Interview

There's no way to escape the journalistic exercise that is the interview in our world oversaturated with media. Politicians and artists, athletes and anonymous people all have to subject themselves to it, in a never-ending whirlwind of information. Whether it be intrusive or complaisant, combative or friendly, posthumous or imaginary, solemn or burlesque, the interview is all about playing a role. It is a theatre stage and a dancefloor on which two subjectivities meet. But at a time when everything is but chatter, what matters is to allow truths to arise, words that can break away from conformism and banality thanks to that unique art Plato called maieutics. It is those diverse styles, that interrogation about questioning itself that Nicolas Truong, himself a journalist well-versed in the exercise, wants us to hear. From Foucault to Duras, from Pasolini to Deleuze, but also from Bernard Pivot to Thierry Ardisson and from Florence Aubenas to Svetlana Alexievitch, it is an entire universe of interviewers and interviewees that are made to speak again, those who are used to asking the questions now asked about their successful interviews and failed encounters. On the stage of the Tinel of the Charterhouse, the audience will get to hear how what often starts as standardised language can shift into embodied dialogue. Unconcerned with naturalism and uninterested in reconstitution, Interview is all about playing and struggling, about deconstruction and reconstruction, about our imagination. From shameless lies to uncontrollable confusion, from complicity to aggressiveness, it is as much our collective memory as our very concept of modernity that are dramatised in this theatre of words.

Conception and direction Nicolas Truong
Artistic collaboration Nicolas Bouchaud et Judith Henry
Dramaturgy Thomas Pondevie
Stage design and costumes Elise Capdenat
Lights Philippe Berthomé

With Nicolas Bouchaud, Judith Henry

Production MC93 Maison de la Culture de la Seine-Saint-Denis
Coproduction Théâtre des idées, Théâtre du Rond-Point (Paris), Théâtre National de Strasbourg
With the support of Princeton Festival, Monfort Théâtre (Paris) and Théâtre Paris-Villette