” Attacks on his life is a contemporary classic. “Interviewed in March 2020, a few days before the unexpected closure of all theaters, Philippe Cyr confided that he had long wanted to stage this text by Martin Crimp. The director will have had to wait a little longer to finally see his production come to fruition, at Usine C. is embedded more deeply. »
In the meantime, the creator has become artistic director and co-director general of the Prospero Theater, where, coincidentally, a play by the great British author was presented this winter, When we will have tortured enough. “It’s fabulous how much you can see the correspondences between the two works, in the somewhat dizzying way in which Crimp talks about something and constantly redefines it, renames it differently, says Cyr, reached on the phone. I believe he is the master of variation on the same theme. »
With Attacks on his life, he conveys contemporary violence through discourse in a “terrifyingly effective” way. “The text transposes certain mechanisms of violence found in society. With cruelty and not without irony, the narrators of this enigmatic score keep telling the story of a certain Anne. An absent character, with an indefinable identity.
Contemporary resonance
Written in 1997, this post-dramatic text “resonates even more directly today”, with the advent of social media, believes Cyr, who somewhat compares narrators to Internet users “who seek the click bait “. Already, at the time of his writing, the use of ” storytelling was developing. “In subsequent years, we will use it in politics, in communication, in all aspects of society, to control the story, control information, invent. And that takes on more importance with social networks: you can invent the story you want there! Somehow in Attacks on his life, it is from this mechanism that the narrators feed. They totally exploit the idea they can have of Anne, and they do what they want with her. »
To the point of absurdity: she becomes an artist, a terrorist, even a car… She is elusive. “With overinformation, overcommunication, in our day, we hear everything and its opposite. It is very difficult to put your finger on the truth. Crimp’s text, for me, offers a dramaturgical transposition of that feeling. »
And it exposes an exploitation of identities. According to Philippe Cyr, the play “takes its place in a denunciation of capitalism. Crimp transposes mechanics, power relations between people. It is as if today, these mechanisms had even reached the sphere of the intimate in a dazzling way, [avait contaminé] our private relationships, our identity and our personal spaces. Now, we market the guest room on Airbnb. We market romantic relationships with apps.”
And when he immersed himself in this text again, after two years of waiting, the director noticed that it had acquired an even stronger resonance. Think about the relationship to discourse and truth during a pandemic where “our universe was constantly changing, as if we were in a bad board game where the rules changed along the way. » The famous « we build the plane while it flies »… « That’s the mode of operation ofAttacks on his life: you can never cling to anything. The things said seem like truths, but they are constantly being redefined. The piece transposes this kind of difficulty of having an understanding of the world very well. And clinging to all kinds of discourse, which at times are contradictory. Cyr also sees echoes in the violent invasion of Ukraine, where the storytelling the “manipulation of public opinion is part of the war”.
“For two years, the world in which we live has been even more unstable, more disturbing, more elusive. So the piece is all the more relevant and revealing of our time. That’s what leads me to say it’s a contemporary classic. I think to myself: maybe Martin Crimp is the next Shakespeare (laughs), in the sense that his works are there to be heard for a very long time. It’s as if they transcend the era, in a way. »
Dizzy
Still, it is a destabilizing work, for the creative team as well as for the viewer. “But it’s so well written. It is woven very skillfully, as I have rarely seen. We are able to connect networks of meaning. I have the impression that there is a way to combine the radical form of the text and a more accessible side. This is an exercise in which the director of I love Hydro likes to hitch up. “I strive in my work to try to bring together the radical and the popular. It’s one of my obsessions. And it’s such a major challenge with this text. »
In fact, Philippe Cyr qualifies the management asAttacks on his life a “titanic” challenge, among the great ones he had to take up. This score offers whoever directs it a “completely dizzying” freedom. We can do everything. And there are a lot of things that work. It’s so full of possibilities, it’s kind of scary. But at the same time, it’s extremely enjoyable to work on such a living material”.
For two years, the world in which we live is even more unstable, more disturbing, more elusive. So the piece is all the more relevant and revealing of our time. That’s what leads me to say it’s a contemporary classic.
The lines were not distributed according to characters, so he had to choose a number of actors, then assign them himself. “Already there, there is an immense form of writing on the part of the director, and even of the team. And in terms of tone, level of play, it remained immensely vast. »
There are only four performers left: Maxime Genois, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman, Iannicko N’Doua, Ève Pressault. Having become unavailable, an actor from the original cast, Jade Hassouné, had to be replaced (except for a recorded song) by two “guest artists”: Camille Poliquin, of the musical duo Milk & Bone, and dancer Gerard X Reyes. Their exact role in the show remains a surprise. And for Cyr, it was important to take into account the question of representativeness in the distribution, since “the person whose identity is exploited in this story is a woman. The choice of Karine and Ève is not insignificant. They have an unusual aplomb. »
Visceral
This piece, which Cyr approaches like a musical score, is a kaleidoscope of 17 scenes. “It’s a very disruptive show. It metamorphoses, we will feel the different aesthetics that we approach, the different tones from one scene to another. The director wants to communicate strangeness there, to create this feeling of “discomfort with the world around us or of uncertainty in relation to what is being told, transmitted to us”.
“I really work on the sensation level. It is a text that is almost kinesthetic, like a show of dance. » With a sensory approach rather than an intellectual one. ” Attacks on his lifeapproaches violence in a formal mechanics which, in the end, is transformed by the scenic transposition into a rather visceral sensation. Crimp is a master in this way of transposing sensations to the theatre. »
And with its formalism, the piece comes to question a “utilitarian tangent, very present in art at the moment, noted Philippe Cyr in 2020. This text also speaks of theater, of representation in the broad sense, of artistic language. However, everything pushes us, including the arts councils, to do useful works. As if art could not appeal to the realm of beauty or sensation, of abstraction. As if it could not exist by itself”.