|
2007 - El bufón trágico andino y su tocayo europeo - A. Díaz-Florián.
2004 - El Corral de Comedias en compañía
del Caballero de Olmedo - A. Díaz-Florián.
2004 - La Cartoucherie: une aventure théâtrale - Joël Cramesnil. (extractos
del libro en francés)
2000 - Teatro Latinoamericano: Entrevista Díaz-Florián - Osvaldo
Obregón.
1991 - Tamerlan: The beauty of the Resistible Tyrant. - Brian
Singleton.
THEATRE RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL
Article by Brian Singleton.
Oxford University Press in association with the International
Federation for Theatre Research.
Volume 16 - Number 2 - Summer 1991.
Pgs. : 83-108.
The Beauty of the Resistible
Tyrant :
Tamerlan at the Theatre de l'Epee de Bois
Brian
Singleton
"The
Theatre de l'Epee de Bois offers Free Training in Actor's
Workshop", reads the announcement each year in Libération.
The response is minimal. Of the four thousand actors in Paris
at any one time, few will apply.
The workshop offers on-site training for theatre
apprentices and most students and experienced actors
decline. Of those who attend, few will have the constitution
necessary to withstand the mental and physical demands required
of those subsequently engaged for production, let alone be
prepared for a ten-month rehearsal period, twelve hours a
day, unpaid. The Épée de Bois is more than
just a theatre company, it is also a school, and a way of
life.
Since Jacques Copeau's Theatre du Vieux-Colombier (1913)
there has been a host of theatre-cum-schools in France, all
sharing a common aim of training both the actor and the man.
Copeau's school trained actors to assert their creativity
in a pursuit of le beau, le bien,
le vrai.
One such trainee, Charles Dullin, set up his own school,
L'Atelier (1918), along similar lines aiming at a fusion
of the theatrical elements and at cultural revitalization.
It was Dullin's theatre which influenced Antonin Artaud and
Jean-Paul Sartre, spawned a new generation of practitioners
such as Jean-Louis Barrault, Roger Blin and Jean Marais,
and which now acts as a model for the Epee de Bois.
Ariane Mnouchkine's Theatre du Soleil is a more recent example
of a co-operative company in pursuit of total theatre, making
harsh physical and mental demands on its actors in their
approach to matters of art and life. A common interest of
these theatres, particularly those of Dullin and Mnouchkine,
is in the Orient. Dullin taught a westernized version of
Kabuki theatre to his actors and Mnouchkine's productions
have featured oriental subjects and orientalized Shakespeare.
L'Épée de Bois is a co-operative company with
oriental interests, and it is little wonder, therefore, that
its 1989 production should be Marlowe's Tamerlan ( Tamburlaine,
The Great).
The company consists largely of actor/members exiled from
the Middle East itself (Armenia and Iran), and also from
North Africa and South America. One of the principal reasons
for this is that the strength of character and wealth of
experience demanded by the school, which really can only
be gained by living in fear, under tyranny, hungry, or in
the shadow of death, are to be found amongst actors from
society's marginalized groups or from the Third World.
These actors came to Tamerlan often
speaking French as a foreign or second language with a non-West-European
perspective of the world. They came not to speak poetry or
to interpret the subtleties and nuances of Felix Rabbe's
translation, but to present the spirit of a world governed
by tyranny and through fear which, with the exception of
Franco's dictatorship, has been alien to West Europeans for
several decades.
For us, tyranny is not tangible. It is a notion embodied
by one of many abstract conditions such as poverty, racial
discrimination, homelessness and unemployment. But for these
actor-exiles at the Epee de Bois in 1989 tyranny has been
a reality and a way of life.
The Epee de Bois is one of five companies which make up the
avant-garde theatre complex at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes,
Paris. The most renowned, Theatre du Soleil, was the first
to occupy four of the hangars of a disused munitions factory
for its collectively-created multi-focused spectacle of the
French Revolution, 1789.
A new, young audience followed the company to the Cartoucherie
and the Soleil was joined subsequently by four new theatre
companies; the Theatre de la Tempete, the Theatre de 1'Aquarium,
L'Atelier du Chaudron, and the former 'Atelier' de l'Epée
de Bois.
Over the past twenty years the Cartoucherie has been a hotbed
of radicalism and experimentation with theatre forms and
audience/actor relationships. Its warehouse-sized spaces
have been transformed into many different environments; circus
arenas, baths, marble palaces, Elizabethan banqueting halls
and fairgrounds, in which commedia
dell'arte, Brechtian gestus, Stanislavskian psychological
realism, expressionism, and ritualized Kabuki and Kathakali
have all found their place.
Nowadays any in-house production tends to carry with it the
label 'avant-garde'. One's horizon of expectation is determined
by this reputation, and extended by the constantly changing
use of space and the striving by the theatres to demystify
the event. The Epée de Bois is thus one section in
the commune that is the Cartoucherie, which provides the
theatre with a home and determines the nature of the latter's
existence.
The Atelier de l'Epée de Bois began life as one of
several groups under the aegis of the Communaute theatrale
de Raymond Rouleau in a ramshackle building, Rue de l'Epée
de Bois in Paris's 5th arrondissement. The present company
has very little to connect it with the original theatre except
that one group to form there (led by the Peruvian student
Antonio Díaz-Florián), which had performed
its own creation entitled La Torture in
1969, was subsequently invited by Jean-Marie Serreau to perform
its next production, Martyrs ( 1)
at the Theatre de la Tempete. Díaz-Florián's
company noticed that several of the hangars at the Cartoucherie
were vacant, decamped permanently to Vincennes, and shared
a space with the Atelier du Chaudron.
The company currently occupies two hangars adjacent to the
Theatre du Soleil, one of which is used exclusively as a
construction workshop. The second hangar is divided into
two permanent theatre spaces with fixed, tiered seating.
Mnouchkine helped Díaz-Florián become established
(as a good neighbour should) and there still exists a close
working relationship between their two theatres.
Díaz-Florián, like Mnouchkine, openly acknowledges
the influences of Dullin and Copeau for the structure and
philosophy of their respective companies, and the Orient
for its gestural language and performance style. The early
creations on torture and martyrdom set the precedent for
future thematic preoccupations. Although the range of plays
produced has been vast, stretching from Diderot, Marivaux,
Hugo, to Lorca, the works of two dramatists in particular
have been produced with great frequency; Brecht and Camus.
Recently they have attempted a reassessment of English Renaissance
texts and Díaz-Florián admits that the purpose
of this is to find his way into Shakespeare.
The production of Camus's Caligula (1987)
marked a new development in the company's staging. Rehearsals
began during the Theatre du Soleil's orientalist period (1981-8) — a
cycle of three Shakespeare productions with an Orient-inspired
framework of performance language, and Helene Cixous's L'Histoire
terrible mais inachevee de Norodom Sihanouk, roi du Cambodge.
Díaz-Florián played a minor role in the latter,
and the title role in Caligula went
to a long-standing Theatre du Soleil actor, Serge Poncelet.
But it was not only the personnel of the Soleil which Diaz-Florian
invited into his own troupe. A similar performance language,
the orientalization of a Western text and the style of acting
('jouer frontal'), all owed an enormous debt to Mnouchkine
as well.
In both theatres Orientalism abounds. The musical instruments
in Caligula were mostly Armenian
and had a significant role to play in performance. For
example, Caligula, by acknowledging the musicians, would
call on them to change the patricians' moods. Music became
an extension of Caligula's own mind, an extra voice. His
own voice complemented the music in that many of his utterances
were monosyllabic and extra-textual. The acting style bore
some resemblances to Japanese theatre: the patricians were
played mostly in the kyogen fashion,
inventing much of their highly acrobatic antics with ladders
and torches to portray humourously their fear. Certain orientalized,
anti-naturalistic conventions were set up. Death, for instance,
took the form of a spinning movement of which the actors
lost control. Ironically, Caligula had the force to set his
unsuspecting victims into a kind of circular, celebratory
dance which they invariably failed to prevent turning into
a deathspin. Death in Caligula was
almost an exact replica of the death convention in Mnouchkine's Henry
IV; in both the victim fell into an unrealistic squatting
position.
Other similarities with Mnouchkine's orientalized Shakespeare
include the horizontal and vertical groupings, and the declamation
of the text. Diaz-Florian went further than Mnouchkine by
combining the formerly separated full-front acting and inter-actor
delivery. Caligula would often begin by talking directly
to the other characters on stage and then switch focus in
mid-speech to the audience. This had the effect of turning
the audience into participants in the drama and at the same
time of widening Caligula's sphere of influence.
As an antidote to the doom and gloom of Caligula the
company's next production, Jonson's Volpone (1988),
marked a shift in tone if not in style for the actors. It
was performed in the smaller of the two theatres using similar
heightened and frenetic performance language, akin to commedia,
retaining the unrealistic declamatory 'frontal' acting. Tamerlan was
the third in this series of exaggeratedly gestural productions.
The working method was firmly established although no codes
of performance had been laid down.
To conform to it was the remit of the actor. The remit of
Diaz-Florian from the Ministry of Culture was to produce
one show a year in return for an annual subsidy of 800000FF.
With this he engaged a company of young actors, unpaid for
a ten-month rehearsal period to create a production based
on Marlowe's text. This was an opportunity to return to their
recurring thematic leitmotif: the presentation of tyranny
and oppression, of which Tamburlaine is the archetypal representative.
TAMERLAN: PRODUCTION
Tamerlan opened on 12 April 1989 after a difficult
and troublesome gestation. The first six months were clouded by disagreements
over artistic policy culminating in the disbanding of the company. Some actors
remained and many new recruits joined.
The process of creation played a significant part in the
metamorphosis: the actors came to the theatre each day, not
to rehearse for a performance, but to create, with or without
an audience. A long period of rehearsal with no immediate
prospect of performance proved too frustrating for some who
were anxious to display the fruits of their labours. The
creative process, therefore, had consequences on the production
of Tamerlan beyond the purely
artistic, and so it would be wrong to analyse the performance
without first discussing the method of production.
Each rehearsal day began with a warm-up session led by the
Ecuadorian actor/teacher Freddy Rojas. This thirty minute
session, conducted in total silence, was an essential part
of the method of production and dictated attitudes and approaches
to creation. The actors formed a circle and took the lead
from Rojas. A period of meditation was followed by a succession
of physical exercises (for instance increasing stretches
and strides and climbing imaginary rope). Each burst of intense
physical activity was followed by a short period of motionless
meditation.
Diaz-Florian explains why:
|
L'essence même du théâtre,
c'est une communion. L'échauffement est un moment de rencontre.
Il me semble que dans la société on ne se dit plus bonjour.
Après il y a des exercices vraiment physiques pour que le corps
soit huilé et prêt à repondre aux besoins de la
scène. |
The idea of communion, of sharing is at the very centre of
the theatre's philosophy. All tasks are distributed equally;
cooking, cleaning and acting. The session ended with the
actors standing in a circle, hands clasped in prayer, then
greeting one another and shaking hands. Passing the look
from one actor to another was not gratuitous. It has its
origins in Lecoq's mime, in Mnouchkine's Theatre du Soleil
and is one of the first exercises taught in Philippe Hottier's
Theatre du Phénix. ( 2)
In Tamerlan, as in Caligula and Volpone,
this fundamental principle of engaging eye contact was part
of the acting style — the look passed from actor to
actor, and then from actor to audience.
The basic stance adopted for all the physical exercises in
the warm-up session found its way on stage and was fundamental
to the acting style. The actor stood feet apart, knees bent
and back straight. From this position he jumped to various
parts of the rehearsal room, all the while retaining his
basic stance. This stance in production precluded any attempt
at realism. Yet Diaz-Florian had no intention of excluding
realism from the Epee de Bois stage:
|
Ils peuvent prendre des attitudes
réalistes s'ils en ont besoin. On leur demande une
vérité qui est plus qu'une vérité.
Je leur demande de faire un jeu grand, large, exubérant,
uniquement pour essayer de les libérer de tous les
carcans de trois ou quatre ans de cours de théâtre. |
There was no codified gestural language to learn but the
gesture which conveyed or signified 'la vérité'
was founded on the premise of this one exercise from which
all subsequent movement and gesture derived. It was a kind
of 'exercice de base'. Once this exercise is mastered, realism,
which for Diaz-Florian is totally untheatrical, becomes impossible.
At the end of the session, with the actors having achieved
a heightened state of physical and mental awareness, it happened
quite often that the philosophy of communion would develop
into a sharing of ideas related specifically to the production.
These 'ideas' were not the subject of discussion but were
used to provoke thought regarding interpretation of character
and the creation of the whole performance. Extracts from
books on Marlowe, Elizabethan theatre, the Orient and Orientalists,
mythology, psychology, anthropology, the Koran were read
aloud at all stages of the rehearsal period. Specific extracts
were highlighted for the benefit of the other members of
the company. One such extract ('Sa vie et ses oeuvres' in
Marlowe's Theatre I) is worthy
of note:
|
Toutes les pièces de Marlowe
peuvent se résumer en un seul nom, en un seul type,
qui reste à jamais imprimé dans 1'imagination
de traits ineffaçables: Tamerlan, Faust, le Juif
de Malte, le Duc de Guise. Ces personnages hors nature
sont véritablement ce que Marlowe a voulu qu'ils
fussent: le démon idéal de la conquête
et de la gloire aussi bien Napoleon que Tamerlan, le démon
de la haine et du fanatisme, le démon de l'ambition
et du machiavélisme, le démon de la science
et de l'orgueil intellectuel. |
Diaz-Florian, however, believed that this 'evil' must not
be confined to the play's protagonist:
|
Il faut chercher le tyran dans chacun de nous, le faire
sortir et le maîtriser. |
Each character, like every human being,
has the potential for evil. Those who fail to resist the
tyrant, Tamerlan or Caligula, are not simply guilty of complicity
through inaction, they are fascinated by the evil protagonist.
Conversely, those protagonists can convey to an audience
good sides to their characters, so that an audience can be
similarly wooed.
Every man is a potential tyrant. The actual tyrant is he
who has failed to suppress this negative side to his character.
None of this is to be found directly in the text, or at least
Díaz-Florián did not look there for justification
for his belief. It is the director's view of the world borne
out of direct experience in his native Peru.
The refusal to consider the text a starting point was fundamental
to the creative process. This process was divided into three
stages; "se vider" (emptying),
"construire" (construction), and "aller à l'extrême
de . . . " (exaggeration).
Stage one,
"se vider" is the search for a neutral state in
the warm-up session. Stage two, "construire", is
achieved through a series of mental and physical exercises
begun in warm-up and continued in the period of character
creation. When the actor put on his costume (from the very
first rehearsal) he was constructing. An oversized pair of
shoes or an ill-fitting tunic could affect the gait or posture
of the actor. They could also affect the type of character
being created. Quite often the choice of basic state came
from the director who would specify for individual characters
states such as clown, raging bull, fop, etc. More often,
though, these states originated in the extreme exaggeration
of role models.
The result of this process of typification was the construction
of one-dimensional characters. Warriors fought; kings were
invariably beneficent, patriarchal and both physically and
vocally commanding; servants prostrated themselves and put
their own lives at risk for their masters. In an early stage
of rehearsals the King of Babylon's entrance was preceded
by his personal slave carrying a stool (representing a throne)
and the Koran. His entrance was dictated by the enormous
weight attached to these two symbols of power.
The actor/servant was bent double and in great discomfort
in an effort to get these items in position at the appropriate
time without letting them touch the floor. His contorted
body and face portrayed unquestioning devotion. While still
holding the stool and the Koran in the air causing him much
pain, he managed to wipe the floor with his shoulder before
placing the items on the ground. He then proceeded to measure
their position, to check and double-check. When his master
arrived the slave fawned and cowered like a dog and accepted
without question the whole gamut of his master's emotions.
This improvised scene lasted five minutes and although not
carried through fully in production, formed the basis of
the servant's state. Psychological motive was absent: a servant
was a servant was a servant. This second stage in the creative
process could thus be described as "typisation à outrance".
The third stage was to take the exaggeration of the basic
state to the extreme through a range of emotions called substates.
This resulted in explosive entrances, bold movement, exaggerated
gesture, and in the declamatory delivery of the text.
In rehearsal Díaz-Florián constantly told his
new actors that subtlety of voice and gesture was not permissible
and that they should treat the audience as they would a group
of children.
Voice and its modulation were pushed to the extreme. Each
word was enunciated clearly and not one syllable swallowed.
Consequently the expression "horrible mort", for
example, sounded onomatopoeically "horrible".
The principles of exaggerated voice delivery and gesture
were complemented by the principles of movement, similarly
exaggerated. For instance, the actors were told to imagine
holding heavy swords in their hands. Thus the actor being
verbally attacked had to move his neck in a ducking movement
as if he were being hit on the head by the imaginary sword.
This was just one example of externalizing emotions and banising
any internal psychology of character. Díaz-Florián
gave the entrance of a character added dimension. He called
it the "mise en place": the actor first stops at
the central entrance to the main stage area, holds his position
for several seconds in a posture which conveys his substate
(i.e. current emotion) and surveys both stage and audience.
Only when the audience has had time to acknowledge the actor's
presence does the scene proceed.
This had the effect of breaking all illusion, of eliminating
an element of surprise (an appendage of realism) and of establishing
the tone of a scene from the outset. One could obviously
draw parallels with the mie of
the Kabuki theatre, yet in Tamerlan the
function of the "mise en place" was less of intensifying
emotion than of introducing and clarifying it.
The notion of collective creation which
abolishes the tendency to interpret scenically dramatic texts
applied to every element of the production: set, light, costume
and music. None is illustrative. All are creative(3).
The plastic arts in Diaz-Florian's theatre evolve in similar
fashion to the creation of characters. As the actors are
asked to "se vider" and then to "construire" so,
too, does the set begin life from a neutral state, from the
bare concrete shell of the theatre. The raked seating bank
is a fixture and the set uses the natural confines of the
hangar walls to stake out its territory. No attempt at illusion
or at historical authenticity is made.
The audience's interpretation of the codes and sign systems
of the plastic arts as well as the acting is not determined
by foreknowledge of text, period or location. The Epée
de Bois's ideal spectator is one who can create a fiction
without this armoury. The following analysis, therefore,
is an attempt to examine the communication on the stage/audience
axis, armed with the knowledge of the director's intentions.
TAMERLAN: PERFORMANCE
Looking down from the fixed, raked seating bank to the performance
space, the overriding impression was of austerity. Scenic
additives to the hangar walls and floor of the fixed-feature
space were few. The two side walls of the hangar were painted
in blue and gold cloud-like swirls, imprecise in nature and
of unidentifiable denotation.
The back wall facing the audience had been stripped of its
plaster so that the pale sandstone bricks were visible. There
were three arches in the wall, the outer two curtained off
leaving the central arch for all entrances and exits.
It suggested a Moorish palace — the simple exterior
of which belied the artistic opulence of the interior decoration
and one could argue that it had the same function as the "palais à volonté" of
neo-classical French theatre.
Characters emerged from the "place whence" and
related what had happened offstage.
At the top of the wall a circular window, a natural feature
of the Cartoucherie hangars, let in natural sunlight which
faded as the performance progressed. This window made the "place
whence" (represented by the wall) a double signifier:
palace and open air.
Characters left the main stage area through the wall to their
intended location (interior or exterior). The exit in the
wall, therefore, served as a passage to both, with the window
reinforcing the duality.
The 18m x 14m stage space was a multi-purpose locale, functional
for all interior and exterior scenes ranging across the Middle
East, suggesting a variety of domains beyond the confines
of the actual space. What is more, the gestural language
of the actors forced the domain being evoked to encompass
the auditorium; the direction of looks, and the extension
of dialogues out to the audience, and pointed to figures
and places in the auditorium, contributed to a sense of the
audience being not only participants in the drama but also
signifiers in the theatrical discourse.
The proxemic relations of the scenic space
could not be neatly divided up according to the general cultural
codes governing personal, social and public distances. Nevertheless
certain rules applied. The central acting area was reserved
for homogenous social groups, such as court and family, although
interpersonal distances varied greatly.
The limits of the space were defined by
rusty iron grids on the floor which, when underlit, served
as metaphorical substitutes for hell, prison, or river. In
the front two corners of the grids the symmetry of lines
and surface materials was broken and the concrete hewn away
to a rough surface. These small areas denoted exterior scenes
and also indicated in interior scenes characters out of step
or favour with an apparently homogenous group; it became
the resting place for Tamerlan's victims in public scenes
and for Amyras, Tamerlan's non-conformist son. The grids
kept out servants from the homogenous social group and also
divided opposing factions. The use of space, therefore, was
neither emblematic nor pictorial but was a scenic display
of the laws governing social behaviour.
The floor itself was made of grey concrete and speckled with
vein-like rivers of red paint.
The circle in the centre served as a pivot for much of the
action. The kings and brigand leaders stood on it and it
was soon established that the circle signified the seat of
power. In the early part of the production Tamerlan was suspicious
of it and seemed determined to avoid it — unexpected
behaviour for someone anxious to conquer it. Only in the
final scene, after he had mastered it, did his ambivalent
feelings towards the spot become clear: the circle was not
only the seat of ultimate power and authority, it was also
the predestined place for Tamerlan to die.
At the bottom left-hand corner of the stage (downstage right)
was the only piece of vertical setting: a brick plinth on
which was placed at the start of each performance a vase
of flowers by a created character, the archetypal everyman
Perdicas.
The flowers signified a garden scene, provided cover for
an embarrassed character, and also indicated a space for
moments of joy or laughter. The director's intention was
to bring a little life to the stage in much the same way
as the burning flame to the rear of the central arch:
|
Les fleurs sont
là où se passe le moment le plus beau — une
beauté sublime, désespérante, angoissante,
merveilleuse, joyeuse — une vie supérieure,
la vie qui est au-dessus. Les fleurs sont les dieux du
théâtre. On ne peut pas les maîtriser.
La flamme, par contre, est maîtrisable. On peut l'allumer,
la colorer, la teinter, etc. Les fleurs et la flamme se
complémentent. |
Given that psychology of character was banished
from the stage and that the actors either looked at one another
or at the audience, the flowers became an extra presence
which the actors addressed. Whole monologues were delivered
to the flowers as to the audience as if both were capable
of responding.
Amidst the tyranny and butchery they became, from a representational
point of view, a glimmer of humanity. From a purely aesthetic
point of view, they broke the symmetry and austerity of the
open space.
Another break in the bare scenic continuum was created by
the two musicians, Christine Kotschi and Sergio Perrera,
and their collection of oriental instruments.
They played an integral role in the performance, creating
moods, and leitmotifs; acting empathetically; reacting in
discordance to characters traits and emotions. They initiated
the performance, were acknowledged by the actors on stage
and became, after gesture and speech, the actors' third voice.
The music was composed largely of percussion instruments
but it was the string instruments which provided most of
the melodic leitmotifs.
Tamerlan himself was accompanied by both a Rebac Kemane (a
Turkish violin) and an Indian Santoor, two instruments used
to chart Tamerlan's rise and fall. Tamerlan's mood and his
actions were betrayed by the accompanying leitmotif, long
before his arrival on stage.
Not all the sounds created were of Eastern origin. Natural
elements (such as wind) were realistically evoked. Moments
of musical realism were few and far between. In scenes of
physical violence, no pretence at realism was effected: each
stroke of a truncheon was accompanied by a circus-like drumbeat.
Generally the function of the music was to dispel the illusion
by completing, emphasizing and punctuating speech and movement.
Eighteen actors played thirty-eight characters and only five
were played by the same actors throughout; Tamerlan, the
two women (Anippe and Zénocrate), Perdicas and Boulourg-Casane.
The latter two were new creations — the common man
and the camp follower, choric figures who addressed the audience
directly and commented on the action.
Perdicas, in the original text a servant to Calyphas, was
a free agent in this performance and bore absolutely no relation
to his textual counterpart. Played by the Iranian actor Hamid
Djavdan, Perdicas evolved during rehearsals as a stage auditor,
acting and reacting to the main action, getting caught up
in events. He commented, participated, observed and reacted
but not once did he take a moral stand or pass judgement.
His costume, created by Djavdan himself, evolved during the
course of rehearsals as the character developed. The basic
costume for all characters consisted of an oriental black
headdress and baggy trousers, but for Perdicas, Djavdan also
added a greatcoat dating from the First World War. To this
he made alterations and additions; baggy sleeves, various
pouches, military insignia, medals, and on his lapel a plastic
nose, false moustache and dark glasses, a crude badge of
the dictator. The final motley costume was a visual indicator
of his role as chameleon and everyman. Even his hats changed
according to his role and to the scene.
Initially Perdicas set the scene to the accompaniment of
oriental music, carrying the large vase of red roses, stopping
at the central entrance arch and genuflecting several times
as part of his "mise en place". Then shuffling
around the stage at right angles he placed the flowers on
a plinth. This was Perdicas-the-stage-manager drawing attention
to the flowers without revealing their significance and introducing
the audience to the exoticism of the production by greeting
the audience in Persian with the words "Doroud Bar Choma
Khanomha va Aghayan". The audience perceived this as
delightful, if incomprehensible, hieroglyphics. Appreciating
it simply on that level was sufficient in itself. We did
not need to know that he was actually saying "Good evening,
ladies and gentlemen".
The smile, the flowers, the accompanying musical leitmotif,
the pleasant greeting, all had the effect of ingratiating
himself with the audience. He made himself the touchstone.
Further examples of Perdicas's exotic orientalist interventions
were numerous. He sang a song of dedication to Bajazet in
the first scene and then acted as scribe for a communiqué from
Bajazet to Tamerlan, warning the latter not to set foot in
Africa or Greece "or else". Perdicas chalked this
line by line on a slate giving us a simultaneous translation
into Persian.
This served several functions: it distanced Bajazet and Tamerlan
in terms of territory and language, it reinforced and punctuated
the text, adding extra weight to the threat like an echoing
percussion instrument, and it also highlighted one of the
great dangers of orientalism — misinterpretation.
The scene ended at the culmination of the dictation: "Mais
si, presumant de son faible pouvoir, il est assez fou pour
en venir aux armes avec moi, alors ..." [But if he overestimates
his power and is rash enough to fight with me, then . . .
] Perdicas translated and transcribed the communique phrase
by phrase (one presumes accurately) until "alors" which
he repeated as "allo". Communication broke down
and so did the scene as Bajazet swept out leaving us to wonder
how much else had been lost in translation. The message was
read out to Tamerlan in a subsequent scene right down to
the final "allo"
which had the same effect on the conclusion of the scene.
Here he manipulated a misunderstanding of the Oriental language
and used it (unwittingly) to intensify emotion and exacerbate
tension.
In the second part Perdicas's entertaining orientalism was
called upon once more to cheer up the dying Zénocrate.
Playing the role of court jester he sang a Persian song,
which to our Western ears sounded like a wail, to reveal
the true situation of Zénocrate's imminent death.
Perdicas often intervened in moments of sadness, grief or
danger.
In the early stages of the play with the threat to Mycetes
from Tamerlan, his face invariably displayed little or no
emotion and, given the size of the stage and auditorium,
subtlety of gesture and emotion would be lost at any rate.
When frightened, therefore, he did not appear worried through
facial expression or by uncontrollable shaking. He simply
changed his formal stance. With knees bent, his toes pointing
outwards slowly drew in. This clownish move betrayed the
emotion behind his armoured exterior.
When a character was in the process of dying on stage or
lamenting death, such as Bassa bemoaning Bajazet's demise,
Perdicas hid behind a shield and cried his orientalist cry.
When Bajazet was brought in chained, it was Perdicas who
got beaten up for being in the wrong place.
Bajazet's death speech was accompanied by a wail from Perdicas
which could either have been interpreted as an empathetic
keening for a dying man or as Perdicas bemoaning his own
injuries. Whatever the reason the noise conveyed a sense
of suffering on a universal level.
Perdicas was the embodiment of the suffering of humanity.
He lamented and wailed but not once did he attempt to alter
his condition. He told us of the sacking of Babylon as if
it were a human being and then of the murder of every human
within its walls. His was the voice of resignation, of acceptance
and sadness.
The process of character construction, which set the parameters
within which the character can operate and develop, made
it impossible for Perdicas to alter his situation.
The second character creation (by Laurent Bancarel) was Boulourg-Casane,
Tamerlan's sidekick. Unlike Perdicas, Boulourg-Casane appeared
to thrive on the world at war. He was a Brechtian sutler
of the Mother Courage variety. When Tamerlan, for expediency's
sake, was unable to express his true feelings, it was Boulourg-Casane
who acted as communicator, having little to lose himself.
His character was conveyed largely through his movements,
gestures and sounds. He was a clumsy clown, a noisy character
who stumbled into and disrupted tender moments such as the
first declaration of love by Tamerlan to Zénocrate.
He complemented and contrasted with Perdicas, no more so
than in his relationship with the audience. As Perdicas opened
the production by welcoming the audience, Boulourg-Casane
closed the first act by telling us not only to "mount
your thrones for you are all kings", but also that the
interval would last twenty minutes.
He exited laden with pots and pans signifying the capture
of Babylon and the installation of Tamerlan as King. In a
time of peace he had to move on and so had the audience.
Boulourg-Casane's innate naivety was outstripped
by his political naivety. When he mistook Mycetes for Tamerlan,
he failed to see both the dangers and possible advantages
of the mistaken identity. Then, having stolen Mycetes's crown,
he was unaware of the implications of its possession. Unsure
as to what to do with it, he was quite happy to offer it
to anyone: to the musicians and even to the audience. He
reduced the acquisition of power to his collection of swords,
clutching them like newly-won toys and laying them out one
by one as representations of the Kings who had been conquered
by Tamerlan.
Boulourg-Casane delighted in his metonymic
collection of properties signifying power and rule, blissfully
unaware of their connotations of suffering and slaughter.
He never questioned his fate, never tried to comprehend or
to improve his lot, but, like Perdicas, accepted the role
fate had bestowed upon him.
Both character creations, Perdicas and Boulourg-Casane, had
an important effect on the play in that they constituted
an attempt to redress the balance from captains and kings
in favour of the common man.
Their status was comparable to that of Shakespeare's Falstaff,
yet here they were stripped of all arrogance. They were uncorrupted,
incorruptible, and naïve.
They were the only characters who survived unscathed to the
end of the play, but both remained trapped in their groove
of character typification, never growing old.
The other actors changed costume and character
frequently. Pascal Guarise doubled as Mycétès,
the hapless King in Part One, and Amyras, Tamerlan's non-military
son, in Part Two. The weakness of both characters was a point
of comparison and so, too, were their respective fates.
But there the comparison ended. Mycétès clothed
in a heavy cloak of kingship was a pathetic, bearded figure
who protected his crown coquettishly but by the same token
was quite willing to hand it over at the first sign of trouble.
He begged the gods for help demanding "pitié" in
a strangulated voice. Threatened by the approaching Tamerlan
he decided to hide his crown first to safeguard and also
to save his skin. Having lost a shoe, which forced him to
limp, he made his way to the centre circle which initially
represented the seat of power, placed his crown in the middle
as if it were an imaginary safe and locked it with an imaginary
key.
This could have been interpreted as a pathetic attempt at
self-preservation, like burying his head in the sand, and
consequently lost any respect or sympathy one might have
had for him. His pathetic incompetence was first seen when,
feigning an air of authority, he rested one foot on a brick
removed by Perdicas from the back wall. One feared obviously
that had the wrong brick been chosen, the whole wall might
have come tumbling down. Both signs, therefore, (crown and
brick) denoted power and authority but in practice connoted
weakness and myopia.
As Amyras, Guarise created a Prince Hal figure, a fop who
incurred the wrath of his father for failing to follow in
his footsteps. His costume of tight-fitting tunic and floppy
cap with bright blue feather stood out against the austerity
of Tamerlan's sombre, black court. Harangued by his father
and protected by his mother (Zénocrate), he invoked
our sympathy.
Like Shakespeare's prince he consorted with the lower orders.
To a jaunty Turkish tune he emerged swaggeringly drunk with
Perdicas and Boulourg-Casane, clutching a goblet. His action
broke the conventions of both mise
en scène and society. His end, therefore, was
nigh.
The use of stage space was diversified particularly in scenes
involving Tamerlan's harem of three: Zénocrate, the
Arab-speaking 'black African' Anippe, and the grotesque,
shrieking eunuch, Agydas. In the Garden of Persepolis, in
Part One, the harem was led in by Perdicas along the back
wall in such a way as to suggest them risking their lives
on the edge of a precipice.
To exaggerate the intended meaning Agydas stumbled and was
saved by Anippe. Having negotiated that obstacle Perdicas
next led them downstage to the vase of flowers representing
the garden. This was a piece of mime which was a prelude
to Tamerlan's arrival. Their actions suggested that to achieve
a moment of beauty and happiness great personal risks had
to be taken.
In the subsequent scene when Tamerlan attempted to woo Zénocrate,
Perdicas, Anippe and Agydas mimed sitting positions against
the wall, folding arms and crossing legs at several points,
creating a kind of gestural commentary on the main action,
a similar way to the musical accompaniment, also outside
the central acting area.
One notable convention of the mise
en scène was the representation of good health
by an upright posture and ill-health by a sitting position.
Zénocrate died while sitting on a stool and this
gave the properties an added dimension beyond their functional
denotation. Bajazet (Smaël Behabdelouab) was given
a turquoise canopy on four poles to represent visually
his authority.
Only later did the significance of this roof become clear.
During his imprisonment scene he was given another "roof",
this time in the form of a metal grid. It was placed on top
of him by two prison guards. He had no choice but to hold
the grid up or be crushed by its weight — an inevitable
consequence as his strength waned. All properties, therefore,
had a dual function in much the same way as the centre circle
(or Zénocrate's stool). They were either a symbolic
covering (or a seat) of triumph and power, or a place and
instrument of death.
The weapons carried by both Tamerlan's warriors and enemies
had a similar dual function: offence and defence. Although
brandished throughout the production, they were never used
realistically. Bajazet was beaten up in prison by truncheons
but the act of violence was ritualized and stylized. Most
of the violence occurred offstage. Notable exceptions to
this were Tamerlan stabbing Amyras with a dagger, and Cosroe
staggering onstage impaled on a spear, but this was another
instance of the idea being conveyed, not realistically, but
pushed to its very limits of credibility. It was the notion
of violent phallocratic power which was portrayed and not
its actuality.
Of all the displays of the idea of phallocratic
power there was none greater than that of Tamerlan himself
(Antonio Diaz-Florian). When we first saw him it was at a
moment of triumph. He was in a rush for total domination
and was physically resplendent. His rise to power was swift.
We knew terrible acts of violence had been committed yet
we still remained helplessly attracted to the tyrant, to
the likeable villain, to the purity and beauty of his power
and total domination.
The physical prowess and presence of the actor were attractively
exaggerated from the outset. His gradual demise was conveyed
by kinetic indicators; a stoop, a more pronounced limp, doubling
up in pain.
Throughout the first part little emphasis was placed on Tamerlan's
physical disability which earned him the title
"le boiteux". He gave the impression of power by
non-specific displays of military prowess.
He stood in front of his warriors betraying no emotion other
than his confidence and ambition, leaving suspicion and circumspection
to be conveyed by his warriors behind.
Here, instead of using props to betray
emotions, other actors were used to convey what was going
on in Tamerlan's mind but which he never allowed to be seen.
Even greater strength was conveyed by having his trusty companion
Boulourg-Casane display the rage and aggression which were
obviously welling up inside Tamerlan himself. Rather than
checking his own aggression in a pseudo-realistic attempt
at self-control, Tamerlan restrained Boulourg-Casane who
then came to represent an extended physical embodiment of
his psyche.
This was Diaz-Florian's major success: the non-realistic
externalization of character psychology.
Tamerlan's adopted stance conveyed his prowess
emblematically as well as kinesically. First Tamerlan dropped
Bajazet's defiant message on the slate and stood on it contemptuously.
The inference was that Bajazet had been beaten not only physically
by Tamerlan but also by this contemptuous act of aggression.
A similar fate befell the Koran but this time with the added
dimension of blasphemy. The pinnacle of Tamerlan's career
on stage came at his coronation. No great speeches or ceremony
were needed to convey his success. He simply stepped into
the centre circle with an enormous bang and crash from the
percussionists. Putting the crown on his head was a cliched
coronation which was made light of here since it was an act
of little significance in itself.
The coronation was preceded by a catalogue of violent acts
offstage narrated onstage. Instead of a ritual slaughter
Tamerlan's achievement was symbolized by holding his sword
erect and by his explosive entrances and exits. He did not
kill on stage but threatened to kill. He took hostages, released
them, only to dispose of them later. He took Babylon by threatening
the audience with a dagger and held Bassa simply by a sheath
and not a sword itself, with Bassa collaborating in the creation
of the image.
In the second part the tyrant began to crumble
as he overstepped the mark. The narration by Perdicas of
the destruction of Babylon was painful in its deliberately
poignant emotionalism, the burning of religious books in
its blasphemous excessiveness.
His domination was threatened by the unwillingness of one
of his sons, Amyras, to follow in his father's footsteps
and this sent Tamerlan in a descending spiral. The only murder
he committed on stage is that of his son, carried out swiftly
in anger at his son's cowardice and in the presence of his
whole family and court.
After stabbing Amyras he turned away as if he were not proud
of his action. As Amyras stumbled and fell, Tamerlan's hand
twisted in the air. After the death he threatened the eunuch
Agydas and berated everyone for grieving. Emotional displays
of human weakness were banished from his psyche.
Lest the character of Tamerlan appear
too two-dimensional, Diaz-Florian developed a recurring leitmotif
of physical pain as a symbol of inner turmoil. The pain was
caused in Diaz-Florian's own words by "un serpent qui
mange de l'intérieur".
This gnawing occurred on four significant occasions in Part
Two and gradually brought Tamerlan to his knees and finally
to his death. Each time it was accompanied by the rippling
sound of whisper chimes. The musical leitmotif often pre-empted
the physical pain of the character, bringing on the pain
rather than reacting empathetically to it. The four attacks
took place as follows:
|
i) after killing Amyras, when his other son Calyphas
(whom Tamerlan admired) declared that the death of
his mother signified the death of his own soul;
ii) after the taking of Babylon and the order to drown
all Babylonians;
iii) after the blasphemous disposal of the Koran and
the order for all religious books to be burned;
iv) after calling his illness an attack from God: "Quel
dieu audacieux tourmente ainsi mon corps, et cherche
a triompher du puissant Tamerlan?" |
These attacks occurred after specifically
outrageous acts and they were thus seen as a punishment.
Previously such actions were followed by displays of simple
courage, holding swords erect and consummating sexual relationships.
Now they were followed by drooping swords, stumbling and
garbled words.
Tamerlan became more withdrawn, his gestures introverted
and his sword at times conspicuously absent from his side.
He looked old and haggard. He tried to hand over his sword
to Calyphas but it wilted in his hand: a visual symbol of
his lost virility and power.
His tyranny was over. When he fell he knocked his helmet
off as if his body armour no longer afforded him any protection.
He wrapped himself in his cloak one final time and stepped
into the centre circle (which was once the scene of triumph),
paused, sighed, and in a twisting movement fell in a heap,
dead.
Much in Diaz-Florian's performance of Tamerlan
engaged the audience's sympathy. Simply by the form of delivery,
turning mid-speech to address the audience ensured their
undivided attention. Tamerlan's love for Zénocrate
was undeniable. We were told of his violent savagery but
only once did he commit an act of violence on stage.
The actor acknowledged that most West Europeans would have
ambivalent feelings towards the character and his actions.
Diaz-Florian courted the ambivalence, well aware that his
own South-American audience would have recognized Tamerlan
as an evil tyrant within their own real experience and have
thrown tomatoes at him. He believes that Europeans are not
fascinated to the same extent by tyranny. They have sympathy
for him in that his rise to power was resistible but no one
had the courage to resist. They will not draw parallels with
their own situations but will go away with the essence of
Marlowe's play and an appreciation of the mise
en scène.
A European's reasoning mind will leave him unsure as to whether
he should love the tyrant or not. A production of the play
reminds europeans that we have so far successfully eliminated
our tyrants, and a third-world audience that throwing tomatoes
at a mirror-image of reality is not enough(4).
CONCLUSION
Despite Diaz-Florian's evident political awareness, there
is no political motive behind the direction as such. The
themes of Tamerlan are common to much of the previous work
of the Epee de Bois. The manifestations of Orientalism, however,
are a more recent development coming in the wake of Mnouchkine's
Shakespeare cycle. However, putting the Orient on stage pictorially
is not Orientalism proper. The first step on the road to
theatrical Orientalism is the abolition of the pseudo-psychology
of character and the establishment in its place of the psychology
of the actor.
The pre-rehearsal and pre-performance communion-like ritual
compares to the self-induced trance-like states of the actors
of many Eastern theatres. A consequence of this is a group
of actors in a highly charged emotional state who perform
with exaggerated, broad gestures, using their bodies as the
external manifestations of their inner state. Unlike those
Eastern theatres there is no coded performance language to
dictate form, except perhaps that of the acting style, "jouer
frontal" which is not at all presentational but engaging.
The form of acting used for Tamerlan evolves
from a general method of communicating suppressed emotions.
The text is thus deconstructed from the outset and reconstructed
in tandem with the creation and development of the actor's
inner states. There is no reverence shown towards the text.
It is merely a starting point, the basis for speech, the
initial inspiration for states of being.
Subtlety and nuances of the poetry and of character fall
victim to the declamatory and psycho-physical style of acting.
The Orientalism of Diaz-Florian's Tamerlan is
not simply to be seen in the mock Oriental costumes and props
and heard in the music, but in the theatre language of movement,
gesture, speech, and in the form.
Attending a performance at the Epee de Bois is quite unlike
any other visit to the theatre (save perhaps the Theatre
du Soleil).
The company members take great pains to stress that they
belong as much to a school as to a theatre, to a school with
an independent philosophy of life. One learns that the performance
of Tamerlan on a particular evening is not a showcase for
the work done. It is part and parcel of their learning process,
their creative method.
Performing is an ongoing learning activity in the same way
as designing, sewing, building, exercising. The spectator
is invited into the company's home, treated as an honoured
guest and learns that the members are not only proud of their
work but also of their way of life.
L'Epée de Bois is not a repertory company providing
divertissements but is a "living" theatre where
philosophies of life and art intermingle. The collective
approach to the creation of Tamerlan is,
for the spectator, a window to their philosophy.
Brian Singleton is Lecturer in Drama,
Trinity College, Dublin. This study was undertaken and completed
while he was a British Academy Research Fellow in the Department
of Theatre Studies, University of Glasgow.
Notes :
1. La Torture and Martyrs (both 1969) were devised performances
of the 'Groupe de travail de 1'Epee de hois', a working group within the Atelier
de 1'Epee de Bois led by Antonio Diaz-Florian. [back to text]
2. The Theatre du Phenix was founded in
1987 in Chennevieres-sur-Marne by Philippe Hottier, a longstanding
member of the Theatre du Soleil. Its first production was La Tragedie
d'lvanovby Chekhov in April 1989 at the Theatre de la Cite Internationale,
Paris.[back to text]
3. Un texte poetique qui est simplement
transpose sur scène [ . . . ] se trouve finalement appauvri
par la representation, mais un texte depasse par sa realisation
est en quelque sorte trahi. L'abus de langage qui appelle "creation" la
simple transposition d'un texte a la scène ne modifie en
rien ce constat: le theatre fonde sur la Htte'rature se meut a
travers ce dilerhme, la tranposition ou la trahison. Les experiences
d'un theatre oriente vers la participation active porteront done
au-dela du mot sur I'acte. Marc'O, 'La Creation collective', La
Nef, 29 (January-March 1969), 74-80. [back to
text]
4. Since the production in 1989 the Western
World discovered a new dictator in the Middle East.[back
to text]
The company:
Laurent Bancarel |
Boulourg-Casane |
Smäel Behabdelouab |
Bajazet, Maximus, Guerrier |
David Danechvar |
Theridamas, Callapine, Guerrier |
Antonio Diaz-Florian |
Tamerlan |
Hamid Djavdan |
Perdicas |
Pascal Guarise |
Mycetes, Bassa, Amyras,
Medecin,Guerrier. |
François-Xavier Lecour |
Meander, Capolin, Orcanes, Guerrier |
Seghir Mahommedi |
Guerrier |
Bruno Ouzeau |
Ortygius, Calyphas, Guerrier |
Freddy Rojas |
Menaphon, Alieda, Guerrier |
Andre Salzet |
Cosroe, Agydas, Amasia, Guerrier |
Mounia Aouichi |
Anippe |
Dominique Carrara |
Guerrier |
Corinne Caslain |
Zénocrate |
Habil Cherkit |
Guerrier |
Marc Cossu |
Espion, Guerrier |
Marie Le Gales |
Guerrier |
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Musicians |
Christine Kotschi
Sergio Perrera |
Costumes by |
Dominique Le Page
Luisa Luis |
Directed and adapted by |
Antonio Diaz-Florian |
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