Like all your shows created within the company la vie brève, Fusées is a collective work. Can you tell us about its creation process?
Collective writing has always shaped the plays of la vie brève. I do not consider the actors and musicians solely as performers but also, and above all, as full-fledged creators. It is in this way that I “playfully” provoke the people with whom I build projects. In this creative process, the goal is to take these players into unexplored territories, to move them, to make them take risks. This polyphonic writing allows us to break down the traditional roles of each person and offers the possibility to organically merge music, theatre, and movement. This collective work extends to sharing the authors’ rights to our shows. As a director, I provide an impulse and then carry my entire team in a great movement. I proceed this way because, as an actress myself, this is where I have thrived the most. I have never seen performers as powerful as when they carry their own proposals. Fusées was staged in a few weeks. This was possible because we all know each other very well. More than an artistic story, la vie brève is also a story of friendship spanning fifteen years.
Among your inspirations for this piece, one could cite Out of the Present by Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujica (1995). What was it about this film that interested you?
It is a documentary full of deep melancholy. It takes us back to May 1991. We discover the Soviet cosmonauts of the Ozon mission, Anatoly Artsebarsky and Sergei Krikalev. Both are sent to the Mir orbital station and filmed for the occasion by four cameras. While Anatoly Artsebarsky returns to Earth five months later, Sergei Krikalev, ends up spending nearly ten months onboard due to the political circumstances. Upon his return, the Soviet Union has disappeared. During his stay, so to speak outside of time, one era ended, and another was born. Out of the Present was shot on film, and the photography is beautiful. The work on sound fascinated me, as did the relationship to expanded time, and the relationship to slowness. We see the boredom and emptiness of these men, their departure from Earth and arrival in space, the comings and goings of inhabitants on the station. We observe them isolated, disconnected from historical events. This isolation greatly inspired us to imagine the daily life of our duo Boris and Kyril. They paint, cut their hair, and play with a small rocket inside the rocket. They behave like children. We feel the existential abyss into which they sometimes plunge. It is about an intergalactic journey but also inner voyages.
You claim to work with the “handcrafted tools of theatre.”
I do have a rudimentary way of doing theatre. I find it important, even political, to return to a form of primitive theatre. For example, we do not amplify the actors’ voices, and we do not use video. We offer a “poor” theatre in the best sense of the term, as an act of resistance at a time when stages are overwhelmed by advanced technologies. When Marion Bois, co-director of the Théâtre de l’Aquarium, and I decided to stage Fusées, we knew we would carry this project with very limited means. In this “bare-bones” economy, we had to return to basic, handcrafted things. We set ourselves an even greater challenge, which did not diminish our creative desire. In doing so, we engage both our imagination and that of the spectators. This makes them very active, and sometimes allows the emergence of a concrete poem.
Music plays a central part in your productions…
I explore it live on stage. During rehearsals, we often ask these questions: How do music and theatre “weave the action” together? How do they play off each other? How do they clash or fuse? In Fusées, the music is performed by musician Claudine Simon. A trained pianist, Claudine has the unique habit of tinkering with her instruments, modifying and preparing them. She can distort their sounds live using various accessories. We worked on repertoire pieces—Schumann, Bach, Schubert, Rossini. Works she performs with virtuosity while following the two cosmonauts on their journey, changing the volume of the music as she goes. I love creating with actors who are also musicians or singers. All this is closely linked to my readings on the Renaissance. It was a period when there was no division between the arts and sciences. Intertwining disciplines is a principle that inspires me greatly. It’s wonderful that the same person can perform music while being an actor in the play. This undeniably enriches the stage and brings a lot of emotion. Whereas, from the 19th century onward, a process of specialisation has contributed to fragmenting knowledge and now prevents us from having an overall view, refusing barriers between disciplines is also our way of resisting. It is a political act.
One of the striking sequences of the show is this miniature puppet theatre that appears in the prologue…
I asked Sarah Fiumani to build a castelet, a miniature theatre measuring 1 metre by 1.60 metres with all the appropriate machinery (battons, traps, pulleys, hooks, painted backdrops). A useable stage, but at a reduced scale. Not just a model, but a “solid” place that can accommodate effects and certain parts of the actors’ bodies. A miniature stage whose look is reminiscent of the Movie Theaters photographed by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre in the United States. On stage, this small theatre is brought to life by a troupe of “injured” actors and actresses. Although they appear dignified, we clearly see they are hurt, with broken arms, bandaged skulls, and plastered legs. This troupe appears with the small puppet theatre, makes it “dance,” and fills it with makeshift images. For me, they embody a metaphor for the injured, dying theatre. An allegory of the state in which we currently find ourselves, “we, culture,” “we, creation.” We are fragile, wounded, but we resist, going on stage no matter what. The second aspect that interests me with this puppet theatre is the idea of working with variations in scale. With this shaky, somewhat old-fashioned machinery, with nothing but bits of string, the performers’ bodies, and repurposed objects (including a camping table turned satellite), we tell the story of humans who have always looked up at the sky and wondered. We relate the greatest story, that of the cosmos, in the smallest theatre. And that is truly exhilarating.
Interview conducted by Vanessa Asse in January 2025