The artistic project

LONG LIVE THE MOVEMENT THAT SHIFTS ALL BOUNDARIES!
paraphrasing Baudelaire

I take the liberty to alter Baudelaire’s phrase ironically evoking a cold and motionless Beauty. The theatre, ours at any rate, prefers the beauty of the Surrealists.
Is it because we tend to find realism tedious - the cinema is better at it than the theatre anyway -, because everyday life is disappointing or because the state of the world is so burdensome (but also so fascinating), that on the stage we need the fantastic? We need it through transpositions, allegories and symbols.
The plan is not to run away from the world and find refuge in dreams, not even for a second; it is rather to go to the theatre to try on a new vision of things, to open up to events or experiences beyond the norm.
So I think that we can back the different attempts of a great number of our guest artists at helping us to go beyond the norms. We can support all those, in theatre, dance or music, who find it such fun to move boundaries around.
I am pleased that many productions you will see during the 2011-12 season will also give you a chance to rub shoulders with things strange, odd, fantastic, marvellous, un real and surreal; Indeed nothing human, nothing inhuman should be excluded from the theatre.
Aren’t those productions signs of a certain revival of the Surrealism that gave us the paintings, sculptures, literary  and poetic  which shook the artistic world awake before and after the hideous Second World War?

CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS
In our new season we have  deliberately started an “itinerary for Children and Teenagers” which brings together projects from different fields, invented in partnership with other theatres (the Centquatre,  the Théâtre Monfort, the Gaîté Lyrique, the Grand Parquet, the Cité Internationale). We  had  already begun that new policy (we are not the only ones) but it seems essential for children and teenagers to find in the available offers food for their imagination thanks to productions that are not tailored but meant for them. Forthe younger and very young ones (aged 3 to 10): a revival of Fabrice Melquiot’s Bouli Miro and Wanted Petula with my usual company; Élise Caron’s musical rhymes, Maël Le Mée with a child in front of “digital effects”; Jérôme Bel’s Cédric Andrieux  adapred for a younger audience; Katie Mitchell’s The Cat in The Hat, after Dr Zeuss’ bestseller, performed in English, will also allow younger spectators to experience a foreign language on the stage. They will discover the prestigious Indian tradition thanks to the puppets from Rajasthan; last but not least James Thierrée will charm every generation with his lithe gracefulness.

FOREIGN COMPANIES AND THE POETRY OF LANGUAGES
We have chosen to invite and support great artists from all over the world, to partake in the risky adventure of artistic creation; indeed creation represents an act of resistance against all forms of cultural normalization and nothing  can ever be taken for granted for the artist. We are looking forward to the visits of major foreign artists: Christoph Marthaler’s latest production + 0, performed and sung in German, Greenlandic, French and English, which was just premièred in Greenland.
Then a production by Romeo Castellucci Sul concetto di volto nel figlio di Dio[On the Concept of the Face of the Son of God]. As we know, the Christian doctrine allows human and divine representations. Hence also the theatre! We will welcome for the first time the Sydney Theater Company from Australia, led by Kate Blanchett, performing Botho Strauss’ Big and Small, under the direction of Luc Bondy. The relationships with some major European theatres are stronger than ever: the Berliner Ensemble will visit us again, twice! Another cheerful brotherly reunion, first with Wedekind’s Lulu directed by Robert Wilson, starring Angela Winkler, then with Thomas Bernhard’s Simplement compliqué [Simply Complicated], directed by Claus Peymann with the exceptional Gert Voss.
We will host again the Antwerp-based Toneelhuis: Guy Cassiers, who never stops shifting the lines between drama and the novel, has adapted Joseph Conrad’s rather fantastic novel Heart of Darkness, which also inspired Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

YOUNG ARTISTS AND NEW HORIZONS
While we wish to pay tribute to the masters and embrace several generations, we also mean  to back young companies and independent creators, to remain attentive to new experiments, contents and forms.
With his new creation, Le système de Ponzi [Ponzi’s System], (a model for B. Madoff!), associate author David Lescot launches into a fantastic world of his own, the real crooks’universe. Arnaud Meunier will bring together 45 high school students from the Seine Saint-Denis and his company to perform Michel Vinaver’s 11 septembre 2001[9/11]. Bérangère Jannelle will compose the dramatic portrait of the illustrious Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaieva, impersonated by Nathalie Régnier (welcome to the stage!).
Coming from Argentina, young Lola Arias invents a poetical musical documentary form, Mi vida después [My Life After]. After what? After the dramatic bloodsheds in Argentina. The New Yorkers of the Nature Theater of Oklahoma will be back for episode n°2 of their Life and Times saga. Identity, singularity and differences will be explored by Zimmermann and De Perrot from Switzerland.
We are experimenting new forms for the diffusion of art by fostering other kinds of partnerships with a few Parisian houses, in an attempt at facilitating circulation for the artists and developing new audiences in Paris itself. Thus in partnership with the Théâtre Monfort we will introduce you to Quartier lointain [Distant Quarter], which young Dorian Rossel has adapted from the best-selling manga bt Jiro Taniguchi. At the Centquatre, Cyril Teste will tell you a magical tale about two children inspired by a real story.

REPERTOIRE AND CREATIONS
For our coming season we have invited several productions that we discovered in France or elsewhere, even in Paris on occasion, which we thought deserved another career, another chance to meet new audiences. Those revivals will allow the artistic teams to carry on with their work and will extend the life span of a given production. It will be our privilege to host Thomas Bernhard’s Extinction, recited by Serge Merlin and directed by Alain Françon and Blandine Masson. We will also rediscover Hiroshima mon amour the famous script Marguerite Duras wrote for Alain Resnais, reshaped for the stage by Christine Letailleur, performed by Valérie Lang and the Japanese actor Hiroshi Ota. The members of the very recent company “La Vie Brève” will revive Robert Plankett, their collective creation, at once funny, thoughtful and mysterious, directed by Jeanne Candel.
I am very glad to have Suréna back – “toujours aimer, toujours souffrir, toujours mourir” [“Always to love, to suffer, to die”] – thanks to Brigitte Jaques-Wajeman and her actors after an extensive tour in France, thus bringing an end the “colonial Corneille” cycle.
These revivals will by no means prevent our theatre from remaining a Mecca for new creations. Our firm intention is to take risks, both aesthetic and ethical, by being involved in original creations. This season will offer 27 creations (12 dramas and 15 dance pieces).
I will personally stage a play which intrigues me no end and which I am deeply fond of, Roger Vitrac’s Victor ou Les Enfants au pouvoir[Victor or the Children in Power]. This a true fantasy play although its action is placed in the midst of a bourgeois family, two couples and an adultery. But Victor is nine and does not impersonate the glorious state of youth but rather the awesome state of childhood. The play’s ordinary background boarders on the surreal because of Victor’s stupendous casualness towards conventions, taboos and norms. Of course the child will not survive and yet his name Victor means victorious. What child never dreamed of exercising power over his family, the others and the whole world? The play dates from 1928 and was first brought to the stage by Antonin Artaud.

THE LATE MASTERS
Merce Cunningham: two programmes will cover his whole itinerary, with pieces from 1956 to 2007, six in all, to complete the Legacy Tour which will bring to a permanent end the company’s tours, in accordance with the great master’s wish.
Pina Bausch: her company, the Tanztheater Wuppertal will not disband. How lucky we are to see once again 1980, ein Stück von Pina Bausch, a turning point in her career!

NEWCOMERS
We try never to exclude any trends from our artistic choices. Yet one of our clear guidelines is to pay special attention to the new generations of artists. I consider it as my duty to invite these new generations to this house which is so accustomed to welcoming artists from all over the world. Six new dance companies will be guests for the first time at the Théâtre de la Ville this season. While hip-hop artist Sébastien Ramirez meets the Korean dancer Hyun-Jung Wang, Ambra Senatore brings us from Italy her elegant and refreshing Passo. The Grenade group, with 23 professional children dancers, will celebrate their twentieth anniversary on the Théâtre de la Ville’s stage.
After the first competition Danse élargie [Dance at its Broadest], a joint project created in 2010 with the Musée de la Danse led by Boris Charmatz, - the next competition is scheduled for 2012 – the Théâtre de la Ville, having followed the whole process, has decided to support some of those artists by including them in this year’s season. Scali Depeyrat’s extended version of Dance is a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it, which won the Prix du Prix du Public [Public’s Award] will be on the agenda. The hip-hop company KLP will present their latest creation, and in a single evening, Simon Tanguy his solo Japan and Noé Soulier his three short pieces.

COMPANIONSHIP
New writers, new plays, new styles, new choreographic visions: the Théâtre de la Ville ardently supports artists who tread on unventured paths, shift partitions, open hidden doors and unfold their wings in the unchartered space between body and stage. With her latest creation, Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker will lead us from dusk to dawn. Boris Charmatz brings together a group of very young people for his novel invention enfant [child]. François Verret’s Court-Circuits [Short-Circuits] draws freely on Sarah Kane and Heiner Müller. Associate artist Rachid Ouramdame questions the construction of identities in his Exposition universelle[Great Exhibition]. We will welcome the European premiere of Can we talk about this?, in which DV8 rages against all obstacles to the freedom of speech.
Robin Orlyn, from South Africa, will evoke the Hottentot Venus and Samoan artist Leni Ponifasio the world’s chaos.
When I survey the number of foreign artists, of countries, of languages that are presented at the Théâtre de la Ville, I would like to invite you to rejoice: in a theatre which is sometimes supposed to be a world apart, encounters take place, encounters full of sensitivity, intelligence and emotion, yielding a pleasure shared by the audience in the here and now - you - and artists from the whole world who bestow their very best efforts upon you. Not only are you invited to outlandish travelling but also to familiar reunions. The fantastic joins forces with the everyday reality. What more could anyone wish?

Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota