Frédéric Dubois and Olivier Kemeid offer themselves a project completely outside the framework, out of season and outside the theaters, in line with the spirit of their subject: two important avant-garde artistic movements of the decades 1950 to 1970 , aiming to take art out of traditional environments. Come to Espace Transmission, a former garage of the Société de transport de Montréal, avenue des Érables, to discover this atypical proposition.
Playground. I really like what I see was born from an astonishing synchronicity, as the two creators prepared their epic Five Kings. In Japan, where he put on a show, Frédéric Dubois discovered the Gutaï movement (1954-1972), whose manifesto reminded him Overall refusal, by its “break with an era, a formalism”. Also roaming the art galleries, but in New York, where he was in a writing residency, Olivier Kemeid spoke to him about Fluxus (1962-1978). Two pioneering, founding groups which are at the basis of performance art.
The duo wishes to “bear witness to this spirit which [lui] seems not to have aged a bit: the artist’s dizziness in the face of a new field of exploration,” explains Kemeid, who wrote the text. The show draws on archives, interviews and diaries in which the performers confide. “We draw inspiration from these movements to tell, in a rather interior and intimate way, a story – not exhaustive – of the performance. The trigger was to connect with the interiority of the artists, with what was revealed in them when they were thinking about their performance, when they were doing it and after. »
Among the daring performers chosen, there are several Japanese and a strong female presence, including Yoko Ono – an important artist seen for too long as John Lennon’s wife – and Charlotte Moorman, a cellist with a moving destiny, who died prematurely of breast cancer , which she documented. “These movements were crossed by feminism, but also nourished it,” says the author. The courage and visionary side of these women, the emancipation that it created, inspired us a lot. »
At what point is the spectator called to be more than someone who watches, without it becoming participatory theater?
The body is often at the heart of these surprising performances, which are striking in their great concreteness — gutai actually means “concrete” in Japanese. “After the war, in Japan, you had to connect with tangible things,” explains Dubois, who directed the production. And it was necessary to restore a presence to the bodies, even though they had just been “calcined, vaporized by the bomb”.
The practices resulting from these movements also highlight the idea that art “can be everywhere: in a sandwich, a salad…” They were part of a desire to abolish the boundaries between great art and life, “ to poeticize everyday life,” according to Kemeid.
Freedom
In this series of tables, we will be able to see some of these happenings artistic that the piece describes. Those whose artists authorize reproduction, according to their instructions. “Some members of Fluxus are so democratized that they write the instructions for the performance, they give them to you and go for it,” notes Kemeid. For them, we all have creative potential. »
But in the eyes of purists, a performance has a unique, spontaneous character that cannot be repeated. The two men do not claim TO DO of performance. They recreate it, “but like a repertoire,” explains Dubois.
For the director, the show also allows them to question themselves about theater, to think about the mechanisms of their profession through another lens. “For example, the relationship with the public. What is the position of the viewer? The performers asked this question when creating their works. We discuss this a lot. At what point is the spectator called to be more than someone who watches, without it becoming participatory theater? » He doesn’t want to reveal too much about the piece, but we play with the codes of representation.
Playground visibly stimulates both creators. Dubois praises the great freedom that this exploration brings. “And I feel it with the actors too: how much they take liberties that they don’t usually take. » For the director of the National Theater School, as for the one who has just left the head of Quat’Sous, this project marks the desire for creation on the fringes of institutions.
Is the theater too caught up in straitjackets today? “It is true that in recent decades there has been a form of standardization linked to economic pressures, which we must fight against,” agrees Kemeid, pleading for a diversity of practices. His accomplice notes that “subsidisers also ask creators to confine the practice into boxes”. Even its students, upon leaving the School, try to form a board of directors before defining themselves artistically, “because that’s what we ask of them”!
For Frédéric Dubois, who began by creating theater outside the networks, this return to his roots literally makes him jubilant. “It gives me great joy, especially at this time, when so much is said that our era is heavy, to re-engage people around play, pleasure, community. And to celebrate these artists who have remained in the shadows for a very long time. »