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.
Between 1938 and 1955 Bertolt Brecht kept working and re-working his play, The Life of Galileo, changing the meanings of this fable as his attitude to science changed (one version before and one after the explosion of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima) and as his attitude to politics changed (there is a version before the division of Germany and one after). Jean-François Sivadier, in opting for the later version also wanted to highlight a type of theatre that happens in the immediacy of words. The stage is not only the place where Galileo carries out his scientific experiments, it is also a place for Brecht's experiment in theatre, and the telescope which reaches the universe of the planets, can also be used to reach the theatre and open up the lives of the spectators. The stage becomes, just like a laboratory, a special place where theories can be laid out and the most established certainties shaken. Questions about science, about the place of humankind in the world of science and of reason, questions about the responsibility of scientists in the future of humanity. But most of all, questions Brecht poses about himself and his role as an intellectual in a system where telling the truth, perhaps as it was for Galileo, could mean taking a fatal risk. Is it better to lie to protect the truth from its enemies, to hide, to keep quiet, to bow, in order to be taken seriously in more clement times ? Jean-François Sivadier knows, as Brecht did, that asking questions about science and its relation to the world, also means asking questions about theatre as a form of representating the world. In a multi-level décor, the actors perform a burlesque and dramatic whirl in pace with a line of thought which develops in real time, building up and sometimes falling apart depending on the theories and the experiments, but which are always aimed at the audience which is invited to share this introspective evolution. And although Blaise Pascal, speaking of the post-Galilean universe said, "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frighten me," our response should perhaps be that of Jean-François Sivadier, so close to Bertolt Brecht – "it is more fascinating and attractive than frightening".
Distribution
stage direction Jean-François Sivadier
Artistic collaboration : Nicolas Bouchaud, Véronique Timsit, Nadia Vonderheyden
Cast : Nicolas Bouchaud, Stephen Butel, Marie Cariès, Eric Guérin, Jean-François Sivadier, Christophe Ratandra, Christian Tirole, Nadia Vonderheyden, Dominique Brillault
Traduction : Eloi Recoing
Scenography : Christian Tirole, Jean-François Sivadier
Props : Christian Tirole, Dominique Brillault, Yann Chollet
Costumes : Virginie Gervaise
Lighting : Philippe Berthomé
Sound : Stéphane Rio
Assistant director : Véronique Timsit
Production
Production déléguée : Théâtre National de Bretagne - Rennes coproduction Le Maillon - Théâtre de Strasbourg, La Halle aux Grains, Scène Nationale - Blois, La Rose des Vents, Villeneuve d'Ascq, Italienne avec Orchestre
Avec le soutien de : la DRAC Ile-de-France et de l'Adami
Texte français publié : par l'Arche éditeur