1973

1973 is a stage experiment on the "re-enactment", which recomposes the literal framework of an event, brings closer the necessarily deforming memory that the artist as a child preserved of it, and questions it with the objectivity of an essayist and social sciences researcher. Massimo Furlan's idea is to recreate a TV programme as accurately as possible, as if he were reconstructing an archive. One hour and 30 minutes of a programme aired in April 1973: the Eurovision song contest. The Finnish, Monaco, Spanish, Belgian, Portuguese and Italian contestants performed one after the other, giving the best of themselves - Eurovision, at the time, proposed what Europe did the best of in variety - until Patrick Juvet, from Switzerland, came on stage. "That performance stunned me," Massimo Furlan recounts. "A smiling, tall blond young man with long hair, he sang and seemed so much at ease and so happy. However, he was Swiss." On stage, Massimo Furlan redoes everything: he interprets the songs, he puts on the contestants' costumes of the period, he recreates the hairdos, he repeats the comments and shows the performance of the Luxembourg presenter, Helga Guitton, magnificent that evening in a azure blue gown. But Massimo Furlan, or rather the creature that he conjures up for the occasion, Pino Tozzi, is in a certain way incompetent: he doesn't speak Portuguese or Finnish, doesn't sing very well, even if he tries his best, after many rehearsals. Rigorous and extremely funny, his inaptitude is rapidly touching. Because Massimo Furlan doesn't make fun of it but reincarnates, 37 years later, a contest that became a collective myth but that remained a personal event for him. His private memory thus crosses the popular memory, and gives rise to learned comments from scholars. The destiny of this child who has grown up blends with the history of music, that of television, clothing, techno?logy, entertainment and with the history of a good number of spectators. Everything, of course, is contained here in the space between the archive and the acting, between memory and reality, between what has been forgotten and what has been remembered, between the true and the false. ADB

director Massimo Furlan
dramaturg Claire de Ribaupierre
scenographer Antoine Friderici, Massimo Furlan
musical preparation Daniel Perrin
light Antoine Friderici
sound designer Stéphane Vecchione, Philippe de Rham
costumes designer Cécile Delanoë
make-up Julie Monot

with Marc Augé, Anne Delahaye, Massimo Furlan, Bastien Gallet, Thomas Hempler, Serge Margel, Stéphane Vecchione

production Numero23Prod
coproduction Festival d'Avignon, Arsenic Lausanne, Gessnerallee Zurich, La Bâtie Festival de Genève, Kaserne Bâle, Théâtre de la Cité internationale Paris, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg
avec le soutien de la Ville de Lausanne, de l'État de Vaud, de la Loterie Romande, de Pro Helvetia-Fondation suisse pour la Culture, de la Banque cantonale Vaudoise, du Pour-cent culturel Migros, de Corodis, de Ernst Göhner Stiftung, de la Fondation Artephila, de la Fondation Stanley Thomas Johnson, de la Fondation Leenaards et de la Mediathek Tanz