Jean-François Sivadier met Didier-Georges Gabily at the Centre Théâtral du Maine, where he trained as an actor, before pursuing his training at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg school. As an actor, he worked with, amongst others, Jacques Lasalle, Christian Rist, Alain Françon and Dominique Pitoiset, while becoming a stage director. He wrote Italienne avec Orchestre (Italian with Orchestra) which premiered in 1996 and was performed again in 2003. It was a brilliant satire about the world of opera which he knew well after having directed Madame Butterfly by Puccini and Wozzeck by Berg.
Faithful to his partnership with Didier-Georges Gabily, his conception of theatre is a collective one which he can only produce with a group of actors and artists who are united around a project they can defend, united in their bid to go towards the audience in a moment of suspended time where everything is possible. With meticulous attention to words and the general movement of the texts, he brings them to the fore, and offers them to the audience regardless of convention. He makes them familiar but preserves their colour, making drama a place where pleasure is enhanced by the discovery of dramatic works which are re-invented in the instant of their presentation.
At the Avignon Festival, Jean-François Sivadier has played in Enfonçures (Hollows) by Didier-Georges Gabily in 1993 and in Henry IV by William Shakespeare directed by Yann-Joël Collin in 1999. In 2002, he directed La Vie de Galilée (Galileo) by Bertolt Brecht, and in 2005, a diptych Galileo by Brecht – La Mort de Danton (The Death of Danton) by Georg Büchner.
After Beaumarchais, Brecht and Büchner, it's the turn of Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) to be ovehauled by Jean-François Sivadier and his team for their production in the Pope's Palace Courtyard of Honour. The English playwright wrote this piece in 1606, at the height of his maturity towards the end of Elizabeth 1st's reign. A mythical place demands a mythical play which layers and weaves the themes around the three images of this Lear as king, father and madman. Making the most of the mystery which surrounds the king's choice to give away his power, the father's demands for words of daughterly love and after his tragic mistake about the real nature of his daughters, the madman who wanders in a storm which he has partly stirred up, Shakespeare and his Lear cross through fields of politics, desire, folly and paternity with tremendous force. That force was so great that King Lear was used as a case study by the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, yet never really unveiled the secrets of a unique unending journey.
While in keeping with his choice for theatre that can only come about every evening anew if the spectators are aware that they are an integral part of the performance, and with his choice that theatre can only be an ensemble work offered by the performers, Jean-François Sivadier and his actors take part in a production which matches up to the enormity of this fascinating adventure. Around Lear, played by Nicolas Bouchaud, the question of emptiness is also posed; the ”nothingness” in which the hero, and after him all the other characters, find themselves. To the question Lear asks himself in the first act, “Who is it that can tell me who I am?”, there is only one answer – yourself. And this answer leads him to a permanent quest for the place where he can recognize himself once he has cast off all that symbolized his life as king and father, and once he can experience want. From absolute power to absolute submission, from “everything” to “nothing”, Lear follows his path in the space of his thoughts, in the meanders of a quest which ends in final elimination. If there is one moment where Shakespeare is really the “man of the ocean” that Victor Hugo described him as, it is without doubt when he wrote King Lear.
Distribution
traduction :Pascal Collin
mise en scène :Jean-François Sivadier
collaboration artistique :Véronique Timsit, Nicolas Bouchaud, Nadia Vonderheyden
avec :Nicolas Bouchaud, Stephen Butel, Murielle Colvez, Vincent Dissez, Vincent Guédon, Norah Krief, Nicolas Lê Quang, Christophe Ratandra, Nadia Vonderheyden, Rachid Zanouda
collaboration exceptionnelle :Vincent Rouche, Anne Cornu
scénographie :Jean-François Sivadier, Christian Tirole
lumières :Philippe Berthomé
costumes :Virginie Gervaise
création musique :Fred Fresson
sonorisateur :Jean-Louis Imbert
assistantes à la mise en scène :Véronique Timsit, Anne de Quiroz
régie générale :Dominique Brillault
Production
Production déléguée :Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes)
texte à paraître aux éditions Théâtrales en juillet 2007
Jean-François Sivadier est artiste associé au :Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes)
coproduction :Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes), Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, Festival d'Avignon, La rose des vents - Scène nationale Lille Métropole/Villeneuve d'Ascq, l'Espace Malraux - Scène nationale de Chambéry et de la Savoie, Italienne avec Orchestre, Théâtre national de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées
Le Festival d'Avignon reçoit le soutien de :l'Adami pour la production