la paranoïa - EPOC productions

LA PARANOÏA
by Rafael
Spregelburd
stage direction
Marcial Di Fonzo Bo
Elise Vigier
dramaturge
Guillermo Pisani
with
Rodolfo De Souza
Marcial Di Fonzo Bo
Frédérique Loliée
Pierre Maillet
Clément Sibony
Julien Villa
Elise Vigier
associate producers
Théâtre des Lucioles, Rennes
coproduction
Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris
Centre Dramatique Régional de Tours, Nouvel Olympia
Théâtre National de Bretagne, Rennes
Théâtre de Nîmes
Le Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg, scène européenne
Théâtre de la Place, Liège
contact production | diffusion
EPOC productions
Emmanuelle Ossena | +33(0)6 03 47 45 51 | [email protected]
Charlotte Pesle Beal | +33 (0)6 87 07 57 88 | [email protected]
LA PARANOÏA
by Rafael Spregelburd
stage direction Marcial Di Fonzo Bo et Elise Vigier
with Rodolfo De Souza, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, Frédérique Loliée, Pierre Maillet, Clément
Sibony, Julien Villa, Elise Vigier
set and lights Yves Bernard
images Bruno Geslin
in the collaboration with Romain Tanguy
costumes Pierre Canitrot
sounds Manu Léonard
hairpieces and make-up Cécile Kretschmar
assisted by Sarah Dureuil
dramaturge Guillermo Pisani
translation Marcial Di Fonzo Bo et Guillermo Pisani
coach and Chinese voice over Rui Xie
graphic designer 2D animation Loïs de Cornulier
assistant to stage direction Alexis Lameda
intern to stage direction Vanessa Bonnet
general stage manager Ivan Assaël
video production Quentin Vigier
stage camera Romain Tanguy
lights production Bruno Marsol
set manager Claude Chaussignand
sound production Manu Léonard
maquilleuse habilleuse Sarah Dureuil
film extras Célia Pilastre, Hélène François, Béatrice Boulanger, Camille Champagne
Special thanks
to the technical team of the Théâtre national de Chaillot for the costumes and accessories
created by their workshops, for the sets by Solutions and Un Point Trois at the Cité des
Sciences and the Argonaute submarine, to Christian Nironi and the team of Georges Rigal
swimming pool, to Louise Larrieu and to Katia Zakryzhevskaya
VIDEO / PHOTOGRAPHIES
To watch excerpts of the show, please use the link below:
http://simon.ben.free.fr/PARANO/TEASER or alternatively contact Emilie Allio at 02 23
42 30 77
To watch an interview of Marcial Di Fonzo Bo and Elise Vigier :
http://spectacles.premiere.fr/pariscope/Theatre/Exclusivites-spectacle/Videos/Interviewde-Marcial-di-Fonzo-Bo-et-Elise-Vigier-pour-la-Paranoia
www.theatre-des-lucioles.net
The play takes place between 5.000 and 20.000 AD, in a time when mankind shares a
very strange relationship with alien creatures, much more powerful than them and called les
Intelligences. The fine balance that has so far guaranteed peace is on the verge of collapse,
resulting in the imminent destruction of Humanity. Fiction, the only reason for les Intelligences to
preserve mankind, is about to disappear forever. It only grows on Earth as Men are the only
specie able to imagine what doesn’t exist. Les Intelligences feed on fiction as if it were a rare and
delicious spice. But they have been too greedy and ate it all.
Hagen, a mathematician, Claus, an astronaut, Julia Gay Morrison, a successful writer,
and Béatrice, a G4 (an ancient type of robot with a corrupted memory), are brought together by
Colonal Brindisi from the Planet Earth’s Special Operations department in a rundown hotel of
Piriapolis, Uruguay. They are given a very delicate mission: to create in 24 hours a fiction that les
Intelligences have never eaten before. This is a huge responsibility: the survival of mankind
depends on it.
The team gets to work and starts to build a fiction: Brenda, a young girl from Venezuela,
has been secretly held prisoner in a hospital where she has endured numerous operation of
plastic surgery. As oil ran dry, the only remaining wealth of the country is Beauty. With the help of
the government, some illegal firms convince young girls to go under the knife to sculpt their body
according to future beauty standards, in order to win the coveted prize of Miss Venezuela.
However sometimes they choose the wrong girl, and this is the case with Brenda. Her treatment
is suddenly stopped and she remains stuck half way between a possible beauty and absolute
horror. Besides she discovers she isn’t the only future Miss Venezuela. She then looks for
revenge, killing doctors and policemen and maybe plotting as well against President Chavez.
John Jairo Lazaro is a policeman who turned bulimic and drug-addict after escaping a
deadly ambush and being kicked out of the Force. He is the antihero who tries to solve the case
and investigates in the underground world of transvestites and transsexuals.
The Piriapolis team and the fiction in Venezuela intertwine deeply until the two worlds
cross in a twist à la Borgès. The team wasn’t creating the fiction: they were themselves created
by the young Brenda.
Mixing theatre and cinema, la Paranoïa turns out to be an incredibly hilarious machine that takes
fiction’s mechanism to pieces.
foreword
Elise Vigier and Marcial Di Fonzo Bo
After directing La Estupidez, created in March 2007 at the Théâtre National de Chaillot,
we wanted to keep exploring Rafael Spregelburd’s work. We read in Spanish the Heptalogy’s
other plays, as they were not yet translated in French, and we chose to work on La Paranoïa.
Several reasons motivated this choice:
- La Paranoïa is the seventh part of the Heptalogy, inspired by The Table of the Seven
Deadly Sins by Hieronymus Bosch, and comes right after La Estupidez.
- Rafael Spregelburd writes mainly for the actors and La Paranoïa is the perfect proof of
that. He explains:
«With the work usually written for the El patron Vélasquez company, the actors would
receive the quasi finished play, and all we would have to do would be to start its montage.
This time, on the contrary, it appeared to us that it was time to try something else.
Therefore each development, each turn of the story, each appearance of a new character
is conceived and validated in collaboration with the four actors. »(…)
« The plays of the Heptalogy favour the playful process rather than thematics, messages,
excess, studied architecture, total abnegation, in order to reveal the incredible as the most
normal thing in the world.»(…)
This « actors’ theatre » is what touches us in Spregelburd’s work, as it matches
completely the way we think actors and theatre within the framework of Les Lucioles, the actors
collective we’ve founded.
In La Paranoïa – that represents Greed in Bosch’s Heptalogy – the author uses many
forms and genres side-by-side, replicating the structure of a brain or even just the world we live
in.
He borrows references from the universe of cinema (from film noir to the « tele-novela », B-horror
movies and David Lynch), from Chinese opera and from the genesis of theatre: the invention of
speech. The actors pronounce words and create a fiction that starts to exist while taking a
concrete form in front of our eyes.
What interests us is to find how these movies and images can suddenly appear, condense and
disappear in the stage direction. That’s why we’ve created a round stage device (magic lamp,
bubble cinema) to work on the concept of hallucination and the fragments that exist in the
incredible construction of our memory.
How can we manage to render the use of image absolutely necessary while keeping the
process simple? To experience concretely (thanks to audiovisual techniques) the feeling of
inventiveness with the help of an image running on from the actor’s thought?
We wanted to discover how all these films exist as much as movies as bits of brain, fragments of
memory containing stupid thoughts and catastrophic events in the same vertiginous whirl. Finally
we wanted to understand how, in this never-ending circle, those who think they create fiction are
the one actually created by it.
The stage direction is circular and chaotic rather than linear, while always keeping the focus on
the story and its prime suspense: the Intelligences (the aliens) will destroy the planets if the
Special Operations team doesn’t come up with a fiction able to feed and satisfy them all.
And finally,
- Science fiction is a genre very rarely seen on stage, which means everything can be
invented.
- In La paranoïa, philosophical questions are raised about fiction, reality and greed (greed
for beauty, water, oil, fiction…) leading to madness. These questions are very topical in
our society and they inhabit the play, overtaking their own gravity with a mix of caustic
humour and an undisguised pleasure to all sorts of codifications and genres.
- This writing technique doesn’t fear anything and therefore it frees our thoughts from their
limits.
NB: in italic, an excerpt of Rafael Spregelburd’s interview about La Paranoïa
© Christian Berthelot
Rafael Spregelburd
Born in 1970, Rafael Spregelburd is one of the brightest
representatives of a new generation of extremely inventive and prolific
Argentinean playwrights, who started to bloom at the restoring of
democracy, after the military dictatorship between 1976-1983 (among them
Javier Daulte, Alejandro Tantanian, Daniel Veronese, Federico Leon…)
He received a grant from the Beckett Theatre of Barcelona, where he took part in seminars
with the Spanish playwright José Sanchis Sinisterra. He received as well a grant from the
British Council and from the Royal Court Theatre of London. He was author in residence at
the Deutsches Shauspielhaus of Hamburg, guest author and stage director at the
Schaubuhne of Berlin, guest stage director at the Theaterhaus of Stuttgart and
Kammerspiele of Munich, appointed author for the Franfkurter Positionen 2008 and fellow of
the Akademie Schloss Solitude of Stuttgart. He’s published in Germany by Suhrkamp.
Spregelburd got invited at several international festivals and received more than thirty
Argentinean and international awards, among them: Tirso de Molina, Casa de las Américas,
Dramaturgy of Buenos Aires, Argentores, Maria Guerrero, Florencio Sanchez, Trinidad
Guevara, journal Clarin, Konex, etc.
In his artistic practice, Rafael Spregelburd surpasses the work division that traditionally
structures theatre activity: at the same time author, stage director, actor, translator and
teacher, his writing feeds itself on the different knowledge that comes together with its
creative activity. He trained as a playwright and actor with playwright Mauricio Kartun and
stage directors Daniel Marcove and Ricardo Bartis. From 1995 he started to direct his own
texts and occasional adaptations of other authors (Carver, Pinter). His translations of Harold
Pinter, Steven Berkoff, Sarah Kane, Wallace Shawn, Reto Finger and Marius von Mayenburg
have often been stage directed. He mostly lives and works in his birthplace, Buenos Aires.
Around the end of the 90s, his work, translated in several languages, starts to be renown
outside Argentina, mostly in South America and Europe, especially in Germany, Spain and
the UK.
In 1994 he created (with the actress Andrea Garrote) the El Patron Vazquez company, for
which he writes several texts, among them La Estupidez and La Paranoïa. Through more
than thirty plays written from the beginning of the 90s, Spregelburd has never stopped his
formal exploration, as prolific and talented than theatrically efficient.
This one is especially obvious in the series of independent plays forming the multiform and
outrageous Heptalogy of Hiëronymus Bosch. Initially inspired by The Table of The Seven
Deadly Sins by Bosch (painted around 1475-1480, Prado museum), the Heptalogy spreads
over more than a decade of wor
Marcial DI FONZO BO
stage directo rand actor
Born in 1968 in Buenos-Aires, he settled down in Paris in 1987.
As part of the collective of actors Théâtre des Lucioles, he’s directed several
plays, keeping close to contemporary authors like Copi, Leslie Kaplan, Rodrigo
Garcia or Rafael Spregelburd. As an actor, he worked for numerous directors,
among them Claude Régy, Matthias Langhoff, Rodrigo Garcia, Olivier Py,
Jean-Baptiste Sastre, Luc Bondy or Christophe Honoré.
In 1995, he received the award of stage revelation from the critics union for his interpretation of
Richard III ‘s main character, directed by Matthias Langhoff. In 2004, the same critics union gave
him the award for best actor for Munequita ou jurons de mourir avec gloire by Alejandro
Tantanian directed by Matthias Langhoff. On screen, he’s worked with Claude Mourieras, Emilie
Deleuze, Christophe Honoré, Stéphane Guisti, François Favrat, Maiëwen and Woody Allen.
In 2008, he’s started a long collaboration with the Argentinean author Rafael Spregelburd. That
year he directed with Elise Vigier the sixth play of a seven-part work, La Estupidez. Created at the
Théâtre National de Chaillot, then put on again for a national tour, the show was an undisputed
success. In 2009, he directed with Elise Vigier La Paranoïa that met the same success and with
Pierre Maillet La Panique with the acting students of Théâtre des Teintureries of Lausanne. In
2010, he wrote Rosa la Rouge in collaboration with the singer Claire Diterzi .
For the Festival d'Automne 2010, he took care of the stage direction for Push up by Roland
Schimmelpfenning within the framework of Paroles d'Acteurs.
Elise VIGIER
Stage directo rand actress
Within the Lucioles collective, she directs contemporary authors and plays for
Pierre Maillet, Bruno Geslin, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, Frédérique Loliée.
In 1998, she directs Copi, un portrait in collaboration with Marcial di Fonzo Bo
and Pierre Maillet.
In 2001 she directs L’Inondation by Russian author Evgueni Zamiatine,
adapted for the stage by Leslie Kaplan.
In 2002, she directs and plays with Frédérique Loliée Duetto1 from Rodrigo Garcia and Leslie
Kaplan’s texts. In 2005, she collaborates to the stage direction of La tour de la Défense by Copi
with Marcial Di Fonzo Bo. That same year, she writes the scenario of La mort d’une voiture, a
medium-length film that she directs with Bruno Geslin. It is then short-listed for the Brest festival
wins the CNC award of quality and the jury prize at the Lunel festival.
In 2006, Elise Vigier directs with Marcial Di Fonzo Bo Les Copis (Loretta Strong, Les poulets n’ont
pas de chaise, Le frigo). This creation takes place at the Théâtre de la Ville in the framework of
Festival d’Automne, and at the Avignon Festival.
In March 2007, she also directs with Marcial Di Fonzo Bo La Estupidez (La Connerie ) by Rafael
Spregelburd at the Théâtre national de Chaillot.
In 2008, she plays and directs in collaboration with Frédérique Loliée Duetto 5 ou Toute ma vie
j’ai été une femme by Leslie Kaplan, as well as excerpts of texts by Rodrigo Garcia. In 2009, she
directs, still with Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, and plays in La Paranoïa by Rafael Spregelburd.
In 2011, she directs and plays with Frédérique Loliée Louise, elle est folle by Leslie Kaplan. The
play is created first as a preview at 104 in Paris, before being staged in March 2011 at the Maison
de la Poésie in Paris, then at the Nouveau Théâtre in Angers and finally in April 2011 at Teatro
Stabile in Naples, in its Italian version.
le Théâtre des Lucioles
« The Lucioles company started out ten years ago as an actors’ collective. Fresh from the
Ecole du Théâtre National de Bretagne, and looking for stage performance as much as
stage direction, they all proved from these common beginnings a real will to perform, a pure
passion for drama, with the ingeniousness, spontaneity and appetite of children who just
want to play. To play the character through their own self, far from psychodrama and
without naturalism. Taking turns directing each other without the director’s status to ever
take a leading role of superhero within the group.
Proportionally to their ever hungry appetite, this collective of strong personalities – Paola
Comis, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, Laurent Javaloyes, David Jeanne Comello, Mélanie Leray,
Frédérique Loliée, Pierre Maillet, Philippe Marteau, Valérie Schwarcz, Pascal Tokatlian,
Elise Vigier – always makes its mark with great lucidity regarding what to “stage” and the
reason behind it.
They started with Fassbinder at first, then came back to it several time after that, which
resulted in the Grand Prix 1995 at the Festival Turbulences du Maillon in Strasbourg. A few
years later, Copi will take an important and regular place in the collective’s work, as well as
Peter Handke, Lars Norén, Leslie Kaplan or Rodrigo Garcia.
In other words: how to show the world’s brutality without becoming cynical or destroy free
men’s collegiality? How to point out upsetting questions and the moment when our life turns
into fear before destroying us? How to find the place to give back to things just in order to
be as fair as possible?
Their own desire is their answer, the heart of their energy, their subversive strength inspired
by desire, a desire of creation rather than one of destruction. Because they are hedonists,
playful and sensual. In our gloomy world where we slowly lose all sense of meaning, they
create a phenomenology of pleasure, rhetoric of the tangible world, a way to be political
without being involved in politics or trying to convert the crowds.
It is a return to real things, a return to beings, to situations, to the depth of experience, and
a way to find solutions on stage from the essence of the play. Something is to be opened
within the play itself to transform thought into action, and action into attack.
If they perform, it’s not just by being together in a theatre, housed in it or produced by it so
much that they become themselves its own trademark rather than the stage object. They
make demands on the theatrical institution, they question it, and they mix with it in a very
diligent manner. However they only pass through the institution, staying independent in their
productions, elaborated outside its limits and standards, so that the heart of the artistic
matter flourishes in the shade of impressive buildings…. »
Géraud DIDIER
July 2005
Théâtre des Lucioles
61, rue Alexandre Duval
35000 Rennes
tel/fax : 02 23 42 30 77
www.theatre-des-lucioles.net
production | diffusion
EPOC productions
Emmanuelle Ossena | [email protected]
+ 33 (6) 03 47 45 51
Charlotte Pesle Beal | [email protected]
+ 33 (6) 87 07 57 88
administration
Odile Massart | [email protected]
+ 33 (0)2 23 42 30 77
communication
Emilie Allio | [email protected]
+ 33 (0)2 23 42 30 77