July 8

Concrelat - Chapelle des Pénitents blancs (3-5:15pm)
by Sam Holcroft
direction: Jean-Pierre Vincent

translation: Sophie Magnaud
dramaturgy: Bernard Chartreux
lighting: Alain Poisson
scenography: Carole Metzner

with: Suzanne Aubert, Daphné Biiga Nwanak, Sébastien Chassagne, Chloé Chaudoye, Julien Frégé, Sophie Magnaud, Julie Pilod

for more info:
http://www.festival-avignon.com/en/Spectacle/3285

There is so much about this show for me, which was ultimately not about the show, but about me. Petty competitive nonsense, probably not worth mentioning but for the fact that very few people mention just how often the sentiment can arise and with what nonsensical force.... It's all a sudden mentality, a shift, obsessive and delusional and amounting to very little aside from some unproductive philosophizing, a bullshit comparative analysis...but truthfully, I've never been able to get over the habit and in so far as this blog is a bit about what I'm thinking in the theater as well as what I'm seeing, then this should be part of it, (right?).

With barely enough energy to get myself to the theater, I sit down, mentally insensate, and wait for the show to begin. The house is packed and I keep thinking, she's your age.... I don't know why that more than much else is what I find so consistently compelling, but it's all I can think throughout much of the show and it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly that I'm not getting the language, not even a little, and a fit of exhaustive jealousy cripples any desire I have to understand or to observe the piece. she's your age... What is that? A sort of metric to compare equivalences, a feint at objectivity? I unravel myself in preparation and leave almost nothing critical or competent with which to watch the show.

The church is a nice home for the performance - cool, reverential; I'd be happy to have a show performed here. There's a full lighting grid and nice sight lines. (For some reason this is true of all the plays I've attended: the French care about their audience and there's not a bad seat in the house.) The audience is entirely white, though age-diverse and I'm picking and scratching and sweating while I observe them. I feel a bit like a problem when the actors come on-stage and the show begins. There is one black person in the house and she's sitting politely on-stage. Avignon, tends to have a poor record of racial diversity and being that we're in the S. with a healthy dispersal of North African, mainly Algerian immigrants, the deficit is not incidental.

[racial identity in England, in Am?, in France?
[Discussion of war: 4 countries in the world that can fight in a military conflict (war): England, America, Australia and Israel (with India as an up-and-coming player... for this reason the French-language war story seems romantic and a bit far-fetched. These kids don't really have the violence in them of a British or American teen, rather these kids seem petulant and even quaint and though they are clearly talented actors, they don't really have the menace the story calls for.

The program which this show is a part of Théâtre Ouvert / 40 ans: Mises en Espace is, as the title suggests, a theatrical segment of the Avignon festival, which is, this year, celebrating it's 40th anniversary. It's 'formula' of "putting into a space" new works from little-known authors, whose texts are individually selected by the French directors who will cast and premier them, is a truly marvelous opportunity for young playwrights to gain European exposure in the world's leading theater festival; the programming for which, otherwise, can be dauntingly restrictive. The mini-fest of four stripped-down plays is held over 12 consecutive days, and includes a moderated discussion, The "mise en espace": a writing of staging, among the authors, directors, actors and those referred to as, "witnesses". The whole is well-produced, (and well attended,) and despite the actors remaining mostly on-book resembles anything you'd be familiar with off-off-Brdwy.

The idea, best as I can tell, is to premier new pieces of a non-exclusively francophone variety. This year we have: Sam Holcroft, the 28 year-old British author of Concrelat or "the Cockroach", (which is the ostensible subject of this article); the American, MacArthur-winning Fellow, Naomi Wallace, who is neither very young nor little known, though perhaps little-known in France: a German, Philipp Löhle; and finally a young frenchman Éric Pessan, rounding the festival out.

And now, to get to Concrelat:





MISSED SHOW:
Stabat Mater Dolorosa - Temple Saint Martial (6-7pm)
Le Suicidé - Carrière de Boulbon (11-12pm)