Cycle de metteurs en scène européens (European directors series)

France Culture has kicked off this year a new programme to enhance and to highlight the work of great European stage directors who are eager to familiarise us with living European authors. Each year, France Culture would like to give them a day, where they have carte blanche to invite those with whom they work and those who inspire them. We are delighted that Claude Régy has accepted to be the first candidate for this series. For decades, he has set his heart on making contemporary texts heard and to bring them to the spectators so that new roads will open for them. A play directed by Claude Régy is never closed in on itself, never does it send a message, never does he hammer home one-sided arguments. Every spectator leaves the theatre with their own secret idea. They go out of the theatre at the end of the performance wanting to take further, with themselves, the dialogue that Régy has begun with this “communion” that he tries to create between the audience and the actors. That is no doubt why in his productions, the lights are always low. The intensity of the actors at its peak level. With Régy, we never feel, as the audience, that we are passively watching a show. Claude Régy continues to make known contemporary authors and to work with their words on stage, incarnated by actors. His work in this direction began with Marguerite Duras. Then there were Peter Handke, Edward Bond, and more recently , David Harrower, Charles Reznikoff, Jon Fosse and next autumn Sarah Kane.Throughout this day, Claude Régy and his guests – contemporary writers, directors, actors and scientists, including Valérie Dréville, one of his favourite actresses, and Michel Cassé, an astro-physician – will discuss work methods, sources of inspiration, their paths, their uncertainties and the slow construction which leads to the very idea of theatre performance.