Since the triple Chronicles in 2009, Emmanuel Schwartz will have delivered his texts quite sparingly. The gesture of writing does not, however, come from a one-off impulse for the highly solicited interpreter, but rather from a “groundswell”. “In all my free time, which hasn’t been legion in recent years, I devote myself to it. It’s hard to say if it’s a job, a hobby, a passion… It’s something that has always been with me. »
Even at the start, the artist did not imagine that he would be mainly recognized as an actor. “When I left school, I really intended to be a playwright,” he recalls. Author and director, that was what interested me the most. »
It was with this intention that he then founded the company Abé Carré Cé Carré with Wajdi Mouawad. “But he perceived in me abilities as an actor and I found myself playing for him a lot, a lot. Life does things funny. Not that I’m not happy to have participated in all these projects as an actor. It’s a great richness to be able to cross the landscapes of so many creators, it fed me a lot. But I would like to focus a little more on my practice as an author, director, screenwriter and director, which is beginning. »
After directing his first feature film, Pigeon Projectcreated with his students from the Professional Theater School at Lionel-Groulx College, he is preparing another, hoping to establish this tradition for graduates.
The founding of La Clairière, Compagnie de création, in 2020, of which he is the artistic director, aims to make more room for his career as a creator. And “perhaps also to allow me to arrange spaces, so that I am not completely out of breath at the end of several projects, filming or theater as an actor”.
Spaces favoring the creation of more permanent works. “It was a one-time disappointment, following the five shows I’ve created over the past 15 years, that, without structure and without follow-up, they seemed like a sort of happening, of spontaneous creation. And sometimes, I have the impression that the depth or the weight of the work did not have time to really settle and find its form. »
And since these texts were spaced between his acting engagements, it could be difficult to perceive the link which united them. Emmanuel Schwartz, he sees the common thread running through them. “I think it’s a search, not to say an obsession, to unfold the identity of the creator, he describes.
In Chronicles And Nathan, it was oriented around author characters. with the trilogy Trialsof which The sharing is the second part, it’s creative identity in the broader sense: what does it mean to choose this profession today, where does it place us socially? Are there responsibilities that go with that or, on the contrary, is it a permission to be on the sidelines? »
For The sharing, of which he is both the author, the director and the sole performer, the artist has been working on this theme for four years. “And I think I created an environment, a team that allowed me to sculpt the dramaturgy and the aesthetics of the show a little more. »
Reflection
Started with the exhibition (2017), his “essayistic” approach pursues a questioning of the artistic act. A comedian writing about a comedian. “Now, I’m not even saying it’s autofiction; I say it’s egofiction, said Schwartz smiling. There is an extremely narcissistic tone to this quest. And if we go a little further, on a symbolic level, it’s someone who sees himself in his own reflection and who seeks to understand himself.
In the case of the character Share, he seeks to get rid of this reflection which is not even him and which was generated by a film which does not resemble him. He tries to peel back the layers of this reflection to find himself and be a little closer to his primary identity. »
The solo created at La Chapelle therefore tells a fiction where we find parts of Schwartz. The author wishes to offer “food for thought on where I am, and perhaps where we are collectively at in terms of our relationship to theatre, cinema, games. Our relationship to these multiple avatars that coexist with us “. Actor in crisis, star of an apocalyptic vampire film, the protagonist is “a kind of Narcissus obsessed with his own double”, whom he flees but sees everywhere.
This double of the actor first refers to the public figure, “who rarely resembles us”. What the actor illustrates with an anecdote: at UQAM, where he has just finished studying for a master’s degree in “the metabolization of the novel for the stage” – he plans to adapt The basement notebooks of Dostoyevsky — he took a workshop with Daniel Canty, who told him: “My friends call you Doctor Dark. Emmanuel Schwartz laughs. “I am often given busy, intense, even twisted roles. It projects an image of me that doesn’t look like me at all. »
Besides this public image and the persona that the character requires, the double also comes from “this ambivalence of character that we are asked: to enter a tormented character, then to come out of it and be completely affable and socially adapted . And of course there is the more psychoanalytical aspect. You can see your picture in the newspaper or watch yourself in a movie and find that it doesn’t look like you. But you can also look inward and not recognize what you have become, faced with this reflection of yourself which appears much more fundamental, close to the child you have been”.
The monologue will be wrapped in a setting, its “very beautiful space crossed by projections, presences generated by 3D animations, artificial intelligences. And I have the impression that all these reflections carry different voices. It was the work dug in rehearsal: how all these voices can inhabit a single body. And how it transforms the body.
The sharing is co-directed by Alice Ronfard, a great accomplice of the interpreter since their “absolutely dazzling encounter” at the end of his training. “She was there for all my creations. »
In the service
The story explores in particular “the power relationship that is played out between the director and the actor” sometimes.
“Even when I work with creators that I respect enormously, I have a kind of impression, in the long run, that it is a form of enslavement, recognizes the actor. And I also understand that it’s the only way to really practice this profession: to play for [autrui], I have to silence all voices of my ego, or even creator voices. Well, sometimes I can suggest things. But I also know the course of the creator, who needs to have the field free to go after an idea. It’s so complicated, to align all the elements to give substance to an artistic vision that, inevitably, it requires extreme generosity and a form of enslavement on the part of the collaborators. » Or, to « better » put it, to put oneself at the service of the work.
What can weigh for the actor is also having to exist in the eyes of others. “That may be why my relationship with my profession is so conflicted. This recognition after which we run to be able to practice it without fear of not having a job next year requires considering this look. We cannot ignore it. And that puts us in an awkward position, I feel. We would like to achieve on a personal level, but the job requires us to meet certain requirements. »
If we were to see more creations by Emmanuel Schwartz in the future, don’t worry: this remarkable actor won’t disappear. “I can’t deny that there’s still something inside me that’s excited about projects. » It will shoot in the fall Kairosthe sequel Impetus directed by Jennifer Alleyn. And next year awaits a great theatrical adventure with UBU, which we cannot yet reveal.