What was your starting point with The Confessions?
I interviewed my mother and we spoke for several days. Her life is the basis of the story I wrote, even though I have written a work of fiction... But the basis is that it’s not a fictional life: it’s a real life! A life that will hopefully tell of other lives too, as it’s both extremely specific and, I hope, universal. It’s the story of a woman born into a simple family in an Australian village who wants to learn, discover the world, but who, in the time and place she finds herself in, is not given the right tools and has to go look for them. She is a person who suffers the snares and violences of her time, and who seeks to repair this violence done to her in any way she can. She must find a way to overcome it, to become who she wants to be. There will be many hurdles along the way: a marriage at 18, what she suspects as an assassination attempt, the women's liberation movement in the 1970s, the spectre of World War II. There is also the story of my father, a Jew born in 1930. The ambition is to make people feel time, and how people’s lives move time. The British author Rachel Cusk, and her work on selfhood, parenthood and domestic life, have influenced me, because her way of writing the world today, is in my view, nothing short of the creation of a new language. I’m also thinking of Annie Ernaux and Simone de Beauvoir, who was my mother's favourite author, as well as Knausgaard and Eugene O'Neill. I hope to create moments of life on stage that give a sense of lived life afresh, that theatre can give us fresh access to our lives, through being with another. As if theatre allows us to experience life in a more carnal, concrete way, to get through the fog of the world, of distraction, to what is really important. The Confessions is a simple celebration of an ordinary life, and that has weight, and importance I think. A question that is very close to my heart is that of becoming: how to become who you want to be. The story of a person who tries to be themselves despite societal circumstances. These questions often come up in my plays, as for example in LOVE (2016). There are elements that link this new play to my previous projects, because ultimately Alice experiences social violence in her veins, she feels the weight of the world, and its constraints and fights against it. The big question is: "How to honour a life?". This is an important function of theatre: to make people feel the richness of life and dignity. Dignity is an essential word for me when I think about theatre.
Can you describe your work method and how your creations emerge?
How do you make theatre exist in the world? To make it exist, I don’t start in the theatre, as it often feels empty and self reflective, but I try to find theatre in life. I keep in mind the way the Ancient Greeks used to define theatre; theatre allows us to see the world, it is the "seeing place" (theatron). LOVE, for example, is set in a temporary shelter and is a play about love, viewed from more social standpoints. I spent a year working in social housing, with families facing eviction and precarious rehousing. I always feel the need to immerse myself in reality to make work. With The Confessions, this immersion is different, as it is the story of people who are close to me. But it's an immersion, nonetheless. Part of the process has been to meet women in Australia who are now elderly, who have lived through these times, and to explore the act of memory and the idea of a life story with them. How is it then possible to link the theatre to the world? I was the assistant director to Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne for a long time. Peter spoke to me about intuition without form. And I think that this intuition is often my starting point. The Confessions is this desire for an emotional investigation, starting from a life story.
And how does this translate on stage?
The play, I hope, will allow us to behold a life. From the beginning to the end of her adult years, with a few moments from her childhood. On stage: nine performers of different ages and identities. As usual, the text and the dramaturgy change when confronted by the cast. Their relationships with the world and their experiences have even sometimes echoed the life we are telling, but really the question is how can we play something we are moved by truthfully.
The scenes from 80 years of her life are set side-by-side a little like Giotto’s gigantic frescos, who was very much an inspiration for me. I am first and foremost a storyteller. I like to tell stories that speak to people directly, unvarnished, without intermediaries, to alert and captivate them. It's always a story about reality. I hope!
A portrait of destiny, so to speak?
What is the portrait of a human being today? Portraiture is a great literary tradition that can be reinvented today. So yes, it seems to me that this play is a form of portraiture, based on the experiences of a lifetime, and destiny in a way. And destiny is interesting as it also questions what we carry within ourselves: family history, but also social histories, traumas and hurt passed on from generation to generation. We are also our collective history. I would like to show this on stage. Telling the story of a human being today is much more fractured, or let's say fragmented, than in the classical era. Memory is questioned in this play; What do we keep? What do we expose about ourselves by recounting scattered episodes of our lives, consciously and unconsciously?
Can you talk about your artistic gesture, which combines social investigation, writing about reality and sincerity, and working with your collaborators?
I came across theatre as a teenager, at a time when I thought the world was a bit fake. I found the sincerity I needed. A close friend at the time was in a rock band. And twenty years later, Yannis Philippakis and I got together to create The Confessions. He is now the lead singer of the band Foals. I offered for us to collaborate, gave him the text and made sure he had quite a lot of artistic freedom. Then we simply worked together during rehearsals. This is also how I work with my actors and actresses, in a kind of collaboration where I give them simple directions. The characters are created with them, for them. After the trilogy devoted to Inequalities, I wanted to forge ahead with another form, by introducing work on sound. Music plays an important role in my theatre, and the reunion with Yannis seemed obvious. I follow the same type of work with the performers, regarding rhythm, rigor and the search for honesty, the endless search for that which is elusive, we can just do our best. It’s a space and a time that brings us face to face with ourselves, and what often remains hidden and invisible in us. This is what I am trying to create through theatre: these small, mysterious and essential things that we sense in life, I want us to behold them together.
Interview conducted by Moïra Dalant and translated to English by Gaël Schmidt-Cléach