November 01, 2004 -

“Is it reality, is it a vision? The faces move, the voices speak: this is pure Beckett.”
– Georges Banu, ArtPress, October 2002 (transl.)

Ottawa, Ontario -- As part of the National Arts Centre (NAC)’s 2004–05 French Theatre season, Denis Marleau is delighted to present two of his “technological phantasmagorias”: Dors mon petit enfant by Jon Fosse, and Les Aveugles by Maurice Maeterlinck, both directed by Mr. Marleau. This extraordinary double bill will play in the NAC Studio on November 10, 11, 12 and 13 (Wednesday through Saturday) and November 18, 19 and 20 (Thursday through Saturday).

The NAC is proud to present the Canadian premiere of Dors mon petit enfant, a theatrical installation commissioned by Lille 2004, European Cultural Capital and first performed at the Manège de Maubeuge during the 2004 Borderline Festival. Les Aveugles premiered at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art in 2002, then went on a major European tour (including the 2002 Avignon Festival) with a stop in Taipei; after its November run at the NAC, the production will head out again for engagements in France, Spain, the UK and Norway. This mesmerizing “technological phantasmagoria” (as Marleau himself defines it) was voted Best Montreal Production (2002) by the Association québécoise des critiques de théâtre.

In these two unsettling and fascinating shows, Denis Marleau stretches the limits of theatre to construct a visual, auditory and textual adventure. Though they incorporate elements of visual art and video technology, both works are firmly rooted in Marleau’s practice as a stage director. As early as 1997, in his adaptation of Tabucchi’s Les Trois Derniers Jours de Fernando Pessoa, Marleau used video technology to engineer the juxtaposition of the actor playing Pessoa and the character himself in his various manifestations. He continued this exploration in 1999 with Urfaust, tragédie subjective (inspired by the writings of Goethe and Pessoa), using video projections to animate mannequins, mirrors and busts.

In Dors mon petit enfant and Les Aveugles, Marleau again approaches the stage as “a site of strangeness” where he orchestrates a spectral sonata for our times. Using video images of human faces projected onto masks, Marleau blends the animate and the inanimate to evoke the poignant fragility of human existence. In the words of renowned French essayist and critic Georges Banu, “The absence/presence of the bodies that accompany the spoken words of the dialogue evokes the immobile wanderings of beings engaged in the endless quest for a world just beyond their reach.” (We are delighted to welcome Professor Banu to Ottawa, where he will give two lectures on Friday, November 12: one at the University of Ottawa at 13:00, and one in the NAC Fountain Room at 20:10, immediately after the 19:00 performance.)

Dors mon petit enfant by Jon Fosse

Three little beings are talking quietly amongst themselves. Where are they? All three would like to know. Suspended in limbo, perhaps? At the instant after life ends… or before it begins? One says, “I have always been here / Even when I wasn’t here / I was here.” Another muses, “I think it looks like my children.” They’re beginning to feel strangely comfortable in this doorless, windowless space where time doesn’t exist. What if they are “nowhere,” and “nowhere” doesn’t exist? What if they are living inside love itself?

A concise, crystalline play written in 2000, Dors mon petit enfant draws us into the metaphysical circumlocutions of Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse, into a state of completeness suspended between existence and non-existence—which in this case is not death, but the beginning of everything. From his first play, And we’ll never be parted (1994), Fosse’s writing style is simple, spare and repetitive, yet almost baroque in the iteration and infinite multiplication of motifs, capturing the elusive thoughts, contradictions and emotional reversals that assail us.

Jon Fosse is one of the most original voices in European theatre today. In 2002, Denis Marleau introduced Canadian audiences to this groundbreaking playwright with his staging of the Canadian premiere of Fosse’s Quelqu’un va venir (Someone is Going to Come), featuring Pierre Lebeau, Alexis Martin and Pascale Montpetit.

The technological phantasmagoria Dors mon petit enfant is designed and directed by Denis Marleau and performed by Céline Bonnier, Ginette Morin and Paul Savoie. The production premiered at the Manège (Maubeuge) during the 2004 Borderline Festival, and was also presented (with Maeterlinck’s Les Aveugles and Beckett’s Comédie) at Lille as part of the Mondes parallèles weekend series dedicated to Montreal.

Les Aveugles by Maurice Maeterlinck

“We should consider liberating the stage from the actors’ presence. This does not mean that we would not thus return to centuries-old artistic forms, of which Greek tragic masks may bear the last traces. Shall we one day use sculpture, which is already the subject of some fairly intriguing questions? Will live actors be replaced by shadows, projections of symbolic shapes, or inanimate forms with all the characteristics of living beings? I do not know; but what does seem essential to me is to eliminate the physical presence of the performer.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, Menus Propos – Le Théâtre, 1890 (transl.)

Twelve faces emerge from the gloom. Six women and six men. Their gaze is aimless, directionless, unfocused. All twelve are blind. Lost in a shadowy forest where they have fallen asleep, they are waiting for the return of their sighted guide. While they wait, to break the tension, to reassure themselves that they are not alone, they talk; and they listen—fearfully, hopefully—to the sounds that emerge from the darkness that surrounds them. Their guide doesn’t answer, seems to have vanished. Unable to distinguish between night and day, suspended between life and death, The Blind feel abandoned.

The technological phantasmagoria Les Aveugles, coproduced by UBU, compagnie de création (Montreal), the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art (MMCA), and the Festival d’Avignon, was premiered by Denis Marleau in 2002 in Montreal during his residency at the MMCA (multimedia division). Situated at the intersection of visual art, Greek tragic masks and contemporary technology, this theatrical experiment is performed by Céline Bonnier and Paul Savoie. The performance space/time is intensely animated and inhabited by multiple video images of the actors’ faces projected onto masks—even though the actors themselves are not physically present.

Following its presentation at the 2002 Avignon and Edinburgh Festivals, the production (whose English version is narrated by Ellen David and Hubert Fielden) launched a major European tour which occupied much of the 2002–03 season, with stops in Bruges (European Cultural Capital 2002), Warsaw, Rouen, Mons, Modena, Compiègne, Ljubljana and Lisbon. During the 2003–04 season Les Aveugles played in 23 cities in four European countries, with engagements at the Noorderzon Festival (Groningen, The Netherlands), the Festival Bellones-Brigittines (Brussels, Belgium), the Festival européen Temps d’images de la ferme du Buisson (Marne-la-Vallée, France), the Festival bis-ARTS (Charleroi, Belgium), the Spielart Theater Festival (Munich, Germany), and several major national theatres in France. In spring 2004 Les Aveugles was presented in Taipei.

“Prophetic as he was, Maeterlinck could scarcely have foreseen that his ideas would be taken literally. And yet they have been, absolutely: his play Les Aveugles is being performed in Avignon by actors who are entirely absent…. One is dazzled by such a feat, but even more by the fact that the play—45 minutes long—is so admirably performed… Its success goes far beyond the appeal of a curious phenomenon.”

“Maeterlinck is not the only one to cherish the dream of ‘theatre and its double’—at least theoretically, speculatively. Denis Marleau follows unhesitatingly in his path…. Marleau has created a beautiful, mysterious, astonishing show that will be eagerly welcomed by theatres around the world.”

“A singular and fascinating achievement that transcends all genres…. In Les Aveugles, Denis Marleau has crafted an astonishing theatrical form that is perfectly suited to this short text by Maeterlinck—who envisioned a theatre that did away with the actor’s physical presence, that would have “all the characteristics of life without actually having life.” That is exactly the case with this work, a seamless symbiosis of form and substance…. Besides the dazzling aesthetic premise, the success of Les Aveugles rests on the fact that, despite its static quality and entirely virtual nature, the production manages to convey all the anguish and despair of these fragile creatures.”

Tickets: Adults $30.00, Students $16.00 On sale at the NAC Box Office (no service charges), through Ticketmaster (at all Ticketmaster outlets or by ‘phone, 613-755-1111) or online at www.nac-cna.ca.

Groups of 20 or more save up to 20% off regular ticket prices! For information and reservations, call (613) 947-7000, ext. 384, or e mail grp@nac-cna.ca.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Wednesday, November 10 at 20:10
(following the 19:00 performance)
OPENING NIGHT TALK-BACK
With special guests Denis Marleau (director/designer) and Stéphanie Jasmin (designer)
– National Arts Centre Salon –
Admission free

Friday, November 12 at 13:00
LECTURE by GEORGES BANU
Essayist, critic, theatre studies professor at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and the Université de Louvain-la-Neuve
La Nuit symboliste, de Spilliaert et Maeterlinck à Claude Régy et Denis Marleau
With special guest Denis Marleau
Presented in association with the Cultural Office of the Embassy of France and the University of Ottawa Faculty of Arts
– Salle Académique, University of Ottawa –
133 Séraphin-Marion, Ottawa
Admission free

Friday, November 12 at 20:10
(following the 19:00 performance)
LECTURE by GEORGES BANU
Essayist, critic, theatre studies professor at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and the Université de Louvain-la-Neuve
La Nuit symboliste, de Spilliaert et Maeterlinck à Claude Régy et Denis Marleau
With special guest Denis Marleau
Presented in association with the Cultural Office of the Embassy of France
– National Arts Centre Fountain Room –
Admission free

Friday, November 19 at 20:10
(following the 19:00 performance)
LECTURE by RAINIER GRUTMAN
Associate Professor, French Literature Department, University of Ottawa
Maeterlinck hier et aujourd’hui
Presented in association with the Embassy of Belgium
– National Arts Centre Salon –
Admission free

Information:
Guy Warin, Communications Officer
NAC French Theatre
(613) 947-7000 or 1 866 850-2787, ext. 759
gwarin@nac-cna.ca