Words that tremble, because they have seen too much.Words badly adjusted, because they are not sure they are audible.Words without bulletproof vests which are our dignity.At the Comédie de Genève on Tuesday, Tiago Rodrigues releases these words.The Portuguese director and author sheds light on the fate of these Crusaders of attention and care, of these Burgling escalapes which bivouac on hostile fields, which visit Pouilleuses jails, which negotiate rights of passage to access prisoners ofWar, which ensure that conventions are respected, even and especially when the jackals roam.
Read also: Tiago Rodrigues in July 2021: "I refuse the labels, which I am locking in a role"
This burning memory, sometimes charred, is that of the humanitarian workers, nebula of women and men of good will.CICR delegates, doctors in the service of doctors without borders.Geneva, the city of Henry Dunant, is their base camp.Tiago Rodrigues wanted us to invest their uncertain territories, that we feel this spreading that is theirs, between a peaceful here and a chaotic there.He called this radioscopy of commitment to the extent of the impossible."Impossible", like these regions which no longer stand up, ravaged by ancestral or crushed hatreds by carnivorous diets.
By its subject, by its ambition, by its dimension, the company is already apart.A dozen institutions co -produce the show, including the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris and the Nacional D. Maria II in Lisbon, the house that Tiago Rodrigues directs.
This is called federate.The artist has this talent.That he portrays his grandmother, absolute reader suffering from blindness (by Heart), that he celebrates the breath of his LisBotic theater (Sopro), which he complaces Anna Karénine (The Way She Dies), he reveals his soul, starting a little from ours.His conditions become yours.
Read again: our review of "La Cerisaie" by Tiago Rodrigues at the last Avignon Festival
After rehearsals, the future director of the Avignon Festival finds refuge in a bistro in the Eaux-Vives district, the Café de l'Amitié.He sometimes drinks a goat, an alcohol that whipped, served by the owner, he breathes the scent of passenger camaraderie, he knit the scenario of the next day, the one he will offer to his troop, the actors Adrien Barazzone and Natacha Koutchoumov,notably.Like a character from Paul Auster, this novelist he loves, he speculates on the intelligence of signs and the happiness of coincidences.His writing draws from this inkwell, where lives are hunting for the treasure.
Time: Where does "Impossible" come from?
Tiago Rodrigues: This is the fruit of happy meetings and hazards as always.In the spring of 2017, Anne Brüschweiler, director of the Meyrin Forum, invited me to present a set of pieces.This allowed me to spend two weeks in Geneva and meet spectators, spectators.Among them, there was Yves Daccord, who was then managing director of the ICRC.We wrote emails, he came to see Sopro at the Avignon Festival, a dialogue has deepened around the humanitarian professions.
However, curiosity does not make a show ...
With me, a work always starts from the pleasure of curiosity.When Natacha Koutchoumov and Denis Maillefer, who co -edit the comedy, asked me to think about a project for Geneva, I told them about this strong desire.I have a personal relationship to this material: my father is a journalist, my mother doctor.This show is a bit like I was doing my father's job to talk about my mother's.
Could you have been a doctor?
As a teenager, I was sensitive to what the Anglo-Saxons call "care", that is to say the care of the other, in the broad sense.But I was too unruly to take a scientific path.I read astrophysics essays like I read a novel by Virginia Woolf, with the same slightly disorderly excitement.
Humanitarian aid is a galaxy.How to penetrate it?
To have a chance to grasp the forest, you have to tell the story of a tree.By taking an interest in the experience of a nurse, you can access her world.Upstream of rehearsals, so I read sometimes acidic trials on humanitarian action, I became interested in the reflection of the American Susan Sontag on how to get a skeser of the pain of others.I take notes, I fill in notebooks, I constitute a baggage which will have to be forgotten afterwards.
Why?
This knowledge is a prerequisite, but it must not hinder the presence, those of the professionals we have encountered.With the team, we spent afternoon listening to these people who are committed so that inhumanity does not prevail.It is these actors who are at the heart of our show.
What distinguishes them?
A double belonging.Part of their lives are played out in Geneva or Lisbon, in protected and comfortable spaces.Another, the most important, takes place in dangerous areas.We are interested in what it means to live between two worlds.
What form will the show have?
They will be the thousand and one nights of humanitarian workers.A collection of special moments that actors will endorse as stories.
Great way to start the year with a publication in the world psychiatry newspaper!“How to assess patient satisfaction… https://t.co/2sbdh4bhl
— Social Psychiatry Wed Jan 09 10:18:42 +0000 2019
Vous écrivez toujours vos textes au fil des répétitions. Why?
Because I am unable to do otherwise!I need to be in contact with the performers, in poetic contact with them to write.I had a rich material, that of the interviews carried out.I first transcribed them, then published as a journalist, keeping the tics of language which are the signature of the one who speaks.This text served as a basis: the actors seized it and I made the adjustments, so that everyone has a partition adapted to their personality.
What regions of the world have you favored?
None.We have erased all references to countries torn apart by conflicts so that our prejudices do not operate, for listening to be as free as possible.
Isn't it taking the risk of a slightly abstract speech?
On the contrary, it is to promote a filter -free curiosity.I aspire an alloy between intimate and poetry, to confront us with a reality that we think we know.For there to be a deep empathy, it is necessary to avoid sentimentality and moralism.
What would you like to make the spectator live?
A humanitarian aid has made a request to us: that we were returning the complexity of the stories collected without sacrificing their share of emotion.When they come back from a mission, these professionals often come up against walls of misunderstanding: their interlocutors do not want to be disrupted in their representation of the world.It is the complexity of these realities that we would like to bring to life to the public.
What is a theater for you?
The theater fills me with happiness.It may seem Candide, but that’s the truth.I meet others there, beings with whom to build and live stories.On stage, with my comrades, I participate in the world and I fight my solitude.
Humanitarian action is often suspect, because in the imperialist designs service.Do you also assume this critical discourse?
Sure.I deplore drifts, but I salute too.I am a critic of the forest, but admiring most trees.Humanitarian aid defends essential values, the right in particular that all individuals have to be treated and helped.But some organizations have neo-colonistic or evangelical behaviors.Some also do not escape political manipulations.But these structures also have a self -criticism that I admire.
When do you know that a show is finished?
A show is never completed before meeting the public.I can put an end to a text, complete a film, but not a show.We are preparing for athletes training in a competition.A representation has its share of unpredictable.The performers learned during the rehearsals of the rules of the game which allow them to react to the unexpected.
What book you offer to beings you love?
Often from A to X (Editions de l'Olivier), a novel by the British author John Berger.But these times are above all letters of war (Editions Christian Bourgois), of the Portuguese writer Antonio Lobo Antunes.Young doctor in Angola, he wrote to his wife.Everything touches me in these words where intimacy and politics intertwine: the violence of what it lives, the power of certain images, the grace of a love that does not capitulate.
To the extent of the Impossible, Comedy of Geneva, from February 1 to 13.
In the theater mirror
1977 Tiago Rodrigues was born in Lisbon, three years after the eyelet revolution.
2014 He took over the management of the Teatro Nacional Dona Maria II in Lisbon.He signed this same year "by Heart", an imaginary dialogue with his grandmother who turns everywhere in Europe.
2021 He was appointed director of the Avignon Festival where he succeeded Olivier Py, from August 2022.
2022 He will present in March at the Geneva Comedy his version of "La Cerisaie" by Tchekhov with Isabelle Huppert, a show created last summer in Avignon.
