originally performed in improvisation twenty years ago for the pleasure of Clémence Massart and Jean-Pierre Tailhade
A new piece by Caubère, marking the beginning of a new cycle. After eleven episodes of Roman d'un Acteur, the playwright is embarking on a new ensemble that is shorter and more secret, Claudine and the Theatre. It tells of his childhood and his first experiences in the theatre before joining the Theatre du Soleil. It's a purely "Marseillaise" tale - Caubère was born and bred in the Phoecean city - created by him and played by him. He plays the first two parts of what was originally called L'Homme qui Danse, and that was intended to be in four parts. Claudine, who lends her name to the first part, is his mother. Claudine who embodies parenthood, Claudine beloved and ill-loved, adored and beaten, a bourgeoise who finds herself lost in the class struggle, whose child, from the moment of his birth, discovers his foremost passion and a quest for an impossible road that would reconcile love and independence. At birth, there is a clash of passion and war. The intimate side of the work is shown against a political framework of the 1950s in France: the Algerian War of Independence, the return of Charles De Gaulle to power, clashes between the Communist Party and the trade unions in France. The Theatre represents the challenge of entering into a mythical world. At the pantheon of the young Ferdinand there is the adored symbol of family aspirations, Gérard Philipe and the idol of the young people and street - Johnny Halliday. How can one become an actor, even if one has made a success of one's first public improvisation at school in the baccalaureat ? In Aix-en-Provence, two women established two opposing camps in drama classes: the Grotowski trend versus the school that sticks to the text. The body or the word ! Ferdinand, in his room, cultivates a dream of the theatre that is crushed against a wall in May 1968. Nihilism, unchecked sexual and other freedoms, exaltation, ferociousness, dirty tricks: a maelstrom where the new theatre is born and where Ferdinand no longer knows how to use the weapons that he has forged for himself. It's a double tale of initiation - solitary and nocturnal, violent and funny at the same time. In his pain and anger, a child becomes "the man who dances - l'homme qui danse" with reference to Nietzsche. Philippe Caubère took the recordings of his improvisations of twenty years earlier in front of Clemence Massart and Jean-Pierre Tailhade: "this spontaneous theatre, he has re-written it and reconstructed it to make it into his most obviously tender and true, the new, the genuine Dance of the Devil. A new Caubère is born, even more sensitive, more mature, more expert in the human comedy. In rediscovering the traces of his distant past, he recounts moments that are capital and uncovers the hidden path to the secrets of his own life. A child of Marseille by birth and culture, and a child of Avignon through his relationship with the Festival where he has always performed or premiered his previous works, this year, Caubère renews the actor's ritual: alone and naked on stage in front of the public. This time it's the huge natural theatre of the Boulbon Quarry that provides the background for this first-half of his emotionally athletic four-part autobiographical performance that is comic and fantastic."
Distribution
stage direction Philippe Caubère
assistant : Roger Goffinet
technical director : Philippe Olivier
Cast : Philippe Caubère
Production
production : Véronique Coquet
coproduction : La Comédie Nouvelle, Les Gémeaux-Sceaux-scène nationale