Ordet

by Kaj Munk

  • Theatre
  • Show
The 2008 archive

Arthur Nauzyciel

Orléans / Created in 2008

Ordet (La Parole) © C.Raynaud de Lage / Festival d'Avignon

Presentation

After studying plastic arts and cinema, Arthur Nauzyciel was, from 1986 to 1989, a student at the school of the Théâtre National de Chaillot run by Antoine Vitez. He then acted under the directors Éric Vigner, Alain Françon, Jacques Nichet, Philippe Clévenot and Tsai Ming Liang. An associate artist at the CDDB – Théâtre de Lorient, the first play that he directed, in 1999, The Imaginary Invalid or Molière's Silence after Molière and Giovanni Macchia, premiered there and has been revived regularly in France and abroad. In 2003, he premiered Happy Days with Marilù Marini, presented in France and Buenos Aires. In 2004, he brought Thomas Bernhard into the repertory of the Comédie-Française staging Heroes Square. He regularly works in the United States where he premiered, in Atlanta, Black Battles with Dogs (2001) and Roberto Zucco (2004) by Bernard-Marie Koltès and, in Boston, Abigail's Party by Mike Leigh (2007) and Julius Caesar by Shakespeare (2008). Invited to Iceland in 2007, he presented The Image by Samuel Beckett with the dancer Damien Jalet and will premiere Le Musée de la mer (The Sea Museum) by Marie Darrieussecq there in 2009. His theatre bears witness to his determination to have the texts heard as close as possible to their meaning, as close as possible to the actor's intimacy. Since June 2007, he has been the director of the Centre dramatique national Orléans-Loiret-Centre.
At the Festival d'Avignon, Arthur Nauzyciel played in A Mid-Summer Night's Dream directed by Jérôme Savary in 1990, with Valérie Dréville in War Plays directed by Alain Françon in 1994, in Brancusi contre États-Unis, un procès historique 1928 (Brancusi against The United States, a Historic Trial 1928) directed by Éric Vigner in 1996 and Life and Death of King Jean directed by Laurent Pelly in 1998. He presented Black Battles with Dogs at the Festival in 2006.

Born on January 13, 1898 in Denmark, orphaned at the age of 5, Kaj Munk was adopted in 1916 by distant relatives. He became a pastor in 1924 in a rural parish of western Jutland. A complex personality, he was a defender of fascist ideas in the 1930s before becoming, after the first anti-Semitic persecutions that followed Denmark's invasion in 1940, a ferocious opponent of Nazism. On the Gestapo's orders, he was arrested and executed on January 4, 1944. At the age of 19, he began his literary work, which made him one of the greatest Danish poets, and he was the author of about 30 plays that were performed in all the major Scandinavian theatres. Ordet, written in 1925, was adapted for the cinema by Carl Theodor Dreyer in 1955.

The translation of Ordet is Marie Darrieussecq's first work for the theatre. An author, notably of Truismes (Truisms), Naissance des fantômes (Birth of Ghosts), Précisions sur les vagues (Precisions on the Waves) and White, published by P.O.L éditions, her novel Tom est mort (Tom Is Dead) was the subject of a reading directed by Arthur Nauzyciel at the Festival d'Avignon 2007. She wrote her first play, Le Musée de la mer (The Sea Museum) for him. She is associate author at the Centre Dramatique National Orléans-Loiret-Centre.

Effaced, concealed behind Carl Theodor Dreyer's mythic film, Kaj Munk's most renowned play, Ordet (“the word” in Danish) seems today like a play at the limits of mysticism and as a tremendous reflection on the forces of life which, in each human existence, are set against the forces of death. We must continue to live, fight, love… to not be inconsolable faced with the inexorable outcome. The pastor Munk does not limit his words as an author to those of the Gospels. He also makes purely human words, of love, doubt, anxiety and hope come out of the mouths of his Danish peasants. He contrasts them in a theatre construction that brings suspense to the forefront, that ravels and unravels the conflicts permitting all the characters to express their contrasting convictions. There is no right word but strong words, the words of those who believe and the words of those who can no longer do so, the words of those who hope and the words of those who have lost all hope… In this new translation by Marie Darieussecq and Arthur Nauzyciel, we are spellbound by the original view that Kaj Munk had on the family, on belief and, more than anything, on women. We hear the doubt that crosses minds, we are troubled and moved by the expression of an amorous desire so frankly expressed. Arthur Nauzyciel returns to the Festival d'Avignon still convinced that the stage is the place where what shatters man, what raises him up, what makes him “alive” and combative may be spoken, provided that there is a strong, unique, lively language that the actors must appropriate to the point of being physically inhabited by it. All of this constitutes the play by Kaj Munk, who considers the stage as the perfect place for dreams and miracles.

Distribution

mise en scène: Arthur Nauzyciel
traduction et adaptation: Marie Darrieussecq et Arthur Nauzyciel
avec: Pierre Baux, Xavier Gallais, Benoît Giros, Pascal Greggory, Frédéric Pierrot, Laure Roldan de Montaud, Marc Toupence, Christine Vézinet, Catherine Vuillez, Jean-Marie Winling
décor: Éric Vigner assisté de Jérémie Duchier
chant: Ensemble Organum Mathilde Daudy, Antoine Sicot, Marcel Pérès
musique: Marcel Pérès
Journal de répétition: Denis Lachaud
Photographie de plateau: Frédéric Nauczyciel
Conseiller littéraire: Vincent Rafis
costumes et mobilier: José Lévy
son: Xavier Jacquot
lumières: Joël Hourbeigt
travail chorégraphique: Damien Jalet
production déléguée: Centre dramatique national Orléans-
Loiret-Centre
avec la participation artistique du Jeune Théâtre National
Le décor a été construit par les ateliers de la Maison de la Culture de Bourges

Production

coproduction: Centre dramatique national Orléans-
Loiret-Centre,
Festival d'Avignon, CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient – Centre dramatique national, Maison de la Culture de Bourges, Compagnie 41751
avec le soutien: de la Région Centre, du Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil – Centre dramatique national et de la Scène nationale d'Orléans
Le Festival d'Avignon reçoit le soutien de l'Adami pour la production

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