course, but it is also interesting for the viewers, because it can create a dialogue between them. Sometimes they see things in completely opposite ways. This is because it’s a very open show, it is not didactic.
So what is interesting for me as a director is to hear the audience talk, but also to conceive stories that must remain open to interpretation, because if we say everything in the story, the audience has nothing more to say. And it’s interesting for me to see how they feel the story, which kind of ending they would like to see, how it could be changed, how it could evolve…
But it is also interesting because there is a reflection on the world, on how society works.
Selene : And simple as it is, it is a kind of theatre that treats very political topics. Can this have repercussions on freedom of expression?
Christiane : Sure. For example in one of the scenes there is a border. Once I had an audience of immigrant students, some legal some not, and I asked if the characters were right in crossing the border, disobeying the authority. And they all said they shouldn’t have, while they had done it themselves.
Nicolas : I don’t think there is any censorship concerning the message, it’s more the project itself that may encounter some difficulties, some bureaucratic obstacles, for example. But it’s probably true of all collaborative projects.
Christiane : We get really all kinds of reactions, and I think that’s why it’s important to bring The Walking Man around Europe, and that’s why I would like to make a sequel.
Nicolas : Listening to you, I realised that our visions are strongly oriented by the political system: speaking must be done in a certain way, inside a certain frame, while here, the way people speak and share ideas is not at all like this, and so for example at the Sarajevo orphanage the result was a very open approach.
Christiane : If I’m not mistaken at the orphanage someone — a teenager or a child — said something he wasn’t supposed to say, and that’s good. Since it’s destabilizing, he didn’t even stop to think “Should I say this or not?”. And I’m thinking: is it like in the ancient forums, was there this kind of freedom of speech? How was it done? It might as well be like this.
Nicolas : I think the artistic approach could be a model for political and civic initiatives.
