Paris has been home since 1987 for Argentine actor Marcial Di Fonzo Bo who studied at the École du Théâtre National de Bretagne in France before working with Claude Régy and Matthias Langhoff (for whom he played Richard III) as well as Rodrigo García, Olivier Py and Luc Bondy etc.
A founding member of the Théâtre des Lucioles troupe in Rennes, Brittany, he staged Copi, a Portrait in 1998, then in Chile, Eva Perón by Copi in 2001.
Alternating between acting and directing plays and opera (Honnegger and Salieri), he remains attached to his troupe and works mainly on contemporary authors like Fassbinder, Genet, Lars Norén, Leslie Kaplan, Philippe Minyana, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Copi, with whose work he carves a rigorous and creative path.
He brings back to the stage the most French of Argentine writers, the man who made French his ‘master' language.
Raul Damonte Botana known as Copi was born in Buenos Aires in 1939 into a family of Argentine intellectuals and he died in Paris in 1987. He became well-known in France soon after his arrival in 1963 through his cartoon in the current affairs magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur. He chose French for his novels and his plays which made him stand out in French cultural circles in the 1970s. Author, director, actor, cartoonist, his many and diverse talents were the vectors for his mockery and caustic sense of humour and which are present in all his works. Content with his choice of being a bit of an outsider, he was provocative and attractive, placing his ironic fancy and his generosity at the centre of his work. From La Journée d'une rêveuse (The Dreamer's Day) in 1968 to his last play Une visite Inopportune (An Untimely Visit), in which he describes his own death, he is always talking about himself, between Argentina and France, an implacable witness of his epoch, but with a tender and humorous eye.
A trip through the varied body of Copi's work, whose itinerary includes two stage plays, Loretta Strong and La Tour de la Défense (The Tower at La Défense), a sort of prologue, Les poulets n'ont pas de chai-ses (Chickens Don't Have Chairs), performed and directed around his drawings, in particular La Femme Assise (Seated Lady) . The provocateur of the 1970s and 80s seems even more ‘modern' today, more directly in tune with our world, as a sort of precursor, an artist-messiah amid laughter and dramas. From 7 p.m. till after midnight, in one place, it is possible to follow this course in one single go or step-by-step following the guide, actor and director Marcial Di Fonzo Bo.
For this project, the Théâtre des Lucioles, with the Théâtre Dromesko, reconstructed the Volière Dromesko, a poetical fairground designed by Lily and Igor at the end of the 1980s. Its skeleton stands up once again and wearing a new skin is turned into a huge magic lantern where Copi's drawings appear to be just as alive as the actors.
Circular screens and layers of curtains, netting and practicable scenery give shape to this enclosed large public space renamed “Oh! Caracol”.
La Tour de la Défense is Copi's most constructed play, his most classical perhaps.
It's a metaphysical comedy with six characters who are spending the evening together in a tower-block in the La Défense district just outside Paris on 31st December 1976.
Somewhere between vaudeville and psychological drama, this play is impossible to classify as it was written with limitless dramaturgical creativity. A lovers' tiff, a rescued seagull, preparations for a meal whose main dish is boa and rat stew, all ingredients which spice up this huis clos which turns into a thriller when the body of a little girl is found in a suitcase… Crazy situations follow one after the other leading the spectators into an increasingly mad chase where laughter halts abuptly at times when Copi forces us to look at how lonely his characters are, how impossible it is for them to exist in a world which isolates and destroys.
Marcial Di Fonzo Bo has staged this serious and unforgiving view on love and unlove, that is both funny and ironic, with a mixture of lightness and discipline and has managed to allow his actors the same freedom - which they have thoroughly enjoyed - which Copi claimed as an author. In this way, he has allowed them to create moving and familiar characters sometimes in the form of extreme caricatures who try desperately, but always energetically, to avoid falling into the abyss whose precipice they dance on, expecting the Apocalypse that is expected, because as Copi said, “God sometimes arrives so suddenly.”JFP
Distribution
stage direction Marcial Di Fonzo Bo / Théâtre des Lucioles
avec : Jean-François Auguste, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, Marina Foïs, Mickaël Gaspar, Pierre Maillet, Clément Sibony
avec la collaboration artistique de : Élise Vigier
décor : Vincent Saulier / in-situ architectures
lumières : Maryse Gautier
vidéo : Bruno Geslin assisté de Clément Martin
son : Teddy Degouys
conception des poupées et animaux : Anne Leray
costumes : Laure Mahéo
Marina Foïs est habillée par : MISSONI
directrice de production : Coralie Barthélemy
Production
Coproduction : Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes), MC 93 Bobigny, TnBa-Théâtre national de Bordeaux en Aquitaine, Le Maillon-Théâtre de Strasbourg
Production déléguée pour Avignon : Théâtre des Lucioles (Rennes)
avec la participation artistique du : Jeune Théâtre national
texte publié : aux éditions Christian Bourgois
Marcial Di Fonzo Bo est artiste associé au Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes)