Viviane De Muynck is best-known as one of the main actress of Needcompany. At the beginning of the 1990s, she met Jan Lauwers, and has since then shared the path of Needcompany and has performed in nearly all of its creations.
Before that meeting, Viviane De Muynck worked with the most famous directors in Flemish, including Jan Decorte and Jan Joris Lamers, but she also worked a lot abroad with, amongst others The Wooster Group. She often acts on the big screen and on television and performs in avant-garde music concerts.
The prodigious Flemish actress, Viviane De Muynck, who was incredible as the extraordinary title character of Isabella, in Needcompany's Isabella's Room at the Avignon Festival in 2004, is also very interested in another character. That character is Claire Goll, a formidable woman and a real one this time, another witness of the 20th Century, like Isabella - they could even have been friends – and perhaps, as Jan Lauwers who stages this production suggests, her alter ego.
In her memoires, La Poursuite du vent (All is Vanity), the wife of the poet Yvan Goll tells her life story that seems as if it ranged from historical fresco to nasty gossip. Her direct, incisive and abrupt style describes the birth and evolution of the dada movement which she was a part of everyday and her numerous meetings and liaisons with some of the greatest artists of her time, Joyce, Rilke, Breton, Picasso, Satie, Dalí, Cocteau, Chagall and many others.
An enamoured, proud and destructive muse, Claire Goll's book was controversial when it was published because she made such personal comments and judgements, and it sparked lively debate.
Alone on an empty stage, Viviane De Muynck is Claire Goll now elderly, and reaching for her memories. It is a new challenge for this actress, whose monologue evokes the legendary artistic and literary period in Europe in 1900 up until 1970.
Based on an historical context and private impressions, the perilous and disturbing exercise the actress sets out on is carried out in masterly fashion, between truth and lies, subjective images, fiction and reality.
Irène Filiberti
Distribution
texte : Claire Goll
adaptation du livre La poursuite du vent de Claire Goll par Viviane De Muynck
Mise en scène et scénographie : Jan Lauwers
avec : Viviane De Muynck
lumières : Jan Maertens, Jan Lauwers
construction du décor : Herman Sorgeloos
directeur de production : Luc Galle
Production
Production : Needcompany
Coproduction : Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, Festival d'Avignon, Théâtre Garonne (Toulouse)
avec la collaboration : du Kaaitheater (Bruxelles), du deSingel (Anvers) et de la Commission communautaire flamande de la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale
avec le soutien : des autorités flamandes
Le Festival d'Avignon reçoit le soutien de l'Adami pour la production