“Theatre is not very good at dealing with current affairs. It is too slow to develop, too slow to be programmed”, recognizes Jean-Philippe Joubert, artistic director of the Nuages en Pantalon company.
This feature could have posed a problem for The End of Fiction, a co-production with the Théâtre Catapulte which will be on stage at Périscope from March 22. Five years effectively separate us from the first ideas around the project: it was in 2017 and, for the record, US President Donald Trump imposed on the common radar what we now call “fake news”, elements of a nebula in which now join the grafts “conspiracy” and “conspiracy theory”, “disinformation” or even “radicalization”. So many elements contributing to the “weakening of the common premises, of the common narrative”, continues Danielle Le Saux-Farmer, artistic director of the Théâtre Catapulte.
“Hence the desire to turn to the historical dimension”, explains Jean-Philippe Joubert, about this project which takes the form of a theatrical essay – literally: an essay on the theatre. In seven episodes in the style of a documentary series, the collective writing project retraces, from Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, a sum of historical milestones allowing us to explore our propensity for narrative, with however the distance of historical hindsight. “It’s a bit like coming to the theater to ‘binge watch’ a documentary series”, illustrates Jean-Philippe Joubert.
In particular, Walt Disney, the hippies, Silicon Valley and PT Barnum will follow one another, explains Danielle Le Saux-Farmer: these returns in time, different ways of deepening the same central thesis, promise “a trip crazy for the viewer.
The erosion of the common
The recent proliferation of different ways of thinking, while it can be taken as encouraging diversity, sometimes leads to such marked differences that the possibility of dialogue is broken. An issue that is not of the first importance for the big players of the Net.
“All the examples of the transformation of the social fabric by agents who absolve themselves of responsibility have fueled enormous fear, which has animated certain people in the writing team”, continues Danielle Le Saux-Farmer, who mentions in particular the functioning of YouTube’s algorithm and how children are exposed to content beyond their control.
The move into digital has had major effects on the possibility of agreeing on common narratives. And that was true before the pandemic and the polarization around vaccines and health measures. Before, too, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which brings back to the fore the importance of controlling the narrative, at the heart of the conflict.
“It’s extremely disturbing what is happening now,” said Jean-Philippe Joubert, adding that the question of our common institutions is closely linked to that of democracy. “But, without diminishing the confusion, the historical perspective has nevertheless done me a lot of good to look at this distressing world of today and try to give a certain number of views on this world which, it seems to me, escapes me. more and more each day, or each time I see a friend falling into a reality parallel to mine. »
The End of Fiction will thus offer a space for exploration, a step aside to look differently at our upset, even fragmented, present. “It’s very, very sad, not being able to debate with someone because we don’t live in the same world, these divisions that happen because we are no longer able to talk about the same reality. »