After training as an actor at the Centre Théâtral du Maine where he met Didier Georges Gabily, then at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg school, Jean-François Sivadier worked with Jacques Lassalle, Christian Rist, Alain Françon and Dominique Pitoiset, while at the same time working towards directing and writing himself. Italienne avec Orchestre which he wrote, directed and performed, was first staged in 1996 and had a second run in 2003. In the meantime, he staged Le Mariage de Figaro by Beaumarchais and La Vie de Galilée (The Life of Galileo) by Bertolt Brecht after which he turned to opera and Puccini's Madame Butterfly. His close relationship with Didier Georges Gabily, leads Jean-François Sivadier to conceive of the theatre only as collective work which he can only conduct with a group of actors and artists who are all wholly behind a project, united in the idea of reaching out to spectators, almost to the point of bringing the audience on stage with them for a moment of suspended time where everything is possible. He is meticulous about the words and the general movement of his texts: he enhances them, offers them to the audience without attaching any of the standard conventions that can have a paralysing effect, bringing them closer but without making them dull. Jean-François Sivadier's aim is to make the theatre a place for enjoyment, where artists and spectators discover together the depths of dramatic works, and become richer for the experience. Jean-François Sivadier's works presented previously at the Avignon Festival are Shakespeare's Henry IV in 1999 and Brecht's Life of Galileo in 2002.
Jean-François Sivadier likes theatre that handles politics poetically, theatre where words invent what is living, word after word, where resistance to the wearing effect of time allows thought to be constantly in active mode. With La Mort de Danton (The Death of Danton) by Georg Büchner, he plunges into the first of the three plays written by this legendary playwright who died at the age of 24, and who took just a few days to write the play when he was 21 and was being chased by the police of the Grand Duchy of Hesse for his revolutionary texts. Büchner did not write a historical or pedagogical play even if he did draw on historical events and documents. It is a reflection on the state of humankind swept up in a movement which can no longer be controlled humanely. It is a moment for pause and reflection for the heroes of the French Revolution. They can no longer take action and are going to disappear in a whirl of ideas, bound for death but writing one of the most beautiful dramatic poems ever heard. Whether Danton, Robespierre or Saint-Just, they are all analysed, dissected, examined by the young medical student who is also the author. It is indeed a tragedy, in the sense that we know from the start what will happen to the heroes, but it is also a veritable manifesto on dramatic art. Büchner knows that he must not write in the same way as those gone before him, starting with Schiller, and that new times demand a new type of theatre. He proposes a fragmented form, mixing crowd and more intimate scenes, political discourse and fictitious dialogue, giving the actors the opportunity to assume their roles that are constantly deconstructing. Jean-François Sivadier wants the audience to hear this multitude of voices, the questions, the vitality of thinking over which hangs the approaching shadow of death, the humanity hidden behind the masks. He wants the actors on stage to come as close as possible to the truth, to rediscover the playwright's original urgency, re-situating, through the character of Danton, the human being in the centre of the theatre stage and, in the centre of the world stage.
Distribution
stage direction : Jean-François Sivadier
Cast : Marc Bertin, Nicolas Bouchaud, Stephen Butel, Marie Cariès, Sarah Chaumette, Charlotte Clamens, Vincent Guédon, Frédérique Loliée, Christophe Ratandra, Jean-François Sivadier, Rachid Zanouda
Translation : Jean-Louis Besson, Jean Jourdheuil
Scenography : Christian Tirole, Jean-François Sivadier
Costumes : Virginie Gervaise
Lighting : Ronan Cahoreau-Gallier, Philippe Berthomé
Assistant director : Véronique Timsit
Production
En compagnie : de l'Adami
Production : Théâtre National de Bretagne – Rennes, Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, Festival d'Avignon, MC2 Maison de la Culture de Grenoble, Italienne avec Orchestre
Avec le soutien : de la Région Ile-de-France
Texte publié : aux éditions Théâtrales