Arthur Nauzyciel graduated with a degree in plastic art. He went on to train under Antoine Vitez at the École du Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris from 1986 to 1989, while taking film studies at the same time.
He acted with Éric Vigner, Alain Françon, Jacques Nichet, Philippe Clévenot and Tsai Ming Liang, before becoming a director and, since 1996 has been associate artistic director at the Centre Dra-matique National de Bretagne, CDDB-Théâtre in Lorient where he formed his own company in 1999. Le Malade imaginaire ou le silence de Molière, the first play he directed, has toured often and still does. In 2001, he staged Black Battles with Dogs, in Atlanta in the United States, which came to France in 2002, before returning to the U.S., to Chicago in 2004. In 1993, he directed Oh!Les Beaux Jours by Beckett with Marilú Marini in Lorient, Buenos Aires, and in Paris at the Théâtre de l'Odéon. In 2004, he had Thomas Bernhard added to the repertory list at the Comédie-Française when he directed Place des Heros in the Salle Richlieu. The same year, he directed another première in Atlanta, the last play written by Koltès, Roberto Zucco.
Arthur Nauzyciel's theatre is a demonstration of his desire to stage plays in such a way that they remain as close as possible to their original meaning, and of his determination to work as closely as possible with the actors.
On a construction site, in a part of Africa which is modern and unlike the generally received notion of the continent, Bernard-Marie Koltès faces off two worlds when a black man looking for the corpse of his dead brother meets white men holed up in their reserved area. None of the protagonists come out of this confrontation unhurt, rather their existence will be shattered by the destruction, in the space of one night of words and silences, of the traditional framework of black-white and man-woman relations. Arthur Nauzyciel first staged this play in Atlanta, the most important city in the southern part of the United States, the historical land of slavery and racial segregation which fascinated Koltès. The playwright's words, in a new American translation, drop like a bombshell, placing the spectator in an uncomfortable, non-politically-correct, situation. The work of the American actors brings out the precision and intricacy of this partition of Koltesian language, thus to open up the meanings of the play. They create a universe where fights over race, gender and class are inextricably mixed and each protagonist ends up close to a dangerous edge.
Arthur Nauzyciel makes this story of love and grief, tragedy and violence, of people and places, tangible showing bodies brushing against each other and moving apart in unrelenting choreography, giving a glimpse, in an almost cinematographic way, of the universe of the African night, its sounds and stifling heat.
Given the kind of news we hear everyday, the words that Alboury, the black man, says to Horn, the white man, perhaps strike an even louder chord today, “There isn't enough space in your heads and in all your pockets for all your lies.”
Jean-François Perrier
Distribution
mise en scène et adaptation : Arthur Nauzyciel
traduction : David Bradby, Maria Delgado
avec : Janice Akers, Isma'il Ibn Conner, Tim McDonough, Daniel Pettrow
scénographie : Giulio Lichtner, Arthur Nauzyciel
lumières : Christophe Delarue, Giulio Lichtner
son : Xavier Jacquot
voix off : Marcel Bozonnet
costumes : Arthur Nauzyciel
Production
Production : Compagnie 41751/Arthur Nauzyciel, CDDB - Théâtre de Lorient, 7Stages (Atlanta), Étant Donnés / The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts, avec le soutien de l'AFAA