Hello again after…(approximately) 4 months! Life (and by life I mean work) really did decide to throw me for a loop this year, what with innumerable college applications to sort out for students (ah yeah, I do that now), teaching feeling generally just more loaded than ever, and the added nonsense of having to navigate between two school sites (yeah, the admin at my establishment made some fascinating decisions last year because school is a business and businesses need to be in a perpetual state of expansion). Every time I have sat down to gather my thoughts a bit after getting home from a show, I’ve just felt nothing. Empty. A vide, if you will.
It’s like my brain is too exhausted from just constantly juggling other things that I’ve had to leave behind writing, something I avidly enjoy. But damn does capitalism really love sucking the joy out of things.
In any case, I am here now, so with the small bit of bandwidth I’ve managed to scrounge up from somewhere, here are some thoughts on the current theatre season.
Its…fine.
There have been some exceptions to this (see: Carte Noir nommé desire, which I saw again, as well as another piece which I will briefly touch on in a bit), but for the most part, what I have been seeing hasn’t left me with anything that lingers on after the show is done. Perhaps it’s because – aesthetically speaking – not much of what I have seen has proposed something new regarding the approach to staging / performance / audience relationship. Then again, it could also just be due to the fact that going to the theatre as much as I do almost inevitably means I have more chances of encountering something aesthetically familiar than not.
It is nice, though, when a surprise does come, and Hatice Özer’s Le chant du père at the MC93 on January 21 certainly was a welcome surprise. Semi-autobiographical and very intimate (staging it upstairs in the Salle Christian Bourgois helped), the piece is also something of a dialogue between Özer and her father who appears on stage with her. Yet rather than confrontational – a tone which a piece with the premise of a young person whose defied their immigrant + working class parents’ wishes and pursued a life in the arts could have adopted – the piece is steeped fully in melancholy. It’s the kind of bittersweetness that comes when one at once embraces traces of one’s past or origins, yet the very act of doing so simultaneously reveals how much has been lost – likely permanently – and the weight of these losses on one’s identity.
And though I cannot go as far as saying that Özer’s own history as she presented it on stage exactly mirrored my own, there were certain resonances in it that stayed with (and still in some sense are) with me after the performance ended. For one thing, Özer’s family hails from Anatolia and, for anyone who is not familiar with that region in modern-day Türkiye, the cultural and historic ties of the region with Greece are hard to ignore. This goes beyond the Ottoman years, as well as the genocides and (many) migrations and population exchanges in the area (though one really cannot minimize those). If you were to listen to the music, particularly the kind of blues that’s played in cafés that (on both sides of the Aegean) are largely (if not fully) dominated by men, even if you cannot understand the lyrics, there is an inherent sadness in the music, in the way a sustained note becomes almost like a thread, stretching out as though in search of something (or someone) that has wandered off, attempting to bring them back in.
Özer’s father is a musician, and, after she has finished setting out and pouring some tea, comes on stage from sitting in the audience, sits at the wooden table which – along with two chairs – makes up the sparse furnishings, drinks a tea, and then picks up his saz, and begins playing and then singing. Just prior to, and intermixed with this, Özer has told us some stories of her father – his gift for music, how she decided one day to just go into one of the cafés he and other Anatolian transplants to France frequented sometimes for hours to see what was keeping him in there. She does hint at the start of the piece that these stories, like all her father’s stories, are a mix of truth, fiction, and a bit of what I can translate as “mystery” or “uncertainty”, yet what does become very clear by the piece’s end is that the question of an adherence to “truth” does not really matter so much. It does not, for instance, change the basic fact that Özer’s father (and her mother) had to leave their homeland to try and seek a better life, that their French is an immigrant and working-class French and that their daughter – in her words – speaks Turkish like a child.
Language – and communication more broadly – is rather central in this piece, and in that sense, one could also consider the folk songs Özer’s father plays as a kind of language, an attempt to “re-inhabit” the body with melodies which are inextricably tied to place. Thus, it may (slightly) bridge that remaining gap that a loss in the poetics or subtleties of spoken/written language has left following the act of migration.
On a more personal note, other than the question of being able to speak one’s “mother” language (which I could certainly relate to), as well as Özer’s recounting of the difficulties she encountered at school when teachers could not (or – equally as likely – would not) pronounce her name correctly, what really weighed on me was the question of existing as something of an “in-between” – not entirely of one place or another one. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I may have been born in California, but there’s no way the name “Ifigenia” is not going to evoke the image of a “somewhere else”, the name thus becoming its own evidence of a migration. Hell, this is not a unique experience for other first-gens – and I cannot ignore the degree to which my white and class privilege have and continue to “shield” me from the ugliest sides of this. In my own case, though, I’ve also managed to go through a good portion of my public life using a shortened, more “palatable” version of my name. I have also come very close to losing the first language I learned to speak, and if it weren’t for my own initiatives, I would have probably lost numerous other cultural, historical, and culinary ties as well. My name says one thing, yet my lived experience, and the minute I open my mouth say another, no matter how many attempts towards closing these small gaps I have taken.
To return to Özer’s piece, the wonderful thing about theatre – and I am going to be cheesy here for a minute, sue me – is that the space and the medium are already pre-disposed to plural and alternative modes of language and dialogue. Of course, theatre is not a panacea, and no matter how close the act of (re)playing the gestures or rituals of a removed place approaches a lived memory, it will never be enough to erase the reminder of loss. But, as Özer, during the latter half of the piece, begins to “plant” long stalks of these small yellow wildflowers that grow abundantly in that part of the world all around the stage, something about the way this abundance of plastic flowers approximates a field – an unabashed construction of a place that itself likely a mix between the imagined and the “real” – felt, good. As in, settled good. As in, the recognition of the in-between as a possible new space in itself good. Unfixed and ephemeral, still, but somehow better than trying to force the dominance of one side of the familial / cultural divide over another.
For the sake of not getting too in my head on this (and because I did intend for this to be brief – though these things never are for me), I’ll end things here. Hopefully, I’ll be able to write more consistently soon, and maybe find the habit of regular post-show writing again. It’s hard to get back into the academic mindset – or rather, the researcher’s mindset – when things have been getting in the way for so long. Still, I’m trying.
It seems odd – or off, rather – to be writing right now.
But it’s also the first time in quite a long while that I’ve had enough down time to actually get to writing out my thoughts on what I’ve seen so far this season, so I figure I may as well just take it.
I won’t lay out my feelings here (those who know me know exactly where I stand on this and that’s fine enough for me), but I will close with taking a second to point out the overwhelming hypocrisy that is characterizing a vast majority of media responses to current events – October 7 of course, but particularly now the siege and very likely ethnic cleansing in Gaza, as well as the (expected but no less vile) opportunistic co-opting of these tragedies by the right/far-right.
With that, the two pieces for this post:
Another reason I am making a point of writing now is also the fact that the shows I am going to feature were – for now – the only two that left some kind of impression on me. Granted, this does not mean that it was necessarily a good one (I found both somewhat unsuccessful, but for differing reasons), but as I was saying to someone recently, after going to the theatre as often as I make a point of doing, sometimes just feeling a…thing…even if it is not overwhelmingly positive is better than leaving feeling perfectly neutral about the last hour(+) spent watching a performance. Call it an inevitable result from going to see as many things as I do, but it does take quite a bit to truly move me.
Also, both pieces happen to be based on works of English writers…so…it kind of makes sense to write about them at once anyway.
Écrire sa vie (based on The Waves and other texts by Virginia Woolf), dir. Pauline Bayle, Théâtre Public de Montreuil, Oct. 7, 2023
I’m not entirely sure if anyone has ever asked themselves why Woolf’s work (other than possibly Orlando, but I think I have an idea as to why) has never been adapted for the stage, but should anyone in the near future find themselves pondering over this question, I would advise them to look to this piece. This is not to say that it was a total disaster – in fact there were one or two moments I found quite beautiful (the synchronized movement sequence among the six players being one of them). Rather, what it more speaks to is an inherent limit in some of Woolf’s work that, oddly enough, is tricky to translate to the stage if one is not particularly attentive to it.
I’ve talked before about the idea of the plurality of the body on stage (see: Bovary but also my dissertation + book), with particular emphasis on the fact that the body in performance on a stage is at once the body of the actor as well as that of the character(s) they are incarnating. This, one could argue, comes somewhat close to Woolf’s treatment (or destabilization/destruction) the literary subject, yet the problem with theatre is that, unlike in written fiction, one must contend with the fact that the aesthetics of stage performance still more or less insist upon a 1:1 association between the actor on stage and whatever singular character they are playing in a given instance. Flowing in and out between two or several subjectivities is thus rendered almost impossible when the physical body still acting as a primary signifier for an audience. Of course, exceptions exist (see again Bovary, particularly the sequence at the end when Emma confronts Flaubert), but based on what I saw here, I think those exceptions would have to be relegated to either a small moment that reveals the – let’s say – cracks in that 1:1 representational system, or something that is constantly engaged with.
Given that Écrire sa vie is mostly based on Woolf’s The Waves, I really think it’s the latter option that should have been taken.
The piece – which begins with a bifrontal staging but then moves to a fully frontal one about 2/3 of the way through – centers around six friends who are meeting for a beach picnic to celebrate the return of a seventh friend from the army. Though it is never specified what time period we are in, the costuming, as well as the particularities of the references to war made throughout, suggest we are in the late 1930s (never mind that at one point we are all asked to join in a singalong to a modified version of “Hey Jude”). Like in Woolf’s novel, the majority of the piece centers around the friends’ interpersonal relationships, how they see one another and consider themselves as individuals within the center of it all. Unlike Woolf, however, the fluidity in stream of conscious – the almost wave-like way in which one character seeps into the story/narrative of another – is missing until the latter half of the piece. At that point – which followed a kind of air raid that destroyed the celebration – all the actors come back and semi-switch costumes. I say semi because the new outfits they wore leaned more towards borrowing colors or patterns from another costume rather than an exact copy. They then began to play a version of a childhood make-believe game they had already played earlier in the show, only this time the names they call each other are those associated with the costumes they are wearing, rather than with who they played earlier. This leads to confusion, culminating in a final moment in which each character states who they “are” while trying to “properly” identify the others.
And while I see what Bayle was trying to do here in terms of developing a commentary over the way in which our relationships with those close to us help shape who we become as individual subjects – they are, in part, the multitudes we contain, as several characters in the piece suggest – I do wonder why she chose to have this happen so late in the piece, after the 1:1 relationality between actor/character had already been established and confirmed. In some sense, having this come so late makes it seem almost forced, rather than organic or fluid as a way to harken more closely to Woolf’s text. It’s a shame, really, that it feels so stale because even amidst the tragedy of impending war, there is still a larger celebration of the randomness of life that underscores this. But I think also that for it to really have worked, the piece would have needed to lean much more intently towards the ludic element of the children’s games the actors played, destabilizing fixed identity from the start. Doing this with six actors, however, especially taking into account the randomness with which Woolf’s explorations of subjectivity – particularly through her stream of consciousness writing – flow on the page, is understandably tricky, hence my suggestion earlier on why Orlando seems to be better suited for stage adaptation (its comparatively easier, for instance, when you just need to keep track of one character who shatters the illusion of the actor’s body on the stage rather than several).
Avant la terreur (based on Shakespeare’s Richard III and other texts), dir. Vincent Macaigne, MC93 Bobigny, Oct. 8, 2023
Ah, we meet again Vincent.
After a six-year absence from the theatre to focus more on his acting career in television and cinema – I finally watched La Flamme + Le Flambeau for the first time recently, and let me tell you, his guest appearances on both were…a trip – Macaigne and his special brand of spectacular excess and destruction are back. And to get this out of the way now, no he does not seem to have tamed any of the aesthetic down quite yet.
Now, I was going to write something much more detailed about this one (because like with Je suis un pays, I have…thoughts), but I was informed last night when I was sharing my impressions on the piece with someone who had seen it a few days after I had that since last Sunday, Macaigne has made some edits to the production. Chief among these is the reduction of the run time from 3.5 hours to 2.5 hours.
I mean, look, already the 3.5-hour runtime listed the afternoon I saw it was an improvement from the 4+ hours of his last piece, so I guess we can take this development as a sign things are moving in a…tighter…direction. At the same time, this is still a show funded largely by public money, and given how production-heavy Macaigne’s work is – as well as how strapped almost all public services are in France currently –, I do wonder if perhaps these edits could not have been made sooner. Perhaps during rehearsal? In any case, most of my notes are now useless, but there is one key moment that survived the cut that I would like to speak about, mostly because it deals with a moment in Richard III’s reign that is not detailed in Shakespeare’s play directly, but that historians are – I believe – pretty much in agreement that the last Yorkist king of England had a hand in: the Princes in the Tower.
Before getting into this, yes, Macaigne’s piece is a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s play – and by extension of Richard III’s reign. As such, there are some elements that deviate further from the historical record than Shakespeare’s piece does. These include the swapping of Richard’s oldest sibling, King Edward IV, with a woman, Elizabeth (that she shares a name with Edward’s wife, Elizabeth Woodville, is likely a coincidence), a character named George (no, not George Duke of Clarence…he’s still here) who seems to be an amalgamation of Buckingham and – maybe – Tyrell, and key for our purposes, the reduction of the two aforementioned princes down to just one – Andrew.
Further deviating from Shakespeare and the historical record is the fact that though at the start of the performance the audience was commanded to close our eyes and imagine ourselves in the 1480s, there was no real adherence to historic-temporal coherence. In an early sequence – one that arguably has a sizeable bearing on the significance of the one I will get to in a moment – Richard projects videos taken from his supposed Instagram “For You” page on a series of television screens on stage. The images are all real, and if one were to watch the videos on their own, one might be momentarilyshocked at the instances of intense violence, but watching a never-ending sequence of horrific accidents makes it difficult to ignore not just how disturbing by nature these videos are, but also what our appetite for them says about us and, perhaps, our numbness to violence.
And this brings us to the prince in the Tower.
This is the longest sequence, I believe, excepting those where someone has a monologue. The sequence happens in two camera shots. The first is backstage, where Richard goes and grabs Andrew from the cage where the boy has hidden himself and begins to strangle him. The second happens immediately after and it is on stage and almost right in front of us. Richard drags Andrew back behind a box that is up slightly stage right; however, we have cameras that are to the side and above that show him strangle him and we see that fully frontally. This is shocking. However, the message I believe that McCain is trying to get across is rather clear, and will likely be clearer now, given the extensive cuts.
Just before the scene happened, Andrew had his own monologue. Essentially, unlike in other plays where the new generation comes out and chastises the old generation, Andrew also recognizes the fact that the older generation is one that was itself begot by violence and came up in violence. I am thinking, for instance, when George early in the play talks about how his parents would always repeat to him how life was better before he arrived. Thus, if one is coming from that violence, then what else can one expect except to continue to perpetuate violence? In any case what Andrew does is he essentially forgives or pardons the old generation. At the same time, he also makes it clear in his speech that the urgency with which the whole piece is underpinned by is not going away anywhere, that the terror that’s in the title of the piece is coming. We are about to run face first into it, and we have to act and do something and the only thing we might have working on our side is the fact that this kid is talking and showing us that there is a possible other way if only we listen to him if only Richard essentially humbles himself and gives up power willingly.
The problem, of course is that Richard does not want to do that, even though it is very obvious to him and everyone else that what he’s doing is going to lead to mass destruction. And it is as a result of this that we get Richard strangling Andrew on stage, the boy’s convulsions seen not directly, but by proxy via the overhead and onstage cameras. It’s a confrontation, in other words, not just with the violence that was also found in the images projected on the screens earlier, but also with our own gazes and thirsts for violence that keep those images popping up on our algorithms.
Thus, the implication in the killing is essentially unabashedly displaying what they generations in power now are doing or have been doing to the rest of us for the past 15 to 20 years. This gets even more interesting when considering the ages of the actor playing Richard because he is about the same age as McCain, who would be classified as Gen X because he was born in 78. This is often thought of sometimes as the more apathetic generation or the new lost generation but there is a sense of responsibility there anyway: ignorance of the violence that characterizes one’s upbringing only serves to kick the can down the road rather than break the cycle definitively. And so, we kill the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. We sacrifice the young so that the old do not need to ask questions about the stability and viability of their system. There is an urgency in Andrew’s speech, augmented further by the manner of his death. Laws of succession aside, there are strong implications for our present moment in seeing an adult strangle a child who was trying to warn him of his hubris. At the same time, Macaigne’s aesthetic is also a little bit tiring to me at this point because it’s been done over and over again. At the same time though I can see why he reverts to this because the urgency has never been heeded to. I will say this is, I do think this piece was more successful somewhat than his previous piece six years ago because it doesn’t fall into the trap of conservativism that I saw in the latter, but I’m not sure what to definitively think about it.
It’s certainly been a while (I think this may be the longest pause I’ve taken in my writing since I started this blog), but it’s not for lack of material to write on (my theatre bookings were still packed – as usual).
No, this time, let’s just say that my teaching schedule got decidedly fuller following the December holidays, and as such, some things had to be temporarily set aside.
But now that is, thankfully (hopefully), done with, and we can get back to our semi-regularly scheduled programming.
A quick announcement before beginning: my book has been officially published!
I’ve left the publisher’s link here for those who may be interested. Do note that if you have institutional affiliation (and your institution has an agreement with Springer Nature) the book is also available open access.
Some thoughts on that whole experience: overall a whirlwind, but one that I would like to do again at some point (I have some ideas for a future topic), if only to get to relive the feeling of opening the package of my author copies and holding one of my “babies” in my hands for the first time (doubly significant since I never got to hold a Harvard-bound hardcopy of my dissertation given…the whole pandemic…thing). But anyway, if you read here and either you decide to read it (or have requested your uni library to purchase a copy), I’d actually love to know, if for no other reason than I want to see how my “baby” is doing fully independent of me.
And now to the reason why we are here:
Avignon.
Yes, my dear small (very small) group of readers, I have finally popped my Avignon theatre festival cherry, which is quite hilarious when I think about it, given what my research is primarily focused on. I still maintain, however, that my primary reasons for hesitating (other than the fact that a great many things would be passing through Paris at some point anyway – so much for decentralization), including the fact that the thought of being in the South of France in the dead of summer with no beach nearby gave me great pause, to say nothing of the need to plan this months in advance, were legitimate enough for my avoidance, but this year – on a literal whim – I decided I was finally sick enough of people’s shocked expressions when I told them I’d never been to put the hesitations aside and see what all the fuss was about.
In short, this is going to very likely become a new summer ritual (a pre-Greece mini holiday, if you will), albeit with the following amendments going forward:
Stay a week rather than three days (got in late afternoon on the 8th, left early afternoon on the 11th…it was not nearly enough).
Book accommodation much farther in advance (and actually in Avignon because, as nice as Villeneuve was, going to and from the city center was a bit annoying).
Bring a fan – better yet, bring one of those mechanical fan spray things that soccer moms used to use on us during/after games.
Get the Avignon Off card.
See shows programmed as part of the Off.
As that last point makes it clear, I only saw shows that were programmed in the main festival this year (and only three at that), but for a first time, I’d say this wasn’t too bad.
Regarding the shows: funnily enough there was something of a theme that tied the three together, as disparate as they were in terms of form and subject matter. In a word, that theme is “Hell”, though – with one very notable exception – this should not be taken as a pejorative. While the first show I saw was somewhat “hellish” in the infernal frustration I felt while watching it (more details on why below), the second and third pieces evoked ideas of Hell to much more deliberate – and I would arguably say more successful – artistic and political ends. I’m hoping, then, that the aesthetics (and risk-taking) seen in the latter two bode well for the future of Tiago Rodrigues’s tenure as artistic director of the festival (because, let’s face it, given my very obvious fondness for his work as a playwright, his appointment was another reason why I decided to come this year).
With that said, onto the (hopefully brief) rundown of my thoughts, in chronological order:
Welfare (d’après le film de Frederick Wiseman), mise en scène de Julie Deliquet, Cour d’Honneur du Palais des Papes, Saturday July 8, 2023
This one was a bit of a last-minute addition, as some last tickets opened up about a week before I was set to head down. I will be honest, I was not too keen on seeing this piece (and my instincts about why may have been right), but given that it was opening the festival at the Cour d’Honneur (and that Julie Deliquet is only the second woman in the festival’s 77 year history to be given that honor – which says…a lot), I figured it would at least give me a chance to experience what is acknowledged as the most prestigious of the many venues reserved for performances.
As the title suggests, the piece is an adaptation of Wiseman’s 1973 documentary of the same name which chronicles the activity at a welfare center in New York. Deliquet’s adaptation retains more or less a realistic tone while integrating two of the standbys of classical tragedy: unity of place and unity of time. Rather than re-situating the narrative (both territorially and temporally) in France or at least taking it to the modern day, Deliquet instead chooses to keep to the 1973 setting, revealed as a sort of YMCA-like gymnasium-turned-help center as stagehands work to slowly take down the makeshift “dressing rooms” while the audience files in as an adapted raising of the curtain. It is December, the holidays are around the corner, and for the next 2.5hrs we are going to bear witness to the trials and turbulations of a broken system with the understanding that, though the narrative takes place only within the span of a workday, it is doomed to occur again in almost Sisyphean repetition.
Before I get to my own thoughts, I want to quickly reference this New York Times article published on July 9 which touches on many of the same issues I had with the piece (though I will point out one thing: Cappelle’s claim that the working class is “hardly well-represented” in the profession of acting is perplexing to me, given that, unless you are one of the very rare prestige performers, you are very likely straddling a fine line between making a decent living and falling off into poverty with how unstable the industry is here. There is a reason, in other words, that the status of “intermittent worker” as applied to those in the performance industry is its own economic/tax category here). Yet, I would also like to expand a moment on one of the primary reasons why I referenced my experience watching this play as “infernal” earlier: namely the dissonance brought about by maintaining the documentary’s realism and then staging the thing in this particular space.
In short, it’s frustrating, in a way, how here we have a piece that talks about how broken a country’s social aid system is being staged in a festival that has – let’s face it – lost quite a bit of its “Populaire” roots and imaginings, to an audience of out-of-towners (many of whom come from Paris for the occasion), most of whom paid at least 40 euros for a seat, and who – on top of that – have very likely never had to experience a welfare system first-hand. And I do not mean to suggest here that these kinds of stories should not be on our stages, but rather that why we are watching this, who is watching (that is, what kind of gaze is dominating the audience space), and – key here – where we are watching are essential questions that all need to be addressed before a project gets a green light, or at the very least during rehearsals.
The “why” part of the equation was, of course, easy to pick out. In the interactions between the social workers and those visiting the center, there are what should be very uncomfortable resonances to today, not just in the American context (where social aid has basically been all but stripped of any meaningful funding to actually be able to offer help), but in France as well, where the current administration has made it almost its mission of continuing a politics that dates back to at least Sarkozy of stripping public funding wherever it can. A piece like this, then, should be here to offer a dialogue. Yet, in continuously watching those who’ve come in for help slam into a brick wall of bureaucracy where even a slight acknowledgement from a social worker who only has so much empathy they can dole out before they, too, run out of gas is not enough to shake the perpetually nagging notion that these folks are not, and likely will never be fully heard, the obvious gap (at least in this space) between the stage and the house only grows wider instead of closer. One of the questions that came to my mind after I left the theatre and was walking back to Villeneuve was whether or not the piece would have been more successful – all other dramaturgical decisions remaining unchanged – had it been staged in a more intimate space, if for no other reason than to make the feeling of perpetual entrapment inescapably palpable to those who have (again very likely) had the privilege of never having needed to experience it. Yet, even this has its own limitations, though I would say these are more ethical than just strictly dramaturgical.
I touched on this somewhat in my dissertation (and in my book – oh look, a shameless plug) when I talk about Ils n’avaient pas prévus qu’on allait gagner at the MC93, but one of the other things that nagged me about this experience was the degree to which the portrayals of the people on stage more or less conformed to codified perceptions of certain social/racial/economic groups which I will differentiate from the documentary because, as this is a theatrical adaptation and performance, the choice in how to play certain characters, the gestures, body language, vocal inflections, etc. belong just as much – if not more so here – to the craft of the actor and the aesthetic vision of the director as they do to their source of inspiration. Playing a certain way is a choice, in other words, and I wonder again here about the ethics of adopting the names and stories of people who existed, yet whose marginality (as well as the fifty years separating Wiseman’s documentary from the present day) makes the question of appropriating their stories and adapting them for the theatre very murky. As with the other piece mentioned above, the crux of the matter lies in who holds the power to tell a story, and whether the structures of that power maintain or destabilize already established social hierarchies.
There was one point in the second half of the show where one character – a former professor, or at least someone who was very educated based on his speech patterns and references he dropped in during his exchanges with other characters – makes an allusion to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as a way to describe the tragic – yet at the same time absurd – purgatory of his own predicament, and I wonder if here there was not perhaps another thread that could have been followed. Leave the need to adhere to realism behind, take advantage of the size of the space and heighten the absurdity to that Beckettian level which is itself steeped in unignorable darkness. I am very aware that the suggestion I offer here breaks away almost entirely from what I saw on my first night in Avignon, but staging pieces that, in the end, only serve to demonstrate a certain reality without taking aesthetic and dramaturgical risks to interrogate and destabilize modes of representation is a great general frustration I have with theatre these days (and not just in France).
Speaking of risks, however…
A Noiva e o Boa Noite Cinderela, texte et mise en scène de Carolina Bianchi, Gymnase du lycée Aubanel, Sunday July 9, 2023
I should probably start by posting a content warning for this one, given that both the subject matter and the staging of the piece give a rather visceral look into sexual assault, and, beyond that, manners of representing or dialoguing with these experiences in theatrical and/or performance art mediums.
It was also the only piece that was playing during my stay that was strongly discouraged for those under 18, which I admit intrigued me. Those who know me well know that I don’t shock easily (and to push it further – that I gravitate towards things that claim to “push boundaries”), yet oftentimes I find that pieces that come with such warnings tend to over-promise and under-deliver in terms of actually proposing something that shakes sensibilities rather than reproduce the same tired tropes and discourses. We cannot all be Sarah Kane premiering Blasted at the Royal Court Theatre for the first time, in other words.
Yet here, Bianchi, who bases this piece in part on her own experience of being drugged and then raped ten years ago, arguably succeeds in at least partly pushing back against certain elements of the “empowered/revenge” narrative. While this often serves to frame the aftermath following an incident of assault/rape, it does so – as suggested by the piece – while ignoring the underlying root of the problem: namely the hellish reality that many women (and here it should be understood that I am using the term in reference to cis, trans, non-binary, and genderfluid/nonconforming folks who may still outwardly present as “feminine”) have to navigate when the threat of losing one’s bodily autonomy is constantly looming over one’s head. It doesn’t matter, the piece argues, how many times one can repeat that “our survival is our revenge”. This does not change the fact that a violation of the body happened. A car on the stage – a central prop piece in the latter half of the show – sports a license plate that reads “Fuck Catharsis”. There will be no emotional release and recovery; there are only the stories and experiences of these events which we in the house will bear witness to in all their raw intensity without any promise of empty “transcendence”.
One thing that does give me pause, however, is that this piece is billed as the first part of an eventual trilogy, and, more precisely, that it takes some cues from another very famous literary trilogy: Inferno from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Obviously, I have not seen the other two parts of the trilogy yet (nor do I think they have been created), but referring to Inferno as one primary source of inspiration (the piece opens with several lines from the opening canto projected onto a large screen), and knowing how the rest of that trilogy progresses, I am really hoping this is a one-off reference and not necessarily a sign of the future progression of Bianchi’s work (though, to be honest, I would actually be more surprised if she did follow a Inferno–Purgatorio–Paradiso trajectory). I don’t think the intensity should be diluted, in other words.
And intense it was, starting from the opening when Bianchi, alone on a starkly, uncomfortably white stage (and wearing a white outfit herself), entered and launched into a monologue which evoked more an opening of a conference than a theatre piece. On the screen behind her, she projected Botticelli’s series Nastagio degli Onesti, inspired by the story of the same name from Boccaccio’s Decameron, which, to keep things brief, involve a woman being hunted down by a knight who kills her, dismembers her, and feeds her to his dogs, only for the “infernal hunt” to begin again in the morning. All this because the woman had the audacity to reject the knight’s advances, driving him to suicide.
Typical.
This serves as the pretext to open larger conversations around violence on women’s bodies and the treatment of said violence in art, and performance art in particular. Pushing the limits of the body on stage is not something that is entirely foreign in the latter context, though it is not something spectators are often confronted with (or expect to be confronted with) in theatre. To this end – and using her own experience of rape, as well as her experience researching the story of Italian artist Pippa Bacca, who was raped and murdered outside Istanbul in 2008 while on her performance/road-trip Brides on Tour – Bianchi announces that, rather than finishing reading through the hefty stack of papers on the table in front of her, she will be drugging herself again this evening. We watch her mix her drink on stage – on stage she says she has spiked it with a drug colloquially known as boa noite Cinderela (good-night, Cinderella), the same one that was used on her, but in pre-performance interviews, the substance has been clarified as a mixture of tranquilizers – take several sips, begin to slur her words, crawl on the table, and fall asleep. This is all while the screen on the back continued to project the subtitles of what remained of her introductory text in English and French (Bianchi spoke Brazilian Portuguese). There was silence for what felt like ages. Surprisingly, at least from what I could tell, no one left.
Then the rest of the troupe enters, the initial set is dismantled, revealing a much darker space behind. Bianchi’s body is carefully placed on a dingy mattress, and then dragged down center stage to join a circle of other “graves” featuring either full skeletons, partially decomposing corpses, or piles of sand – another addition to the cycle of violence. She is eventually undressed and then placed into a satin nightgown by three troupe members, while the others make off into three pairs upstage, dancing and grinding on each other in a way that suggests that one of the pair is close to falling into a nightmare. Meanwhile, the three troupe members near Bianchi simulate touching her and themselves. She is still knocked out by the tranquilizers.
When speaking of her experience prior to drinking her cocktail, one key point Bianchi emphasizes is the primary side-effect of the drug used on her: memory loss. She knows what happened to her because her body bears the marks of it, yet the black hole left in her memory because she was not mentally present during the act itself has, for her, made the act of reappropriating the experience, owning it, in other words, participating in the kind of “cathartic” discourse alluded to above almost impossible. How far can language or visual representation go when we cannot access an event that has fundamentally demarcated our past from our present? It’s a Rubicon that we did not want to cross but were made to, our past, present, and future selves collapsing into a moment that remains unobtainable.
At one point, towards the end of the piece, there comes what – based on the reactions of those in the house with me – could arguably be said to be the most graphic portion of the piece. Bianchi’s body is lifted from the mattress and placed on the hood of the car, her underwear removed and, using gloves and sanitized equipment, a speculum and small camera are inserted in her, the image of the inside of her vagina projected onto a screen down stage left.
This is all done very clinically – indeed, one can think of the invasiveness of the medical examinations that often follow cases of rape and/or assault – yet the fracturing of the image of the inside of one of the most intimate parts of her body with the rest of her body as well as with portions of her “speech” projected as text onto some of the screens upstage, serves, I believe, as one of the strongest aesthetic representations of the piece’s central thesis. These three elements, while they are all of Bianchi cannot be united back into the singular subject that was Bianchi prior to her rape. The violence in the gaps left by their stark separation (the spatial dynamics of the text upstage, Bianchi’s body down center, and the live feed stage left further enhance this) is thus not only representative of the violence of the experience but of the impossibility of performing any kind of resolving or healing ritual in the hope of something resembling re-unification of the self. This will not change the fact that the rape happened, and this is where I would say Bianchi’s piece is its most radical in how it gives no other option but to look, be confronted with, and actually listen to them while removing any expectation of “healing”.
Eventually Bianchi wakes up again (as an aside: this was rather touching, as in order to wake her up, one of the troupe members places themselves at her feet and gently wiggles them to stimulate her before going to grab her a can of soda), and though obviously in order for any of this to have happened, there needed to have been consent from all parties, the rawness and vulnerability expressed on her face as she came to was striking. How do you go through night after night performing in a show that you won’t remember?
I still have some thoughts about this piece circling in my head, but I think overall (and because I need to move on) it’s safe to say that I liked this piece far better than the one I saw the night before.
And the same goes for the last piece on our list:
Le Jardin des délices, mise en scène de Philippe Quesne, la Carrière de Boulbon, Monday July 10, 2023
Funnily enough, the final show I saw was originally the only one I had purchased a ticket for in advance (seriously, the virtual waiting room for when the online box office opens is almost as chaotic as getting tickets for Taylor Swift – and I mean this sincerely). I didn’t mind though. Quesne is someone whose work I have really missed seeing, and given that it was being staged in an outdoor space that had not been used for about seven years (we had to take a bus to get there – I’ll spare you all the story of me sprinting in 100ºF heat to reach the bus because the bus from Villeneuve decided that schedules are…optional), I made it kind of my personal must-see.
And it was good to see Quesne’s work again – really good. I think he is one of the few (if not the only) theatre-makers working now who could create a piece on the apocalypse without burying it in an overwhelming mountain of depression, which is saying something. I’ve written about his other shows I’ve seen enough already, so I’ll spare most the formal details, but in brief, as usual, the piece eschews a clearly linear structure for a kind of post-dramatic diorama effect of different actors interacting with each other and with their environment. The only thing approaching a kind of story are the bookends. The piece opens with a bus being pushed onto the playing space – there is no explanation as to why it is broken, we just accept that it is. The group of actors exists the bus, then goes to fetch a rather large egg that it rolls onto and then nestles in the dirt before forming a circle around it and performing some kind of ritual. Again, no indication as to what the final endgame is here – indeed, I would say it’s not until the very end when the egg is “cracked”, a giant triangle is projected on the back wall of the quarry, and the actors try, in vain, to scramble up to it, that we maybe get a sense of purpose in the opening –, but, being familiar with Quesne’s work, that is kind of the point.
Further reflecting this is the origin of the piece’s title, Bosch’s 1510 triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (which, as an aside, is not the name he gave to his own work, but anyway), and specifically the delightful chaos of the second and third panels (the world post Fall of Adam, and Hell, respectively). This work is one that many scholars over the centuries have taken great pains to try and decipher, made all the more difficult not just because of how much is going on, but also how random it seems to be (there is a particularly silly image in the second panel of a naked man hoisting a mussel shell in which there is another man over his head that is somewhat reproduced here in the form of a little cabaret dance number which is just as Monty Python levels of silly as it sounds) that it almost seems to eschew cohesion. Yet, what Quesne proposes here by taking inspiration from Bosch is that, as during the time the artist was working on the piece, the world was undergoing a great deal of change, so to are we confronted now with some profound existential questions on how we live and/or structure our lives, our communities, and our relationship(s) with the world. This kind of questioning is itself rather chaotic, and Quesne – being very conscious, as usual, with the materiality and possibilities inherent in the spaces he works in – uses the large, almost otherworldly qualities of the quarry to his advantage in creating an aesthetic out of this chaos.
It is truly a shame I only saw the piece once (though it is – or at least should still be – streaming on Arte) because while primary set pieces took place in the middle of the space (poetry readings, musical numbers, small speeches, mini recreations of imagery from Bosch’s work, a little magic trick, etc.) oftentimes, one or two of the actors would wander off to occupy themselves with something else to the point where, like with Bosch, the eye almost does not know where to look. But there is also a certain…poetry…to the way Quesne stages this plethora of action, to the way it reveals the material possibilities of the space, and the way the characters interact with each other in it, sharing a mutual unapologetic delight and curiosity to explore their environment. One could almost call them a rag-tag team in the middle of a kind of sci-fi western (feel free to make a Firefly reference here), and, in a sense, this little budding community is one of the only constants of the piece.
Part of this latter point may also have to do with the fact that this piece also marks the 20-year anniversary of Quesne’s theatre company, Vivarium Studio. There were, in fact, a couple of performers who I recognized from other pieces of his I’ve seen. But part of directing a troupe like this for so long, and which has welcomed new members and said goodbye to former ones throughout the year, is the centrality of the need to constantly (re)create community. Yet, the piece does not make any grandiose statements about this community creation, instead presenting it as a kind of given part of being in the world. There is no great moral lesson deriving from conflict here. Indeed, there is barely any conflict as, even in instances where one actor steps on another’s toes, so to speak, the situation is more or less resolved without fanfare (there are bigger fish to fry, anyway).
This is further enhanced by the sheer immensity of the space relative to the size of the actors (and one of the reasons I am questioning whether the piece will have the same effect when it tours in the fall, particularly at the MC93). It is, of course, absurd when, at the end, these little “ants” scramble to grab ladders that are obviously far too short, lean them against the wall of the quarry, and climb up to try and reach the center of the triangle. In the end, they end up huddled behind the eggshell (see the third panel of Bosch for the likely inspiration), but I don’t think I would read this ending as defeatist or nihilistic. I would say instead that it speaks more to the fact that though we must actually acknowledge the immensity of the challenges that are ahead of us, we also cannot do so while relying on established (and individualized) modes of problem solving. We must think differently, of course, but there is something to be said about the role of ludics (play) and creativity in this, particularly when done in communion with others who may view the problem through a slightly different lens. It’s not consensus…it’s something else.
Like the piece I saw the night before, this one is not necessarily designed to please everyone (though this is more about a question of form rather than content), nor should theatre in general be created that way in the first place. There was a rather buttoned-up woman in front of me who kept texting throughout a vast majority of the piece about how incoherent she thought it was and why did this have to be the show that relaunched this venue, etc. (oh yeah, I read her texts over her shoulder, part of the whole spectators as a part of the overall experience of the spectacle thing), and it’s a shame that going into experiences with some kind of open curiosity isn’t more of a given. Ah well, I guess. That being said, as the last piece of my first (but definitely not final) Avignon festival, I am glad I ended things on a high note. And as this has already dragged on infinitely longer than I anticipated, I will end things here.
So, I normally prefer to wait a couple of days or so before writing on a show I’ve seen but given the insanity that is my pile of papers to be graded (and while I’m *allegedly* on holiday, no less), I’m going to break with that and instead dive right into the piece I just got out of seeing thanks to my slightly rambling voice notes.
Don’t worry, I’ve toned down the rambling to a somewhat more legible and organized text.
As usual, I will be spoiling things (though given who reads this, I do not think that will be a problem). Suffice it to say, however, that after being slightly underwhelmed by Dans la mesure de l’impossible at the Odéon last month, I can confidently assert that Tiago Rodrigues has once again cemented himself in my mind as one of the best playwrights working today who really takes advantage of all the aesthetic possibilities afforded by live theatrical performance, even – and in this case especially – when such action could create instances of intense (but very likely purposeful) discomfort.
Let’s get into it.
Catarina et la beauté de tuer des fascistes, texte et mise en scène de Tiago Rodrigues, Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, October 26, 2022
A family has reunited in their house in the Portuguese countryside for a yearly celebration. A long table has been set, as waiting for a feast (the “Não Passarão!” printed on the white tablecloth is a nice touch), the wine is flowing, and everyone is dressed to the nines.
Except “the nines” in this case mean long skirts, blouses, and shawls, evoking peasant dress of the early – mid 20th century (side note: I think my grandmothers had blouses that were very similar to some of the ones seen on the performers). This is true for both the women and the men in this family, with one notable exception who we will get to presently. In addition, they are all called “Catarina” regardless of gender identity or presentation, not after some long-gone matriarch, but rather of her dear friend, the first Catarina, who was shot three times in the back by a fascist soldier during a workers’ demonstration. Next to that soldier, however, stood another, the husband of the aforementioned matriarch of this family of Catarinas, whose inaction that day would result in him receiving three shots in the back from his wife, a promise to her friend to avenge her as well as ensure the injustice done to her will not go unpunished in the future. Every year, then, the family of Catarina’s gathers to kill a fascist, with each new member being fully initiated into the ritual at 26. After the execution, the fascist is buried under a cork tree.
This year, it is the second-to-youngest Catarina’s turn to kill her first fascist, yet, unlike her predecessors, she does not pull the trigger. Instead, she hesitates, and so begins a dive into not only her own moral dilemma regarding her own family’s history and legacy, but also larger questions about revenge and, of course, how to fight back against fascism.
It would be easy here, for instance, for a lesser playwright to craft a piece that centers its thesis around the notion that killing is morally wrong and/or that a mission of killing fascists makes those carrying out that mission almost as bad as those they are targeting. Thankfully, Rodrigues’s piece is more nuanced than that. As the younger Catarina points out, for instance, her family has been killing fascists for 75 years, yet this has done nothing to stem the rising tide of fascism in the country, including its ascent to the highest offices in Parliament. At the same time, however, when she counters by proposing that the family change strategies and instead work to change the minds of those who vote for fascism through writing articles, posting flyers, giving speeches, etc., her mother (also Catarina) rightly retorts that expecting a fair fight within the rules of democratic fair play in this case is impossible, precisely because the opposing party is known for openly flouting those rules anyway. Yet, what both (along with the other Catarinas) also acknowledge at different points during their dialogue is the fact that after this ritual, they will all go back to Lisbon to carry on with their lives until the next year’s killing.
In this above exchange over the dilemma regarding how one stops fascism, however, one can also note a critique of not only legacy, but also arguably of the frictions that have underscored antifascist movements both in the past as well as today. These “Catarinas”, for instance, are not just descendants – or offshoots – of a singular person, they are both a multiplication as well as a pluralization (and likely fracturing) of the “original” body as well as its singular purpose. The original has thus become contradictory in its continued propagation of itself, so we thus see in the mini Catarinas not only an inherent plurality that was already present in the original Catarina (as it is in all individuals), but also the inherent pluralities and contradictions in the many movements that align themselves as anti-fascist and must find a way to co-exist. Returning to the piece, the dilemma that young Catarina and her mother have, then, has less to do with the “legitimacy” of fascism or its place in public discourse (both agree that it is something that must be fought against), but over different understandings of notions of morality and justice that ultimately shift the focus away from the much larger problem that is fascism’s continued rise in the country which neither of their two perspectives on its own has managed to stave off (as evidenced by comments made at the start of the piece regarding recent policies made by the new government). One thing that the older Catarina does bring up, however, is the importance around speech, specifically, the danger in allowing a fascist to talk, to spread their rhetoric and infect the larger political landscape like a virus, thus becoming harder to stamp out.
I’ll return to the question of speech momentarily, but first I must get to the second dilemma that comes up in the piece: the infamous trolley problem. In short, after Catarina starts having doubts during the start of the piece, her uncle, remembering that she had a particular affinity for riddles as a child, poses the trolley problem to her, supposedly to help her get out of her head and not think too much about what she is about to do (what counts, after all, is that she makes a choice, that she acts, in this case by shooting her fascist). Predictably, however, instead of ultimately choosing between whether to divert the runaway train so it hits her village or so it hits a lone house with her mother inside, Catarina declares there is a third option: putting herself in front of the train tracks so that she is killed, and the weight of her corpse would slow the train down. Her uncle, however, is very frustrated with this, claiming she has ruined the exercise, but also that it does not actually matter since she will have to make a choice at some point anyway. Yet, Catarina does make a choice, though it is not the one the other Catarinas would have liked. She chooses to not act, in a sense, putting herself between the bullets and their initial target in an act of self-sacrifice that speaks to, perhaps, her hope that some kind of justice that is larger than what is being carried out will prevail and put an end to what she and her family have been fighting with the efficacy of repeatedly lobbing off heads of an ever-growing hydra.
This, then, brings us to the final monologue in the piece – featuring the one actor mentioned earlier who is not dressed in peasant wear – following a last round of chaos that sees all the Catarinas save one (young Catarina’s male cousin, Catarina, who does not speak much, save for when he has his headphones in) shot dead and the fascist prisoner still alive. And it is in this final act, as is usual for Rodrigues’s best pieces, that the piece’s full embrace of theatricality comes in like a sucker punch to the face.
See, the fascist set for execution that day was a speech writer, arguably the one who can most easily disseminate propaganda because he has a way with words, or the power of the pen in the art of communication. After dusting himself off, readjusting his tie, and slipping on his jacket, he who was formerly silent comes down center stage and starts giving – and I’ll just be blunt here – one of the most blatantly fascistic monologues I have ever heard in my life. There is zero attempt to hide what it is he is doing or the ideology behind his words, given his open use of coded language or symbolism (dog-whistling) as well as his, at one point, gesticulating that comes very close to a Nazi salute, yet in his open-ness he also directly confronts those of us seated in the house, whose presence had already been acknowledged several times by the other actors before the start of this final monologue. Yet, he is a survivor, one who not only escaped an execution, but also who we had watched squirm in fear at the prospect of death approaching. Such a trajectory could normally be used to inspire sympathy on the part of an audience, but here that expectation is ultimately used against those of us seated in the house. We are being confronted, yes, but more precisely, we are being confronted with the fact that, when this man starts speaking, we in the house are at risk of ourselves transforming into that soldier from the story that serves as the origin myth for the Catarinas: the one who sat by, saw what happened, and did nothing.
In essence, this final sequence works the way it does largely because it happens in a theatre, and more precisely because it also forces a confrontation and open acknowledgement of the fact that those listening to this monologue are in a space that is governed by a certain set of rules and regulations for audience behavior. Namely, we are to sit down and shut up and not participate nor react directly other than a laugh or an applause. Granted, all of these “rules” are themselves artificial, given that theatre prior to the 19th century was very much not like this as far as publics are concerned, but the way in which these rules have been largely internalized by theatregoing publics meant that, to a certain degree, this last monologue became something of an endurance contest to see how long this guy could go before someone shut him up.
Eventually, towards the end of his speech, there were people in the house who started speaking up or vocalizing their disapproval. I started hissing and stamping my feet at some point, but I also remember thinking to myself that I wanted to say something or boo this guy earlier, but I didn’t. I didn’t because I realize now that while I was being confronted with his rhetoric, I was also listening to it in a space that imposes a silence on my presence there. I then found myself thinking: would I be looked at as a weirdo, as someone who was taking this performance too seriously, if I did react how I wanted to? At the same time, nothing that man said was outside the realm of possibility for anyone in politics who aligns themselves to the right of the political spectrum (and honestly yes, I will go far enough to say that). Eventually the reaction and response from the crowd did get him off the stage and the lights went out, though it took a minute for anyone to start applauding (it was almost as though that moment between the end of the piece and the return to our own temporal reality needed to be prolonged a bit). But what was truly fascinating about this was the way in which here theatre functioned as a means to reveal both the little holes or fissures through which this kind of discourse can flow through unobstructed, as well as how almost used to it we’ve become to the point where it can slip in and flourish right under our noses before we even think to stamp it out, and that is terrifying.
I’ll end here with one final comment on the constant quoting of Brecht in the piece. On the one hand, yes, the use of another playwright whose work was dedicated to raising class consciousness as well as fighting against right-wing totalitarianism and/or fascism does make sense here, especially considering that one of the fundamental characteristics of Brecht’s theatre is the alienation effect, and its role in raising a greater collective consciousness as to the larger superstructures that shape our society (particularly in terms of distribution of power). Yet, while Rodrigues’s piece never aesthetically hides that it is a work of theatre, it also does not go quite so far as to try and replicate alienation. Instead, it makes its public complicit, particularly in its re-shifting of the locus of action onto each seated audience member during the last monologue. Call it a new kind of consciousness-raising, maybe.
Oh, and for the record (and not that this counts for much), Catarina’s mother was right…shutting them up is paramount.
It may be time to go back and listen to the Dead Kennedys a bit…while grading.
We’re going to skip the usual apologies for not being here writing about things. I was busy with the book. I’ve been writing plenty (…ish). But right now, I’m in a funny little limbo space which involves waiting for my copy editor to get back in touch with me (and maybe finalize a publication date…no I’m not silently freaking out about this, why in the world would anyone think that…?), and I need stimulation. Thus, here we are.
Bref.
The theme with theatre so far this season (so…one piece that I’ll get to in a bit plus what I saw this summer) can be summed up as follows:
Why are we putting this show on?
This question applies less to new works and more to restaging of classical pieces – and coincidentally was inspired by what I saw this summer at Epidauros.
Honestly, after the undeniable success of Aris Biniaris’ direction of Prometheus Bound in bringing Aeschylus’ text unabashedly into the 21st century, injecting it with a timeliness and urgency that are often absent in productions of classical Greek texts, my expectations were high. Alas, the show we saw this year was Sophocles’ Ajax, and if this summer’s experience taught me anything it is “Why the fuck is anyone producing this show?”
Truly, I ask you who are reading this, a piece that centers around two men having what essentially amounts to a dick-measuring contest over who gets another warrior’s [Achilles’] armor has what, exactly, to say about our contemporary existence? Of course, the answer to that question may be some rather nuanced or complex insight into our own relationships with notions of pride, glory, militarism, etc., but given that the overall aesthetic of this piece seemed to jump around between tragedy, comedy, and – during one bizarre sequence – modern dance piece that vaguely evoked German Expressionist cinema à la The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, without any discernable reason, my only take away of the whole experience was “We did this because it was on the repertoire rotation. Yay?”
(And yes, now that I don’t have to worry about maintaining an air of critical impartiality, the opinions come out).
This brings us to tonight’s production commentary:
William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, mise en scène de François Orsoni, Théâtre de la Bastille, September 13, 2022
Before I get to this, I need to acknowledge how odd this season at the Bastille is going to be. This is not only due to Jean-Marie Hordé’s retirement after 32 years as artistic director, but also to the fact that, administratively, the theatre is technically in transition mode. Up until now, it has officially been classified as independent (so, neither public nor private). While it does receive some subsidies from the City, as well as from other public and private organizations, for a good part of its history as a theatre, it existed in a state of financial precarity, with Hordé’s programming choices and directorial approach being part of the reason why it reached some state of financial stability at all.
(As an aside, this is all very brief, I know, but we don’t have time to get into the nitty-gritty of it here).
Following Hordé’s retirement, the theatre will be reclassed as a public theatre (though which classification it will receive remains unknown), joining the country’s larger network of such theatres / cultural spaces, as well as becoming eligible for more substantial State and/or Regional and Departmental funding (though given the direction public funding for basically anything has been going these last 20+ years, it remains to be seen how much that will actually change concretely). Yet, what this also means is the risk of a fundamental change in the theatre’s identity in terms of productions, namely: will a space known for being both daring/innovative and, at times, literary (these may sound like polar opposites, but I assure you, they don’t need to be) fall victim to the “exchangism” and stagnancy that has plagued other public theatre houses? At this point, who knows (a lot of this will largely depend on who the Ministry ultimately selects to take over the position – as in, will they actually pick someone with a truly daring vision and not just a surface-level air of one which will sooner or later betray an alliance with the status quo rather than an active questioning and destabilizing of it). For now, the 2022/2023 season is the last one Hordé completely designed, so I’ve made it a point to see practically everything.
But for the love of god, why in the world did we have to start with Coriolanus?
Much like with Ajax, this production, if nothing else, answered the question as to why no one really produces Coriolanus anymore. Come to think of it, I don’t think I had ever read it in any of my theatre classes prior to seeing it. A quick google search will reveal that one of the many roadblocks contemporary audiences have with this piece is how blatantly undemocratic (and, yeah, I’ll go there, fascistic) it is – though this is a complaint that stretches back to the nineteenth century as well. The titular character, despite being the center of the tragedy, is, to put it mildly, an unapologetically vain asshole. He goes off to war to fight the Volsci and, after claiming victory for Rome, is elected consul but hates it in part because he has to play the role of a politician who must endear himself to the common people (though, as it is mentioned several times, his war wounds should be proof enough of the love he has for his country), and, unfortunately, Coriolanus openly despises the common people.
By the way, these same common people are also starving due to lack of bread, but I digress…
Anyway, the long and short of it goes like this: Coriolanus becomes consul – Coriolanus is an asshole – tribunal takes advantage of this – tribunal manipulates the people (because of course, they are easy to twist about like that) into turning against Coriolanus – Coriolanus is banished – Coriolanus pledges loyalty to his former enemy and vows to help him attack Rome – Coriolanus’s mother convinces him not to attack and to draft a peace treaty – Coriolanus realizes he’s been an idiot, agrees to peace, then gets stabbed by his enemy because of his betrayal and because his enemy realizes that Coriolanus actually has the potential to gain people’s respect after all.
Also, the people are still starving in the end, but whatever. Some plot threads don’t need resolving, I suppose.
Granted, Shakespeare did write this play during a time of great duress in England. Queen Elizabeth I had just died (well…uncanny), James I had just come into power, the theatres reopening after two years of closure following a plague (also uncanny), and a series of popular uprisings in the Midlands following the enacting of new enclosure laws and privatization of access to lands that – surprise – led to a rise in hunger amongst the peasantry.
Again, the people are starving.
In his director’s note, Orsoni acknowledges the current as well as historical problematics around staging this piece (notably, how fascists used it to further their own agenda in the late 1930s), while stating that the key for him is striking the balance between Coriolanus and the tribunal that ultimately works to oust him from Roman society. The result is a piece that gives you no one really to root for, except, maybe, “the people”, this nebulous mass whose existence Shakespeare’s text not only questions the legitimacy of, but also reduces down to the status of object used to further the interests of others.
At the same time, this particular staging did play a bit with aesthetic convention when it came to telegraphing the social/class status of its characters. Coriolanus, for instance, wears an adidas track suit – zipped up only halfway – and slides (at one point with socks) for the majority of the piece, and speaks with a certain affected gruffness that is otherwise often used in performance to designate someone on the lower and/or working-class end of the socioeconomic ladder. In other words, his way of being on the stage in all its “boorish-ness” goes against the codified image associated with someone of his station. A career military man (as he is) may be gruff and lack in some finesse, but not necessarily to this extent.
In contrast, the tribunal especially – and to a certain degree the people as well – speak more clearly, if not with an affected refinement in their speech, then with no discernable additional affectation to their voices that would immediately place them on a particular rung on the socioeconomic ladder. Yet, where one does get a sense of social stratification is in the question of space: Coriolanus essentially occupies the stage – as well as has the capacity to jump down to the space immediately in front of the stage in a sort of crossing of boundaries – while the tribunal + the people are (with little exception) relegated to the lower space in front of the stage (and seated on chairs for the most part). The spatial divide only further enhances the dilemma already present in the performances: those who are “lower” are, after all, seeking to depose a leader who openly despises them, yet they also do so while exploiting a supposed weakness that largely informs the leader’s hatred in the first place.
The Roman Republic, in other words, loses its legitimacy precisely because that which allows for its existence – the will and voices of the voting citizenry – is presented as unreliable because of how it is used by others with more influence.
Now, I do not want to go so far as to say that this is the ethos of this specific staging because I do not believe it is. There is a reason, I think, why the plebians are played more “nobly”, so to speak, than the patricians. But it does speak to a quandary within the text itself that, I believe, makes it incredibly difficult to translate the commentary that I think Orsoni was trying to develop (a critique on power, ambition, selfishness, and what gets lost in the struggle for influence). And again, I find myself wondering why this piece in particular was the Shakespeare piece that had to be adapted, other than the circumstantial parallels (one of them purely coincidental) between the time of its writing and ours.
At the same time, it is getting incredibly late, and I have an early workout in the morning.
I would say this is due to the amount of work / grading that started piling up right before the Christmas holidays (and that I only just managed to finish dealing with last week) but having to juggle several piles of exams while maintaining a blog and other projects (aka: a dissertation) isn’t exactly new for me. I should, theoretically, be used to this. No, the lack of posting right now I think arguably is derived from a couple of factors, one of which is more positive than the other.
So, we’ll start with the good: over the holiday break, I signed a contract to get my dissertation published.
I set a deadline to turn in the final manuscript at the end of August – because let’s be honest, teaching right now is anything but predictable, as far as workload is concerned – but I would nevertheless ideally like to have finished with it earlier (end of spring if we’re being optimistic). I have to rework my introduction and conclusion to add some things that came up during the Occupations at the Odéon and other theatres last spring (and also make the Intro in particular less…dissertation-y) and replace two play critiques with some other ones I actually would have originally included had I seen them sooner, so needless to say, I’ve got my editing work cut out for me over the next few months. But I am glad I waited a year before revisiting this project and getting it book proposal ready. Looking at it with fresh eyes not only makes me appreciate it a lot more, but it also helps immensely with the whole cutting/editing thing. Distance has made me less self-critical, I guess.
It is also somewhat hard to believe that this is actually happening, particularly given how quickly the process from proposal submission to peer review to contract went. Other than the four weeks between the submission for peer review and the official feedback, everything else happened within a matter of days. To be honest, given the timing of everything (I actually signed the contract on Christmas Eve), I was almost expecting having to wait until after the new year to receive any feedback at all, much less discuss contract specifications. In any case, what this does mean is that now my academic work is actually going to be out there for other people to engage with (because let’s be honest, no one is really going to be combing through ProQuest or university dissertation databases for research), so I may as well get any lingering notions of imposter syndrome out of the way now (yes, those still exist even post-dissertation defense. Surprise…)
So yes, editing and rewrites are going to take up almost any chunk of time that I have that is not already devoted to lesson planning and grading. But I did also mention a slightly less positive reason for my lack of writing. It’s nothing really serious, per say. It’s more an irksome annoyance.
Basically, this season (with some exception) has been, shall we say, lacking.
Oh, there have been some pieces that have stood out (again, I had a LOT of grading to do that just kind of got dumped on me at once…thanks exam schedules that make no sense), but for the most part, even reserving tickets to go see a show has been kind of…meh. The exceptions are the MC93 and the Théâtre de la Bastille (absolutely no surprise on that last one), but as for Nanterre and La Colline, my desire to go back to either of them right now is rather mixed.
Let’s start with the first one.
I already started to feel a bit apprehensive about going back to Nanterre a couple years ago (god, what is time anyway now), after Philippe Quesne announced he would not be renewing his tenure as artistic director there. This is partly because one of the reasons I really enjoyed going to that theatre in the first place was because of his approach to programming. Not everything was exactly a roaring success, but it was different, it tried things, it pushed the formal limits of what theatrical performance could be. And it was working. I mentioned this in my chapter on his time at Nanterre, but one of the things that consistently stood out for me every time I went to a show was how young the audience skewed. This is an anomaly. And one would normally think that maybe – just maybe – having an artistic director who has seemed to have tapped into something to get a new generation of audiences interested in devoting a little bit of their time to come and check out what was on offer would be, I don’t know, a good thing, especially when so much conversation centers around how difficult it is to get new publics in seats.
(As an aside: the above also taps into questions of decolonizing the theatre space, something that is badly needed, but would merit its own dedicated discussion. So, for the moment, know that I have that in the back of my mind, even if I won’t be explicitly discussing it right now).
I knew this season going back to Nanterre was going to be different regardless of who was at the helm because the theatre was undergoing major renovations, but I don’t know if I can properly explain how fast my hope turned to disappointment following the two shows I have seen there so far.
The first of these was a holdover from Quesne’s time there (thank you COVID for delaying it at least…). It was weird. It was experimental, post-dramatic (hell, post-post-dramatic), different, and it gave me a slight tinge of hope that the creative spirit would still have something of a home here.
And then a nonsense production of Henry VI happened that was just full of so much confusion and at the same time predictability that I actually regretted giving it a chance in the first place. Yes, this is very harsh. No, I am not putting any of the blame for this on the actors (several were actually quite good). This is all on director Christophe Rauck who, coincidentally, is the new artistic director at Nanterre. Granted, I should have known this would happen, given how “classical” his programming choices were skewing based on the season announcement, but…I am a person who believes in chances, sometimes to my detriment.
So yeah, I will likely be going back, but not as frequently.
As for La Colline, even if the debate surrounding the production of Mouawad’s Mère (specifically, his choice on who to work with for the music, and his absolutely tone-deaf response to legitimate critiques and questions from the #MeTooTheatre movement) had not happened, I very much doubt I would have gone to see the thing anyway. Simply put: I have been bored with his pieces, and his programming choices, for a while now. Honestly, if I wasn’t working on La Colline for my dissertation, I doubt I would have gone as regularly as I did during my research.
Funny enough, I am actually working on re-editing my chapter on La Colline right now, and I am a bit surprised as to how much I held back on some criticisms I have about his approach to artistic direction. Editing while still maintaining some trace of “objectivity” is going to be a…fascinating experience.
So that brings us to here. Currently, I am sitting on my couch waiting for a technician who should have been here 30 minutes ago to help me deal with some internet connectivity issues. Alas, I do not believe this individual is coming. Thank goodness for unlimited phone data.
Some of you (and in particular, those who follow me on other platforms) are probably wondering…
‘Say, Effie, you’ve been to quite a number of shows since you last posted. Why haven’t you written about any of them?’
Good question. In short, it largely has to do with two factors: the craze of my work schedule these past few weeks (because I still just can’t say no to things when there’s a payment involved, so guess who’s back to translating transcripts on top of a 22h/wk teaching schedule? Me), and the simple fact that I haven’t really seen anything to inspire the need to write about it yet. Given that I’m no longer in dissertation research mode, I’m giving myself a lot more leeway when it comes to putting more energy into critical engagements with pieces that either I didn’t like (though a strong dislike for something hasn’t really been a deterrent for me writing about it in the past) or worse, felt very ‘meh’ about. Yet, perhaps this also speaks to my larger frustrations with the state of theatre right now, something that has only gotten even more punctuated post-dissertation.
This in particular brings me to some things I have been (and am still somewhat) wrestling with regarding my manuscript revisions, specifically putting my own voice into things. Reading over my chapters again, I do wonder sometimes if the way I outline things truly speaks most accurately to my own views not just as a writer / researcher / scholar (etc.), but also in terms of where I align myself socially and politically. In other words, I personally value honesty and transparency in these things, yet I do wonder sometimes if I come off as disingenuous, if I read as though I speak in cliché.
More precisely, recently I’ve been ruminating over these questions (and personal judgements over my own work…as usual) with regards to eventual revisions / rewrites I am going to have to do on my conclusion, which, along with my introduction, is very likely going to be the chapter that changes the most if (no…“when”) I successfully get this thing published. One of the biggest things that has been giving me quite a bit of grief lately is an argument that I introduced in the original text – and that I want to develop further – regarding the need for continued State funding of public theatres / the arts in general in France. For one thing, the very notion of having to in some way defend the presence of the State is something that runs counter to my own politics regarding the need (or, you know, not) of this particular type of power / organizational apparatus. Yet, at the same time, even if I were to advance a formulation such as “If the State had to continue to exist, it should do so on the basis that it actively distribute its financial assets towards assuring truly equitable access to a plurality of forms of creative expression” (and note that I insist on the “if” there), that still does not address the fundamental problems on which the relationship between the State and culture / the arts in France was built on. And this is arguably where a lot of my frustrations with much of what I see come from.
(As an aside: though I wish I had time to write a detailed take-down of the latest manifest posted by Mouawad regarding his decision not to suspend a performance of an upcoming show due to the histories of some of those involved with cases of assault and, yes, murder, and his labeling of the #metootheatre movement as a “witch hunt”, time and other commitments have had to take precedence. Needless to say, however, it is likely going to be a VERY long time before I set foot in La Colline again. I bring this up here mostly because situations like this – in which predators are being protected and those who speak out against them are attacked – also make up a large part of my frustrations. For this, however, I want to focus on something that runs more deeply, yet also very much intertwines with this.)
One thing I think it is high time to acknowledge is that the decentralization project – particularly in the early, “official” days under Malraux, was a kind of colonialist project. Implanting centers of cultural production / diffusion in various territories, each with a direct link back to a centralized power (an arm of the State, if you will) with the aim of crafting or cultivating the imagining of a “unified” nation both in terms of concrete territory and in the linking of this territory to an abstract sense of identity is, in a rudimentary sense, colonialism. Look, we’ve planted our flag here. Now this territory is linked with us, which means our identity is also tied to holding on to this territory, etc. (you’re going to have to cut me some slack here, as it’s close to 1am and I am in full ramble mode). While the ideal of financing the creation of any and all pieces, supposedly without prejudice, seems rather nice on paper, it rings somewhat differently when one starts to reckon with the colonialist touches that this attitude is, in a way, a product of. I mention this briefly in my dissertation, but though it was ambitious, Malraux’s decentralization project was not exactly universally welcome, territorially speaking. Indeed, there were several critiques being leveled at the time of the planning / building of the Maisons de la Culture that they were being more or less imposed on the towns they were built in, rather than rising up organically.
In other words, a project that states as its aim that it wants to foster more creativity eschews the kind of grassroots development that could not only have allowed for this creativity to blossom, but to do so on more localized – indeed pluralized – terms, does so first on establishing a certain perception of itself as dominant / the common reference point. That is, it’s not just theatre that’s being created here. It is theatre that is being created under the umbrella of a certain imagining of the role of the theatre in the greater social fabric, specifically, an imagining that is derived from Malraux’s own conceptualizing of the role of “Culture” in shaping both an individual as well as the community / territory to whom that individual belongs. While this imagining has evolved over the years – now we’re, of course, in the neo-liberal “what [monetary] value does or can theatre bring to our society” stage – the presence of any kind of central imagining at all is already rather limiting as far as creativity is concerned. The way a State – and consequently, any extension of the State – imagines itself can have a tremendous effect not only on what kinds of spaces it creates, but what conditions it puts in place in order to access these spaces. These conditions can range from economic barriers to educational and /or professional qualifications to questions of language and jargon (specifically, a not-quite-implicit preference for certain terminologies or phrases to describe particular situations or relational dynamics, especially when the use of alternative vocabularies could result in a) the exposure of the illusory nature of these relationships and b) the destabilizing of a sense of control those in power have over delimiting / determining access to space), but regardless of how they show up, the fact that they exist at all to me speaks to a certain impossibility for any kind of existence of a truly pluralized – hell a truly decolonized, since fully decolonizing all spaces is something I fundamentally believe needs to happen within and outside the arts – theatre space so long as the decentralization model, and the State’s role in the development and imagining of this model, remain critically unexamined. We cannot, in other words, take it as a “given” that the State has a certain benevolence regarding the funding of cultural projects. This kind of complacency is what leads to the kind of creative stasis and frustration seen now, at least in my opinion.
This is not, however, to say that there are not folks doing very interesting work here. There are. Creatively and thematically challenging works about, yet the way the funding schemes are set up mean that not only will these works be almost in a constant state of competition among each other for – essentially – scraps, but it also becomes far more likely that voices that are already either underrepresented or shut out will continue to be so.
So with that, when I posit that “If the State had to continue to exist…” I truly mean “If” because as of right now, an alternative – and much more creatively open and autonomous and sustainable – model does not exist. That doesn’t mean that it can’t. But I think, and I’ll close on this, that part of the way we can get to a point where we can realize the possibility of creating such a new model is through both seeking out and seeing / reading works by artists whose voices are continually marginalized, yet who still speak out to pointedly critique this system, as well as embracing the notion of plurality (the politics of the ‘s’, as I call it) and – most importantly – not ignoring the tensions that arise when one confronts this notion directly with the State and the way it imagines itself through the avenue of cultural production / development.
Technically right now I should be working on prepping a talk from my somewhat scattered notes for a conference this Friday, but the need to jot down some thoughts on the first show I saw this season has taken precedence in my already very full brain so…here we are.
And anyway, I’ve still got tomorrow (Sunday), Monday afternoon and all day Wednesday to deal with organizing my notes.
So, with that out of the way, let’s get down to it. The return of theatre commentary / critique for the 2021 – 2022 season begins, as it should, with a return to the Théâtre de la Bastille:
Illusions perdues (d’après Honoré de Balzac) dir. Pauline Bayle. Théâtre de la Bastille, Sept. 16, 2021
Before getting into the details of this, I want to open with a conversation I was having yesterday that more or less captured one the thing that’s been nagging me about this piece since I left the theatre. In brief, the initial topic of conversation was the upcoming Spielberg remake of West Side Story, but this later evolved into a larger questioning of the ubiquity of revivals and remakes in (especially) the American theatre and film industry – that is, the use of already established IP as an assurance of returns on investment – versus the focus in France (at least in the public theatre where it is more or less mandated) on créations, new works, many of which nowadays do not even have a published text version that could then be used to produce a hypothetical “revived” version at some point in the future. In short, it is a theatre that is decidedly of its time, thus making any return to previously produced / written works subject to more direct scrutiny in its act of recall.
In short, in the choice to bring something “back to life”, so to speak, one must not only contend with the general “why”, but more precisely with “why now”. What, in other words, about the present moment makes it urgent to bring a piece / a text back again, especially when there are years if not generations of temporal distance to contend with? This is in no way to suggest that revivals are fruitless endeavors (see, especially Aris Biniaris’ truly exceptional Prometheus Bound at this year’s Athens/Epidaurus festival…which I should have written about but didn’t), but rather that the production/rehearsal phase demands a level of critical engagement that goes beyond the obvious.
Which brings us to Pauline Bayle’s Illusions perdues. I’ll start by getting this out of the way: the performances themselves were excellent, particularly Jenna Thiam as the lead Lucien. The fluidity with which the other four members of the troupe switched back and forth between multiple roles was also especially well done, as was the minimal stage design with the central, white square, flanked on all four sides by the audience evoking the crushing intimacy of a boxing ring. The energy was there. The run-time was just shy of 2.5 hours, but I never felt it particularly dragged. Even with the many cuts made to Balzac’s text in fashioning the script, the choice to focus on his dialogues did give us, for the most part, well-rounded characters, even if some were only inhabited by a performer for a moment. And yes, while I normally find the whole “oh look there is a person being rude / interrupting the performance in the audience…oh wait it’s actually another actor” thing a bit trite, the fact that it was consistent rather than an “ah-ha! Gotcha!” moment, that we could trace the actors in their various seat (and costume) shifts amongst the public, meant that the space as a whole became wrapped up in the urgency of the shifts and transformations being imposed on Lucien. There was no room for respite, for escape away from prying eyes, in other words.
And yet, even with all this, one thing I could not help but think, and that is still itching at me now, is if this piece, and in particular the point of view that Balzac’s novel – and by extension Bayle’s adaptation and staging of it – has something to say about our current era. That Balzac’s text can be read as something of a forewarning as to the impeding dangers of capitalism (note: the novel depicts a Paris on the brink of the Industrial Revolution) is not, in itself, a new perspective, at least with regards to current discourses (well, at least in the circles I run in) about the urgency for an anti-capitalist model. What I was left wondering by this piece, in short, is what else did it bring to the conversation, other than a few easily telegraphed connections, and story beats that have become almost too familiar. Lucien, young, green, naïve, arrives in Paris from Angouleme with dreams of becoming a great writer. Lucien then realizes that the machinations of the world he’s entered into are basically in direct conflict with his desires, and suddenly finds himself tangled in a mess of power and money and influence. Lucien falls. In the end, Lucien sells out. The audience watches.
Yet, as true as it is that the advent of capitalism and the cult of money and profits has resulted in societal and cultural shifts, especially with regards to interpersonal relationships, capitalism is not exactly unique in this. Moreover, this cannot be the only facet of capitalism that is depicted and thus placed up for public scrutiny and critique on the stage, as – like the Paris in Bayle’s production, or, hell, even more accurately, a hydra – capitalism has many (violent, exploitative, destructive) heads, and concentrating on just the one is not going to do much good when the others are snapping at you. What I am saying, in other words, is that we need different kinds of storytelling in our theatres, and in our critiques. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I made the argument for re-thinking what, in France, had historically been conceived as territorial decentralization to a decentralization of thought. We urgently need other perspectives on our stages, other ways of approaching / appropriating / interpreting text because the alternative is that discourse gets stuck and publics can only see half the picture. Do we need more stories of young folks with big dreams coming into a city only to have reality sucker-punch them in the face? Maybe we do. But maybe we should be actively making space for possibilities to approach them differently.
I’m technically in the middle of my (after a temporal truncating last year) usual month+ long trip back to Greece, so this isn’t going to be an overall summation / assessment of my summer. Nevertheless, before I get to the core of this post (see title), I figured I’d throw out a couple of general observations.
Call it my usual soapboxing that all of you, I am sure, know and love by now.
I’ll start with the most timely, given the current situation: everyone should get vaccinated. Additionally, more work needs to be done to make vaccines more equitable/accessible to folks in underserved communities (particularly communities of color…and this holds true for France just as it does in the US) as well as more rural areas and/or medical deserts. Insisting on maintaining patents on vaccines/vaccine development technology is ridiculous and will only serve to exacerbate the already deep divide between “wealthy” and “poor” countries. No one should be profiting off this. Period. Furthermore, the global south should not be dependent on “charity” from countries in the global north to kickstart comparatively trickling vaccination programs (though in the short-term, surplus absolutely should be redirected to countries with low vaccine supply…like, yesterday). There are scientists, researchers, laboratories there who are, I am confident, more than capable of fully engaging in the development and manufacturing of current and future COVID-19 vaccines. The greater needs of global public health far outweigh those of generating a profit / maintaining intellectual property rights.
And I also want to acknowledge my own incredible privilege in being able to write this post. I recognize that I am able to travel as I do in part because of my dual US/EU citizenship status, because I get to live in France, and because I had the resources available to me in order to be able to get vaccinated when I was (even though that whole process was its own little hell, given Education Nationale’s insistence that teachers didn’t need to be considered as priority workers).
With that, let’s take a look at Syros.
Syros is a small island in the Cyclades group, as well as the administrative capital of the region. Throughout its history, the island has seen several occupations, but of particular note is that of the Venetians in the 13th century (sometime around the Fourth Crusade). This led to the founding of the town of Ano Syros, located at the top of a hill north-west of the main port, as well as helps explain the decent Catholic population on the island. Following the Greek War of Independence, the early 19th century saw the construction and development of the main port of Ermoupoli, which, up until it was unseated by Piraeus towards the end of the century, was one of, if not the most active commercial ports in the region. The shift to a more tourism-heavy focus in the area only really took off relatively recently (within the last couple decades, give or take). Given this, one of the truly unique things about this island compared to others in the Cyclades – notably Mykonos and Santorini – is that a not-insignificant number of people actually live here year-round and, further, these folks are not necessarily all working in the tourism/tourism-adjacent industry. This is an island, in other words, that is noticeably “lived in”, as the numerous instances of neighbors crossing each other on the streets and stopping to say hello / chat can attest.
In short, if you’re looking for a spot that explicitly caters to tourists, this may not be exactly what you’re looking for. On the other hand, if you want something that is a mix between tourism and local character, you might be in the right place.
[As an aside, I’d also say the same re: a more calm/localized/less explicitly tourism-focused experience when describing Sifnos – which still remains my favorite island in the region – and to a lesser extent Milos, which sees noticeably more tourism traffic than either Sifnos or Syros, but not to the extent that it has become completely overrun. Milos still ranks pretty highly at number 2 for me, if that counts for anything.]
How We Got There
While there is a small airport on the island, the best (and very likely much more affordable) way to get there is by ferry out of Piraeus. The trip is only two hours on the fast ferry (operated by SeaJets – this is the one my parents and I took), but the island is served by most of the major ferry companies (Blue Star Ferries, Hellenic Seaways), so there are definitely other options available (though travel time may vary slightly).
Should you opt for the ferry, you will disembark at Ermoupoli. From there, you can either take the local bus to your destination (though, as with all the islands, while the buses may run pretty much on schedule, they don’t run super frequently, especially when compared to city buses) or catch a cab at the port or in the main square (about a five minute walk). We chose the latter option, after stopping for some coffee and breakfast in a café (the ferry left Piraeus at 07h00 and arrived at 09h00, so we had some time to chill before a 12h00 check-in).
The size of this cake should’ve been my first clue that dessert portions are rather generous here. Not that I’m complaining…
Before moving on to our accommodations / other location specifics, I want to take a second to point out something many folks might not be aware of: Uber isn’t a thing in Greece (which, to be frank, I think is a good thing). As such, you will see taxis everywhere. Many times, on the islands there are set fares to get from one town/village to another (as was the case with Syros), and the cab driver should let you know if there is a set fare / how much it is when you get in (usually you’d tell them first what town/village you’re headed to before the name of your hotel/hostel so they can let you know the price, assuming it’s a standard / set route). Additionally, a cab driver may also give you a business card with their direct number on it. If they do, awesome; getting a ride on an island – especially in cases where the number of cabs on the island is very limited (*cough* Sifnos) – has just gotten a whole lot easier for you.
Plus, your cab driver can be a good source for local info, and who knows, they may even have some…interesting…observations about someone in your group’s celebrity doppelganger (my dad, for example, was deemed, in absolute sincerity, to bear a strong resemblance to JFK. I’ll spare the details, but suffice it to say that my dad looks nothing like JFK).
Where We Stayed
We booked two rooms at Morpheus Rooms in Kini Beach, a small, family-run hotel located in this little beach town on the west side of the island. The drive from Ermoupolis was only about 10 minutes by taxi, and 20 minutes by bus (which I ended up taking a couple of times to do some exploring). We chose the location primarily because of the hotel’s proximity to the beach (literally a minute), but the fact that it’s located on a relatively narrow – and quiet – street definitely worked in its favor, particularly during naptime in the afternoon.
Where We Went and What We Saw There
I’ve decided to break this down by location, rather than go day-by-day to make things a bit easier. For reference, I’ll be starting off with Kini before moving on to Ano Syros and then back to Ermoupolis.
Kini Beach
As mentioned earlier, Kini is pretty much a beach town, so if what you’re looking for is a spot to chill, swim, sunbathe, maybe have some lunch or a drink: you’re in the right place. There is apparently also an aquarium here, though I didn’t really feel the urge to check it out, so can’t really say whether it’s worth a visit or not.
Lotos Beach
As for beaches, while the many cafés and beach bars along the long, main stretch of Kini Beach provide ample sunbeds / parasols for all-day use for a small price (the café I rented my chair / umbrella from required a minimum 5 euro purchase, so I basically just rounded up the price of the freddo espresso I ordered each morning), on the advice of the daughter of the owner of our hotel, I decided – right after check-in – to make the trek to nearby Lotos Beach. And I say “trek” for a reason. It’s not that the beach is necessarily far (if you were to look to your left while looking out into Kini Bay – which is rather small – it’d be the last small stretch of beach you’d see before a rock outcropping that marks the entrance to open water), it’s just that right before getting there, there’s this hill that’s a bit of a bitch to walk up.
The end result is worth it though. Unlike Kini, this beach is unorganized (save for a few basic, palm frond parasols planted here and there in the sand), so you can plop your towel down wherever there’s an open spot and/or some shade. Like in Kini, the beach here is all sand, and shallow, so you see lots of families with small kids here as well. Just note that, like in many of the Cyclades, the wind can get rather strong sometimes (though not to a really dangerous point), which, while honestly pretty great when it’s super hot out, might mean you should be wary that none of your things start flying about.
We did have dinner at one restaurant in Kini that I’ll post about later. Before moving on, I’d be remiss not to talk about one of the area’s most famous “landmarks”.
Ignore the lighting but behold the Virgin Mary as a mermaid. Apparently, she is the patron saint of those lost at sea. The fountain lights up at night too. This is also where the bus does pick-ups and drop-offs, which is the perfect transition into the next location.
Ano Syros
I had briefly mentioned in the introduction that one thing that distinguishes Syros from other parts of Greece is its small Catholic community. This community was established when the island was under the control of the Venetians, who chose to settle at the top of the hill of what would become Ano Syros, primarily for its strategic location.
Also, yes, for those wondering it is a bit of a hike to get up there from Ermoupolis. Again, though, the effort will be rewarded.
I actually went up to Ano Syros twice. The first time was with the parents on our first night on the island, and we stopped at the (somewhat lower down) Greek Orthodox Cathedral to check out the view before heading back down to Ermoupolis for dinner.
The second time I went was on my own the next afternoon, and this time, I went all the way to the top of the hill.
This is probably the most stereotypically “Cycladic” part of the island, with its winding streets, white buildings and blue roofs / shutters / doorways. The bougainvillea in bloom stood out beautifully against the white, and the quiet from the lack of cars (taxis can only get you to a certain point here) was a welcome contrast from the morning’s bustle in Kini. This part of the island does come back to life around sunset / nighttime, but as I was there just before, my walk was mostly accompanied by the wind and the occasional meowing of one of the many neighborhood cats.
View from the top
While there’s no real vantage point from which to take a good photo of the outside Saint-George’s Cathedral once you’ve reached it, at least the inside remains open for visitors (and air-conditioned), a little reprieve from the winding hike.
Before moving to the final location, I should also point out that Ano Syros’s other claim to fame (though not sure how much traction this one gets outside of Greece / the Greek diaspora) is that it was the birthplace of Markos Vamvakaris, sometimes called the “patriarch of rebetiko” (a kind of Greek urban popular music, sometimes likened to a sort of Greek “blues”). I’ll link a video of one of his most popular recordings here (a bit cheesy, but this one does include an English translation to follow along with). If you look around carefully, you may even find the lyrics to some of his music painted on the walls around Ano Syros.
Ermoupolis
Miaouli Square
I spent part of the afternoon of our third day on Syros getting coffee and walking around a bit in Ermoupolis with my mom. Unfortunately, it was too late to check out any of the notable sites (like the theatre, for instance) before they closed for the day, but it was also a touch early to check out any shops, as most hadn’t yet reopened from their afternoon closures / siestas (essential here, as in almost every Mediterranean country), but I did get some nice shots.
Where (and What) We Ate
Right, now to the moment many of you, I’m sure, have been waiting for. Again, I’m going to separate the descriptions out under headings (and I’ll link to any websites / socials when possible for reference). Note that I’ll be listing restaurants in the order we visited them at.
We weren’t originally planning on eating here on our first night, but when some restaurants we called in Ano Syros while exploring the area told us that they were unfortunately booked up for the evening, I took to my mapstr and found this place, right along the port. While all their outdoor tables were also booked, they did propose us a table just inside (provided we were vaccinated which, we all are). Given how windy it was that evening, dining inside turned out to be a pretty good idea, in the end.
As the name implies, this restaurant is primarily centered on serving tsipouro (a rather strong spirit made from pomace – the residue of the wine press – similar to Italian grappa or Turkish raki) alongside shareable mezze. They have several different kinds of tsipouro on offer, and your waiter will be more than happy to help guide you to one you may like, especially if, like myself/my parents, you’ve had tsipouro before but not enough to develop specific preferences. We opted for a bottle of Idoniko Tsipouro (which, coincidentally, I realized I have a bottle of at home once the waiter brought it out), produced in Drama, in the north of Greece. Note that, while the 200ml bottle may not seem like a lot, this stuff clocks in at around 40% ABV so believe me, you’ll be fine. Like ouzo, tsipouro is commonly served with ice, but unlike ouzo, you don’t add water to your glass to distill the drink down even more.
Unless you’re taking it as a shot (which can be really fun at parties…personally, I’d take a shot of this over vodka any day), tsipouro is meant to be drunk slowly throughout the meal, alongside the several mezze you’ll likely be ordering (and you should plan on ordering a few). As we had not had a full lunch that day, we went basically all out:
Greek salad (basically mandatory at this point) and local San Michali cheese
Marrinated anchovies on toast with tomato and garlic
Fried zucchini (I had never seen it served this way before – usually zucchini is fried in disks – but I want to go on the record and say this is genius) with tzatziki and loukaniko sausage in tomato sauce with a fried egg (guess who did not eat the egg? Yeah, me.)
Oven-cooked lamb with fennel and potatoes, topped with shaved San Michali cheese. The lamb was just melt-in-your-mouth good. Very glad I saved room for it.
To say that we were stuffed at the end is a bit of an understatement (though I did welcome the complimentary shot of masticha liqueur at the end of the meal as a digestif), but nevertheless, we did manage to roll our way into a cab and back to the hotel to rest up for the next day of more eating.
By the way, some of you who have read my other travel recaps before may be noticing that there are comparatively fewer restaurants on the list this time around. This has nothing to do with any lack of good food in Syros, but more with the fact that other than dinner (and one lunch before jumping on the ferry back to Piraeus), other meals tended to be more independent. No, instead, we saved our appetites for dinner. While we did not partake in quite the same level of intense feasting on our second evening as we did during our first, I would still say we ate quite well.
Allou Yialou is arguably one of the best seafood restaurants on the island, though I will also relativize this slightly by saying that contrary to what one may believe, given its geography/location, Syros is not really a big fish-consuming island. The exception here is Kini, where you can still find fishing boats anchored along the right side of the bay. Conveniently, this restaurant was also located only steps away from our hotel – and they also took online bookings – making it the perfect choice for a post-sunset dinner.
Our table was basically right next to the water.
That there is not much other competition in the seafood department does not mean that Allou Yialou is not objectively good, however. It is good. Quite good. And, should you want to opt for a whole grilled fish as we did, a nice surprise is finding that the prices by the kilo aren’t that much different from what you can find on the mainland either.
The restaurant’s other claim to fame in the fish/seafood department is revisiting classic Greek dishes with a slight twist, using local ingredients. I did not try any of these dishes – as the fam and I opted for the whole grilled fish option as we almost always do when going out for fish in Greece – but judging by how other tables reacted to their meals, I’d say you can be happy with whatever choice you make here.
For our part, however, in the aim of keeping things a bit lighter than the night before, we started off with some revithada (which, yes, is a dish local to Sifnos, not Syros, but whatever):
A bit less saucy than I usually like it, but the chickpeas were still super creamy so it’s all good.
Followed by the aforementioned fish (in our case, a whole grilled Porgy), which was presented and then butterflied/deboned tableside:
Not pictured: the greens that came with the fish…as is tradition.
I mean, maybe I am just unoriginal at this point, but you really can’t go wrong with a whole fish like this.
To close out the meal, we were also treated to complimentary slices of portokalopita (orange cake). And yes, in case this has not become clear, offering a complimentary dessert or fruit post-meal is a thing in Greece (though not every establishment automatically does it).
For our final dinner, we opted to follow the recommendation of our cab driver and check out Mitsos, a traditional taverna, and one of the few restaurants on the island that’s open even during the winter / off-season. The spot is pretty loved by local residents, and that plus its increased popularity with visitors means that one would do well to call ahead to book a table (as we did).
We were hoping to get to try some of the μαγειρευτά (“megeireuta” or slow-cooked) dishes the restaurant was known for, but as they had unfortunately run out of portions at lunchtime (not necessarily a bad thing in terms of freshness / reasonable food quantities) we opted for some mezze and grilled meats instead.
We started with some green beans, skordalia (garlic dip – for those who really, REALLY like garlic, which I do), beets and beet greens, and fried San Michali cheese:
Followed by grilled lamb chops (which were excellent) and seftelia, Cypriot lamb meatballs wrapped in lamb caul and grilled:
And I honestly cannot remember if we even touched what they brought out as a little sweet…that’s how full we were after this meal.
Finally, I don’t have any photos from the spot where we had lunch before taking the ferry, but I do want to take a minute to highlight the place anyway. First off, the outdoor seating here is lovely. Located down a small street – and sandwiched between some other taverna’s / cafés – and covered in a canopy of bougainvillea, it provides a welcome respite from the sun, and a bit of calm away from the bustle of the nearby port. We kept it vegetarian here (which is incredibly easy to do in Greece, by the way) and along with the ubiquitous Greek salad, ordered two other dishes that I highly recommend, should any of you ever find yourselves here:
Marathopita: spinach and fennel pie
Eggplant pilaf: it sounds incredibly basic but honestly with eggplant that creamy and a warming hit of cinnamon, this became an easy favorite.
Finally, to close out all things restos, a special shout-out to a couple of café’s I visited for refreshment and (in the case of the second) decadence.
First, Café Bistro Feggari in Ano Syros where I treated myself to a nice cold lemonade on their rooftop patio after hiking up all those stairs and around the neighborhood.
You can technically also add alcohol to this if you like, but just be aware that you still have a decent number of stairs to deal with in order to get down from Ano Syros afterwards.
Second, Ellinikon Kafeneion in Ermoupoli – right across from the main square – where my mom and I treated ourselves to coffee and quite possibly the most generous single-serving of karidopita (walnut cake) I have ever seen in my life.
Local specialties
As to local gastronomic specialties (other than the San Michali cheese, which made a few appearances during our meal) arguably the island’s biggest claim to food fame is its loukoumi or Turkish delight. Of course, this is not to say they invented them. Rather, that the island has an established reputation for making particularly good ones. You’ll find several shops selling them along with the Syros’s other sweet specialty, halvathopita (basically, imagine nougat sandwiched between two very giant communion wafers), near the port and elsewhere on the island.
Overall
As I mentioned earlier (albeit parenthetically), Sifnos still has my heart as my favorite island of the Cyclades (if not favorite island I’ve visited in Greece, period). With that being said, I really enjoyed my time in Syros, and could maybe even have done with another day either to do some hiking or possibly explore another beach. Ah well. Perhaps another time.
Until then – and until I come back again full-force at the rentrée with all my opinions regarding all things theatre – I hope those who’ve stuck through to the end of this recap have found it informative or, at the very least, enjoyable.
In any case, this has rambled on long enough and I’ve got another beach to get to.
It never ceases to amaze me that, with regards to the history of popular revolt and revolution (especially in France), the first thing that comes to mind to many State-side is a commercialized musical.
I say this less as a way to harp on Les Mis and more as a result of a reflection on two things: the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune and a New York Times article on theatre that I read yesterday. In the case of the former, it is rather telling that a popular movement (and let’s get more specific – one that saw the involvement of several anarchists) such as this one has joined the ranks of several others like it (not just in scope or in aim but also in the fact that it was suppressed – violently – by the powers it directly challenged and destabilized) in being largely lost in the American imagination. Then again, there are several socio-ideological reasons behind why leftist history in America tends to be pushed out, leaving only traces – symbols – behind. These symbols then get picked up, sanitized, and, divorced from their context, sold off to a public willing to buy a facsimile of a revolution, singing along to “Do You Hear the People Sing” while the image of a red flag waves in the air. It’s condensed enough to be turned into a slogan you can put on a button or a t-shirt, the illusion of being close enough to revolt while still retaining a sense of comfort that, fundamentally, not much will change once the piece is over.
To illustrate this point: I remember going to see the revival of Hair back when it returned on Broadway in 2009, and in particular, how excited I was to finally get to see something from an era I was starting to dive more into. Yet, what I most retained from that experience – and what, thinking back now, somewhat informed my approach to Re-Paradise at Nanterre a few years ago – was how empty it all felt. Holding up anti-war signs, inviting the audience up to dance on stage with the actors, extolling the merits of free love and self-expression and criticizing the war machine sending young men off to die rings more hollow in a gilded theatre space where tickets are prohibitively expensive. But nostalgia sells tickets.
This is all more or less to say that, albeit with some exception, American theatre has difficulty truly getting political. What I mean by this is that the system – as it is – fundamentally does not allow for the kind of formal and contextual reckoning that could move what goes on the stage to a point beyond consumption of “political” imagery to actual confrontation and potentially discomfort. Now, America is not unique in this (I have already spent ample time writing on my frustrations with similar trends on French stages), but I want to make this point to link to the NY Times article I read this week which concentrated on the occupation of theatres in France by performing arts students and workers that has been underway for the better part of this month.
In brief, while these occupations may on the surface seem only to be about re-opening performance spaces – that is, divorced from the reality of the pandemic – in actuality (and it is here that I believe the article should have leaned more heavily towards) the fact that they are happening at all is a direct result both of the recognition of the very real consequences that COVID and its aftermath will engender, and at the same time that these consequences did not just come out of nowhere. Rather, they are the results of what I would argue to be decades of an eroding away of public funds combined with an increased mépris for those who work in the industry. It says quite a lot, in my opinion, that the current Minister of Culture, for example, has absolutely no background in the industry (her background is in pharmacology), yet is a lover of opera, which apparently counts as a qualification.
To return to the occupation, if one were to look at the list of demands (provided here, in French), one will note that chief among them is not the mere gesture of reopening – in fact there is an explicit recognition that that is not going to solve the larger problems at hand – but rather, and this is where the Times article starts to connect, without providing much detail, back to the question of American theatre, that of labor. More precisely, the demands concern the very real worries of students and those who work in the industry (called intermittents du spectacle because of the irregular nature of their work) regarding their employment and benefits status, as well as the lack of communication from the Ministry.
(A brief side note: the Minister of Culture did speak on French radio following the start of the occupations, calling them irresponsible. Ma’am, irresponsible is not communicating with representatives from the sector your Ministry supposedly advocates for.)
Now, in non-pandemic times, intermittents are normally eligible for some unemployment benefits in periods when they are out of work, provided they complete a certain number of work hours over the course of a year (the fact that theatre jobs are as erratic and irregular as they are is largely the reason behind why the system is set up like this). However, access to these benefits can be revoked if the work hour minimums are not met. When the pandemic hit last year, the government initially declared that 2020 would be what is called an “année blanche”. In other words, given the circumstances, the work hours requirement would be waived, giving intermittents at least a little security. Crucially, however, the année blanche was set to expire at the end of August 2021, presumably under the expectation, at the time, that work would have picked back up by then (or because Macron’s government is simply not a fan of distributing monetary aid where it’s needed, but we’ll get to that in a bit). Since the theatres closed again in October after having reopened again for a hot second, there has been little to no communication with artistic directors or union representatives regarding any projections for the rest of the year. Rehearsals are still allowed to happen to some (read: minimal) degree, but this doesn’t mean much when it is impossible to know whether or not, in the end, the performance will be able to be seen at all. But more pressingly, the lack of communication also extends to whether or not there are plans to extend the année blanche beyond its original deadline, meaning that thousands of folks are suddenly finding themselves in a very precarious position.
Yet, their demands are not entirely restricted to the realm of live performance. Case in point: the demand that the government retract an upcoming reform on unemployment benefits. Intermittents themselves are not directly affected by this, but, the long and short of it is that should this reform pass (and given the right-leaning makeup of this government, this is likely), a lot of folks are going to see their unemployment benefits slashed. The post-COVID crisis is going to hit a lot of people very hard, and there’s been quite a lot written already about how, globally, the wealth gap is only going to get wider. I will not bore anyone here with my usual talk of why there haven’t been real steps (in France, but also in the US) to tax the wealthy – or better yet, actually do something about those who use Luxembourg as a tax haven to accrue more wealth than anyone would need in a lifetime – and instead close this with a final point to piggy-back on one touched on in the article.
As much as France can tout its institutional support for the arts (and it is true, it is rather generous compared to other countries), when it comes down to the people working in the arts, the actors, the professors, the directors, set / costume / lighting designers, tech crew, etc., there is a lack of consideration (by the heads of State, primarily) for the labor involved that makes the sector as rich as it is. This has been going on prior to Macron, and it will most certainly last after he’s gone, so long as the notion that some jobs are more “essential” than others persists.
Because as much as that word has become synonymous with a certain imagining of those jobs that are needed to keep things running – of hospital staff, grocery staff, postal and sanitation workers, teachers – when it comes down to concrete measures, it starts to become clear that this image of “essential” does not exactly align with reality. Public hospitals still face cuts (again, in France this has been going on for a couple decades), especially in number of ICU beds, essential, low-income workers are not always working in conditions conducive to their own safety. Hell, aside from hospital staff, everyone else mentioned – including teachers – are not as of yet prioritized for vaccines, unless they are of a certain age and/or have pre-existing conditions.
No, essential has meant that which aligns with a certain set of (capitalist / neoliberal) values for a while. It is an absolutely inhuman way to see the world, and yet here we are.
As of now, the occupation at the Odéon – itself a historical site of occupation, particularly in 1968 – is still going strong and shows no sign of slowing down. There are over 50 other theatres (and counting) across the country that have joined in. Call it the power of unions, or of the collective, but in any case, it’s the people holding the State responsible, of not waiting to be brought in to the conversation but making the conversation themselves. It is political in the sense that the people involved are, by virtue of speaking, challenging the State’s notion of “legitimized” political “actors”, of those who can or cannot have a say in policy based on the perception of their profession – and more precisely what it “brings” to the State – as “valuable”.
This is not, however, to say that this movement will lead to a glorious revolution, or a utopian reversal of the way things are done in the artistic sector. As much as I can hope for the creation of an anarcho-leftist society, this past year has also firmly cemented my cynicism. But I think, and I am having trouble wording this, that what is happening in France speaks to something that I think the arts in the US deserve in terms of recognition. There are so many folks who work in the arts back in the States whose labor is undervalued, ignored. And the lack of recognition on a federal level (to think the Federal Theatre project in the 1930s could have been a reality had FDR not nixed it…because you can’t have too much socialism, apparently) doesn’t help matters. It also does not help that the governing bodies of major theatres look almost exactly the same (because yes, any popular, labor-related movement worth it’s salt must include questions of race / gender / identity along with those of class), which, to take us back to the initial thoughts that opened the article, has a marked effect on the kinds of art that are eventually produced.
So this is what I have been thinking about on the anniversary of the Commune, on the eve of a third confinement (except this one will include unlimited outdoor time within a 10km radius), with absolutely no possibility to predict anything beyond tomorrow. I am tired, I am pissed off, and I have been this way pretty much over the past year.
Scènes sur Seine 