Troupe's Communal Vision Includes Lunch
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/theater/06mnouchkine.html
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: July 5, 2009
Good food is an essential element of any Théâtre du Soleil
production. A lunch last week started with platters of salad,
colorful mosaics of fresh greens, mangoes, tomatoes, eggs and pine
nuts, followed by three kinds of pasta all prepared by members of
this renowned French troupe. Baguettes adorned each of the dozen or
so tables set up in two solemn wood-paneled rooms at the Park Avenue
Armory, where Soleil's latest production, "Les Éphémères," opens on
Tuesday, the first night of the Lincoln Center Festival.
"If we're going to work well, we need to eat well," said Maurice
Durozier, who has been part of the company for 17 years. Its 70
members actors, technicians, administrators, musicians always
dine together. And as any one of them can tell you, it is almost as
much a part of the creative process as writing the script or
designing the costumes. For Le Théâtre du Soleil, theater is an
entirely collaborative enterprise. And one that includes the audience.
"Ariane is also very concerned with how we feed the public," Eve
Doe-Bruce, a veteran of more than 20 years, explained, her fork
pausing above her plate. "There's something that happens when the
public eats together and they begin to share something."
Ariane is Ariane Mnouchkine, the founder of the 45-year-old Théâtre
du Soleil. Though she is not as well known in the United States as in
Europe, she is considered one of theater's most influential
innovators. This year she was given the Norwegian government's
International Ibsen Award for exceptional achievement in the arts.
The citation noted how "each member of the audience is drawn into a
total experience sensual, richly colored, teeming with life and
absorbing in its choreography."
Food is a part of that, Ms. Mnouchkine explained later in a makeshift
office; it is akin to welcoming an honored guest into your home. She
was wearing a dusty-blue T-shirt and a long brown-plaid skirt and
took a moment to play with a baby, one of the swarm of children who
made the journey from France. At most theatrical performances, "as
soon as it's finished, the public is thrown out as if we didn't want
them," she said. "But we don't want only the money of the public, but
also their presence."
Unfortunately the logistics of the armory make it impossible to feed
the 578 audience members during the nearly seven-hour, two-part cycle
of "Les Éphémères," as is the practice when the troupe is at its home
base, an old munitions factory in the forest of Vincennes in Paris.
"We are very isolated in the woods, very protected," Mr. Durozier
said during lunch. "That quality of life is essential. I do not think
we could do the same presentation without it."
In 2005 the troupe presented "Le Dernier Caravansérail (Odyssées),"
or "The Last Caravansary (Odysseys)," a six-hour production based on
letters and interviews that Ms. Mnouchkine and her colleagues
collected during visits to refugee camps and detention centers around
the world.
At the time Jonathan Kalb, chairman of the theater department at
Hunter College, wrote in The New York Times that "marathon dramas by
someone like Ms. Mnouchkine can be extraordinary; an odyssey through
uncharted physical and spiritual territory where the theater loses
its trick-box aspect and becomes a site of unexpected communion and
awful reckoning."
"Les Éphémères" started with a single question posed by Ms.
Mnouchkine: What would you do if you found out that all of humanity
would die out in three months? The group followed with improvisations.
"We started with about 600, and there are about 42 in the play," said
Shaghayegh Beheshti, who was seated next to Mr. Durozier. "So much of
the preparation is invisible but essential."
By the end of the nine-month process the idea about humanity's end
was jettisoned, but it had produced a rich collection of stories and
snapshots from everyday family life.
Though Soleil is known for its left-wing politics, Ms. Mnouchkine is
quick to say that her communal approach to theater is not
ideological. "Immediately I was convinced that 10 people have more
ideas and intuitions than one alone," she said.
Ms. Mnouchkine is insistent on the absence of hierarchy. Everyone
earns the same salary. Each actor takes on other responsibilities,
like cooking or caring for the "chariots," the rolling platforms that
deliver and remove the actors and sets from the stage. She refuses to
be interviewed unless other members of the company are included. And
at 70 she has already discussed with the group the question of her
successor. "It was very important that everyone agree," she said.
(Her assistant, Charles-Henri Bradier, will get the job.)
The approach is decidedly different from the traditional Western
notion of the individual artistic vision. "It's not based on the
genius in the wild," Ms. Mnouchkine said. "It's based on the quest.
We are a group that is chasing theater."
It is an adventure to which each member of the troupe must
wholeheartedly commit. It is not simply a career path, said Duccio
Bellugi-Vannuccini, whose two daughters, Alba Gaïa, 14, and Galatea,
12, also perform in the show. "It's much more a style of life."
In other words, a family, with all the joys and strains. "Sometimes
we hate together; sometimes we love together," Ms. Doe-Bruce said.
Jeremy James, an Australian who joined seven years ago, acknowledged
that the rich creative life demanded sacrifices: "We miss Christmases
with our families."
Such a life is clearly not for everyone. But for those who embrace
it, Mr. Durozier said, there is an almost mysterious communion
between actor and director. "It's like a coup de foudre," like
falling in love, he added. "You cannot do anything else."
Ms. Doe-Bruce recalled first seeing a Théâtre du Soleil production of
three Shakespeare plays. "I see all my senses " She struggled for
the right word, looking to her companions for help.
"Activated," Mr. James offered.
More than that, said another: "Pleased."
"Stimulated," Mr. Doe-Bruce said. Everyone laughed.
After lunch, as some of the company members went downstairs to attend
to costumes or chariots, Juliana Carneiro da Cunha and Serge Nicolaï
took a moment to explain what is unique about Ms. Mnouchkine's vision.
"She has got something," Mr. Nicolaï said, putting his wrists
together and turning his hands right and left like a weather vane.
"She's got this barometer inside her for the theater. She feels so
many things. She's got this talent."
Ms. Carneiro da Cunha described seeing the troupe in "L'Âge d'Or"
("The Age of Gold") in 1976. The light slowly started to rise behind
the stage, and for a moment the audience members thought they had
spent the night at the theater and were watching the sunrise before
suddenly realizing it was a special effect. Everyone was so energized
and joyful, she said, they began dancing and running on the grass. "I
fell on my nose," Ms. Carneiro da Cunha said, "and I thought 'What
does it mean? What does it mean?'
"I am going to join this company," she answered herself. Fourteen
years later she did. "I had a dream, and it became true. I think it
was like that for everyone in the group."
Mr. Nicolaï smiled and shook his head. Not for him. He spoke instead
of seeing the 1978 film "Molière" with his mother when he was 11.
Most affecting was the voice of the narrator, which imprinted itself
on his mind, he said. Years later he participated in one of Ms.
Mnouchkine's workshops. "I was hearing that voice," he said, and "I
found out it was Ariane." It was only then that he discovered that
Ms. Mnouchkine had been the writer, director and narrator.
.
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