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| Tête de Mort (FIMFA Lx12, Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, 2012) |
In your theatre there are very different visual devices: mechanic structures, huts, words written in papers, finger puppets and drawings, robots, molds of different body parts, and some found objects…Why do you choose such a diversity of forms?
I would almost say that they’ve chosen themselves. In each one of my creations, I use figures, like for instance, a table, some binoculars, a chameleon, a snail or several patterns, which are a kind of collapse, discharge and self-portrait. The forms that these figures and patterns assume don’t precede them, they follow them in their combinations and confrontations and originate and absurd appearance.
I would almost say that they’ve chosen themselves. In each one of my creations, I use figures, like for instance, a table, some binoculars, a chameleon, a snail or several patterns, which are a kind of collapse, discharge and self-portrait. The forms that these figures and patterns assume don’t precede them, they follow them in their combinations and confrontations and originate and absurd appearance.
The dramaturgy in your performances is not so much stuck to the stories, but more to concrete happenings. Can we talk about a theatre of events?
There are sometimes, parts of stories…but I don’t know how to tell stories with characters. Yes, I try to tell stories of events, looking at them in a naturalistic way, selecting and experiencing them. But don’t take me wrong: we have invented them, they are real, but we use strategies to divert them from their usual paths, we pull them off their way, that’s a process, that’s a game.
You’ve stated that you’d like to create adventures to the eyes, what exactly does that mean?
My performances occupy almost always the frontal area of the Italian scene theatres. Facing this box shaped scene, the spectator’s sight can do whatever it pleases within the limits of a direction and an imposed structure, but his body remains still; to the spectator this is a very singular experience, because in life (outside the screen) our sight always travels along with our bodies. This scene in its simple order has a particular device to be able to deal with what is shown and what is hidden and to be able to deal with the framing and the in and out of sight. It can very well commence here the great adventure of the sight, which flows in every region of the visible and the invisible, which invents what it guesses, and constructs its own vision.
Actually, in a theatre, few things are given to the sight of the spectators, as when compared to daily life. Theatre is just an opportunity of sharpening the sight and making it go through new adventurous paths. I dream of my own theatre as a theater of optic pleasures.
You often talk about accidents…
Because there are very few things happening in a theatre, it seems to me that the spectator’s look is sometimes ahead of what is happening, as if it had been awaiting them. I like to play with this idea of wait, to amplify it and restraint it or, to take the shorter way and provoke surprise and catastrophe. It’s a game of complicities.
Is the astonishment related to that?
Not, exactly. Working with time is what interests us in the surprise effect (the before and after) and its duration. Under the surprise effect, something reaches a region of me, where I’m not yet there. What is strong it’s not the happening in itself (whichever it’ll be), but for example, the collapse of half hidden constructions, the frustrated or concretized Expectations, as Paul Valery said; we follow them mocking the established time with our diversions and falsifications.
It is usual to see brushes in action in your performances…
… it is to draw in multiple ways, construct images, place symbols (sometimes words).
It’s a way of performing on stage; a way of talking without saying a word.
This text has been taken inspired by an interview with Naly Gérard published in the section "Matière animées - Corps, objets, images", in the magazine Mouvement, in 2014.
BIO
Jean-Pierre Larroche (FR): Set designer, architect, director and performer. Artistic director of the company Ateliers du Spectacle.
He played in FIMFA with Tête de Mort (Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, 2012).
