Since she met Anatoli Vassiliev in 1992, Valérie Dréville - an actress trained by Antoine Vitez – keeps coming back to the Russian director. Over and above the master-disciple relationship, a dialogue sprung up between them, which give a particular tone to the performances of Médée-Matériau. Vassiliev and Dréville come together for a play written by Heiner Müller, the contemporary bearer of the myth of Medea. The actress, summons the figure of the betrayed wife and infanticidal mother to the theatre stage. What we retain of Médée-Matériau, is the breathing of incandescent words, the brilliant rhythm of poetic and furious words. The actress, seated, immobile on a chair, smokes a cigarette, she lets it burn. Médée soon joins her. On a video screen, images of the sea unfurl, rocking from ebb to flow, the implacable ritual carried out by the barbarian woman. Médée gives Jason' s girlfriend a dress which catches fire. She sets alight two puppets, which resemble her children. At the end of the performance, the actress is laid bare and the tragic heroine has turned the past into a pile of ashes. Thus she effaces the memory of Jason, the beloved. In its intense acuteness, its incredible precision, its accuracy at all times, the play requires all the strength and softness of Valérie Dréville to render audible the unutterable, Médée' s path, with cutting phrases and murders, her determined path between love, jealousy and the desire to be reborn in an different reality.
Distribution
translation Jean Jourdheuil, Heinz Schwarzinger
stage direction Anatoli Vassiliev
cast :Valérie Dréville
stage design :Anatoli Vassiliev, Vladimir Kovaltchouk
video: Alexandre Chapochnikov
costume :Vadim Andreïev
lighting: Ivan Danitchev
sound :Andreï Zatchessov
make-up :Marina Loïeskaïa
props :Tatiana Michlanova
verbal training: Maria Zaïkova
Production
Production :Théâtre de Moscou « École d'Art dramatique »
Dans le cadre de :THEOREM, association soutenue par le programme Culture 2000 de l'Union européenne
Texte publié :aux éditions de Minuit