KOLTÈS AT LE MUSE: AN INCITEMENT

“Black Battles with Dogs” will be the first production directed by Giampiero Solari at the newly reopened theatre. 

The production and artistic director of the Teatro Stabile delle Marche (Marche Repertory Company) started a project with three different productions based on three texts by the deceased French dramatist, in order to foster performances of his work in Italian theatres, and so as to create a strong inaugural season. 

The very same Giampiero Solari discusses the productions with us

“When the Stabile had to think up an inaugural season for the reopening of Le Muse – explains Solari – the Koltès project (see preceding article) seemed to me like a strong choice, both as a way of highlighting the port’s proximity to the theatre (as a transit point), and as a theatrical effort that distinguishes itself from the short-lived fireworks typical of Italian theatre. By including one of the most important contemporary authors in Europe, whose work touches on some of the most profound themes of contemporary man’s existence, I believe the project is an example of the public function theatre must have in society.

A quartet of actors performs Black Battles with Dogs. The action unfolds in a dubious place, a building yard (this seems of the utmost importance for Le Muse) in Africa where a number of western characters work, and where many of the contradictions of our day are played out. 

Koltès doesn’t provide any answers, and frankly I wouldn’t want to trivialize the themes, but it’s about the West’s relationship with the Third World. The characters don’t succeed in returning and have to continue working and living in a kind of no-man’s land. A black man (Alboury) goes to the building yard to reclaim the body of his “brother,” as he calls him. He both speaks and sees things in a very simple, down-to-earth way. His language is purely African, and yet also South American. The western characters live in a kind of relationship quagmire. A man (Horn) has brought his fiancé (Léone) in Africa to marry her, and there begin the fireworks. The other character (Cal) has lost his pet dog. Everybody, slowly but surely drowns in alcohol. 

At a certain point Léone becomes African with traces on her face of marks. The leading actor in the Le Muse production, a black actor named Fantam, tells me that the tribe in the story calls these marks “leopard tears.” In fact, this is Fantam’s tribe, and the black actor will, furthermore, be performing the role of his very own ancestor Alboury. Everything Koltès talks about is true. Without talking directly about globalization or the free market (themes that seem perfect these days), we seem to enter into someone’s soul to witness it shaken for us by Koltès. This is what makes him one of the strongest contemporary authors.

In the striking mix of formalism and passion of Koltès’ texts, the actor must live up to the great French tragedy in the performance as he/she would with Racine’s Andromaque. Hence, I thought of a cast with credible actors that would be able to capture the market as well. As I was saying, the text is somewhere between a numerical and musical quartet, and features Remo Girone in the role that belonged to Michel Piccoli in the French version. The role of Cal is in the hands of Valerio Binasco, one of the most interesting up-and-coming actor/directors. We started an actor’s workshop with him at the Stabile delle Marche (The Marche Repertory Company), and he’ll be directing a few productions for us in the future. I like it when this kind of cooperation develops because I think a repertory company’s artistic direction shouldn’t be crushed by the weight of one personality.  It should be recognizable by the kind of relationships it succeeds in establishing. The black actor is Alex Van Damme (Jean Claude’s brother), while Stefania Orsola Garello plays Léone. Garello is an actress with little theatrical experience, but she has been in numerous cinema and television productions, and right now is one of the leading actors on the television drama “Distretto di Polizia.” Finally, the set-design and décor of the building site will be the work of Sergio Tramonti, and will include everything mentioned in the text. 

When I arrived in Ancona, I immediately thought of Koltès’ dramatic compositions. This connection is not so much due to the natural scenery of a city whose port makes it a point of transit and a bridge to the East and to Africa. Rather, it was because I felt it made sense that Koltès work be performed here.  He is one of the contemporary authors that fascinate me most. He is a westerner that has traveled widely, lived in the Third World, in Africa and Central America, and who understood how to photograph today’s world. His works hit on an enormous number of themes of contemporary daily life in terms of the relationships individuals have with each other, with their culture, with their origins, and with racial and sexual differences. Many people talk about Koltès linguistic style, but I find that passionate language is as natural to him as rigorous stylistic formality. For example, In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields is a structurally symmetric drama that grazes the soil of perfection when you go and count the lines spoken by the two characters. Koltès possesses the formal ingredients in a surefire manner, but the motor in his writing isn’t the head, rather it is passion that allows him to reach an extraordinary depth of feeling and thought. You distinctly feel the connection he has with the theatre’s past tradition. Contemporary drama has undergone many a break with the past, but, without a doubt, the only works to survive are those with some connection to dramatic tradition. “Old rag, you stay and I go away”, says Beckett: the “old rag” is dramatic composition; the words that rest in the theatre while we pass through. Koltès is one of those writers that make theatre endure beyond the physical structure of the building. 

Generally, contemporary theatre of this kind is difficult.  In Italy, people talk about contemporary drama, but other than a bit of Thomas Bernhard, Heiner Muller, Mamet, and Stoppard very little is done.  Koltès is regularly performed in France and the rest of Europe (thanks also in part to his association with Peter Stein), but around here only a few small productions have been made: a few years ago I brought The Night Just Before the Forest to the stage with Massimo Venturiello.  Giulio Scarpati took the same work and sought an impossible realism in the text. Cherif has made a few forays into this territory; a Venice Biennial Exhibition concentrated on his dramatic interpretations. This is why it was important to not only think up a show that enters the theatrical circuit, but also a project that unites the strengths of three different mises-en-scène (my own, Mario Martone’s, and Cherif’s) in order to create a provocation of the norm.

                                                                                                                         Maria Manganaro