Par autan is François Tanguy’s last creation, created with the Théâtre du Radeau. Where does this mysterious title come from?
Laurence Chable: We were at the Théâtre des 13 Vents in Montpellier to perform Item and we learned that the name of this theatre was due to a translation error, since in Occitan, tres means “three”: it was actually the theatre of the three winds! François asked to be told the names of each of these winds before carefully reading all he could about the autan wind. And suddenly, whereas titles usually came very late in his work, he chose this title well before the start of the project.
François Tanguy was deeply inspired by literature, as suggested by the texts that haunt the performances of Théâtre du Radeau. In Par autan, one hears fragments from Kleist, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Kafka, T. S. Eliot, Kierkegaard, Walser…
Laurence Chable: He referred to some of these authors by their first names: Fyodor, Robert… But he rejected the word text, preferring instead the word vocable, just as he also rejected the word show.
Do you feel like these authors formed a stable repertoire that he revisited show after show? Or did you sometimes notice new arrivals?
Laurence Chable: Not really new arrivals, as François was a tireless reader. There wasn’t a fixed repertoire but strong friendships, constant presences. Some circulated a lot around the table without making it all the way to the stage.
Robert Walser is very present in Par autan, and so is Kafka. What do you think attracted him to these writers?
Laurence Chable: Like Kafka, Walser works the material like a fabric: when reading him, you can see him crossing out, scribbling, revising… It’s beautiful. François embraced that liveliness and loved to confront it.
Confrontation: is that the word that comes to mind spontaneously to describe his relationship with the texts?
Laurence Chable: Confrontation, yes, perhaps, if the aim was to activate a multiplicity of materials through a multiplicity of approaches. He composed from works written by others. But one shouldn’t try to define that relationship, even less with a single word. When François made the effort in various ways to respond, to describe, the first impulse would send the word or phrase off like a firework. There were also waves of amusement, but an amusement of infinite depth and tenderness. The theatre-tool was his primary source of amusement, in a way both very concrete and very precarious. He looked at a lot of paintings, photographs, films. He was passionate about music, and about the songs of birds that he recorded.
Par autan presents a plurality of languages without translation. Do you think it is sometimes important not to understand?
Laurence Chable: Perception follows multiple paths. It is a different activity to try to understand, for example, a language. What happens when listening to a poem by Hölderlin or Celan, even translated? What movements occur within us?
You said that the title Par autan was born during the performances of Item and, as was rarely the case, the two shows toured simultaneously. Does that mean they share a special connection?
Laurence Chable: François spoke of Par autan as an extension of Item. Generally, the tours did not overlap. I believe I can say that he needed one tour to be finished before starting on another project; he needed it to be settled. Moreover, elements of the set were reused. But the Item tour had been disrupted by Covid, and we were saddened at the thought of having shared it with so few people. The joint decision at the time to keep both Item and Par autan suddenly takes on a different meaning after François’s death.
Once created, did the shows continue to evolve?
Laurence Chable: It was not uncommon for us to work in the afternoons during a tour. François would sometimes add or remove things. But he would never give us notes or comments after a rehearsal or a performance. Occasionally, there would be a meeting at the table the next day. Perhaps the time of the performance was only the punctuation of a single movement always in progress? Hence the need to wait for that movement to finish, for a moment of calm, before opening other paths?
Par autan seems caught in a perpetual movement where the space is constantly changing and where the images we think we perceive slip away before our eyes. In the discussions you had, did you ever come to address the question of meaning?
Laurence Chable: The question of meaning is inseparable from plasticity. Something is set in motion, both by François’s sometimes very extended words and by the realisation on stage. Without ever leaving “the place from which one watches,” the theatron. Rather than “giving meaning,” François said “to hold oneself.” It is then much more sensitive, sensory, even material, focused on sharing. What slips away is not the key to a meaning. There is transformation, flight, the fading of a line in the vision, or “lines of propagation,” as François said.
Around the presence of Théâtre du Radeau at the Festival, workshops and other moments of exchange and meeting are organized, notably to explore the transmission of this work. You have a strong expression to describe this anxious and watchful quest: you speak of the “sharing of an ignorance.” How can one transmit what one does not know?
Laurence Chable: It is a political question. The word transmission may be unsettling if it implies the expectation of knowledge. We need to explore this question without pretension, live this moment as an experience, without a method or lesson: to question what has taken place and has come to a stop. We modestly bear this responsibility. It will not be a practical workshop on stage but a workshop of the gaze. After the performances of Item, using video fragments from other creations, we will meet over three consecutive mornings with a group of students and young professionals who are just discovering Théâtre du Radeau. In the company of friends whose perspective goes further back in time, we will question each other.
Interview conducted by Simon Hatab in February 2025.