Like a curse, the title of Roberto Bolaño's novel brings together the third millennium and the promise of an impending apocalypse. Impending, or ongoing maybe, if one is to believe the writer's portrayal of Europe as tired and America as corrupt. Between the monstrous crimes that wreaked havoc on the world of the 20th century and the atrocities of the 21st, between the strength of art and the admission of its complete inability to stop evil... Attracted by the historical and aesthetic themes of this monumental work, Julien Gosselin borrows its structure and its many stories and gives them a common setting. Those may seem distinct but they share many similarities, from crimes to the presence of a desert, police investigations and the city of Ciuded Juarez – called here Santa Teresa... Leads pile up and allow the collective Si vous pouviez lécher mon coeur to play with genres and constantly switch gears. Downstage, four European critics lose themselves in the search for a mysterious writer and for a love story, then Bolaño's world opens as the curtain rises. Behold Mexico, and there, a Chilean professor on the verge of madness, a bewildered American journalist, all kinds of trafficking, lost policemen, and hundreds of murders...
Roberto Bolaño
Born in Chile in 1953, Roberto Bolaño is the author of Nazi Literature in the Americas, Putas Asesinas (whose stories were translated into English in Last Evenings on Earth and The Return), and The Savage Detectives, all of which received international acclaim. Defining literature as a “fundamentally dangerous calling,” he rejected established models very early in his career. Without sentimentality but not without humor, Bolaño set out to describe the violence of the world in often maximalist works. After leaving Chile following the 1973 military coup, he lived in Mexico, before settling in Spain in 1977. He died in 2003, leaving behind a 1000-page manuscript, 2666.
Distribution
Adaptation and direction Julien Gosselin
Stage design Hubert Colas
Music Guillaume Bachelé et Rémi Alexandre
Lights Nicolas Joubert
Video Jérémie Bernaert, Pierre Martin
Sound Julien Feryn
Costumes Caroline Tavernier
With Rémi Alexandre, Guillaume Bachelé, Adama Diop, Joseph Drouet, Denis Eyriey, Antoine Ferron, Noémie Gantier, Carine Goron, Alexandre Lecroc, Frédéric Leidgens, Caroline Mounier, Victoria Quesnel, Tiphaine Raffier
Production
Production Si vous pouviez lécher mon coeur
Co-production Le Phénix Scène nationale de Valenciennes, Théâtre national de Strasbourg, Festival d'Avignon, Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, TNT Théâtre national de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, MC2: Grenoble Scène nationale, Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam, La Filature Scène nationale de Mulhouse, Le Quartz Scène nationale de Brest
With the support of Ministry of Culture and Communication, Dicréam, SACD Beaumarchais and Adami
With the help of workshops of Théâtre national de Strasbourg for the set design
Hosted studio and residences at la FabricA of Festival d'Avignon
From 2666 Copyright © 2004, The Heirs of Roberto Bolaño, all rights reserved.
2666 by Roberto Bolaño, translation Robert Amutio, is published by éditions Christian Bourgois (2008).