It is the strength of a novel that brought together Angela Konrad and Benoit McGinnis for this first collaboration. When the director contacted Larry Tremblay to congratulate him after reading hison Final Table of Love, he told her that the actor — with whom she had long wanted to work — had just taken the same step. The interpreter had indicated to the author his interest in a possible theatrical transposition, having seen in the story a captivating material allowing him to dive into a more ” trashthat[’il n’a] not often played.
“I want to embark on projects that will teach me, that will make me grow. And that’s what I’m going through right now. It nourishes me as a human in an incredible way. A thrilled McGinnis meets there a “great character, worthy of great roles in the theater. There is so much material! It vibrates in so many ways, Francis Bacon,” he says.
This is not the first time that the brilliant British painter (1909-1992) has inspired the scene. The Frenchman Denis Lavant notably embodied it in 2005, also at Usine C, in Fig. What is fascinating about Bacon? “The radicality with which he questions representation, the body, says Konrad. And I think there’s something about the human presence that’s extremely mysterious about him. »
Freely inspired by this excessive life that spanned the two world wars, Larry Tremblay imagines Bacon’s troubled relationship with his lover and model, George Dyer. We see in several canvases the deformed body and face of this drug addict who committed suicide in Paris in 1971, just before the glorious retrospective devoted to the painter there. A rather twisted love, which also speaks of what an artist can sacrifice for his art. “It’s the relationship with the lover, but also in art, specifies the actor. It is this kind of relationship that stimulates him. He needs that to create, even if it’s dark. The harder it is, the more it is turned on. »
Angela Konrad continues: “What I found very strong in the novel is how Larry manages to weave an underlying network between the horror issues of adolescence in the relationship with a violent father and the horror of the great story (Hitler, the Holocaust), and also how all that is deposited in the perception of an artist to reconfigure reality. Bacon says don’t paint the horror, but the scream [de l’humain]. And Larry describes how the painter captures in George Dyer a drive for life, and death, which probably makes his own resonate, a kind of projection screen. »
What interests the designer here is the encounter between “two solitudes, which cannot and do not want to heal”. Two beings who “collide and use each other”. She was upset in the novel by a scene where the painter, after Dyer’s death, finally grasps that, “for George, the fact of having been his model constituted the only meaning of his existence, and that he, Bacon , had not understood anything before. This is the whole question of misunderstanding in the encounter with the other. How this encounter crosses the creative process and often goes hand in hand with a killing. A sacrifice. This “sadomasochistic” relationship ends up sketching the story of a work to come and an announced death.
The scene then becomes the ring of a relationship that began with a struggle, when Dyer broke into Bacon’s studio to rob him. A relationship as “a place of battle. But it is above all a place of intimate combat, with oneself”, specifies Konrad.
I want to embark on projects that will teach me, that will make me grow. And that’s what I’m going through right now. It nourishes me as a human in an incredible way.
In final picture of love, the novelist makes his protagonist and narrator say that art does not belong to the domain of ethics. The director agrees: for her, art has a cathartic function. “I think if Bacon we [remet en question], upsets us, shocks us, it is precisely because it creates beyond a Manichaean thought of good and evil, it transcends beauty and ugliness, the diktat of common sense. He is in a radical act of freedom. His creation is of the order of the representation of horror, yes, but this is symbolized, transcended. »
Remembrance
Benoit McGinnis praises the writing of Larry Tremblay. “It’s incredible, the structure of his sentences, how he manages to bring beauty to this horror and this pain. “And in this enjoyment, adds his accomplice. The story is still shot through with desire. »
Signed by the author himself, in a dialogue with Konrad, the scenic transposition takes the form of a condensation of the novel, focusing on the relationship between the lovers as told by Bacon. “Basically, Larry insisted a lot on it, it’s an ‘address to the dead,'” she said. So, we are in a form of remembering what took place. And above all of all the sensation coupled with the meeting with George, which brings Bacon to a creative process. “The narration is therefore mainly a monologue, but a monologue inhabited by the “hyperimportant” presence of Samuël Côté, who embodies the deceased, notes his partner. “We really do show together. »
The director has constructed in stage writing, from the actors’ proposal, a theatrical performance which “testifies to what the novel does: a series of scenes, which I would qualify as scenes of sensation”. It is a question of giving an account of what the literary work says, without illustrating it. “The pitfall you shouldn’t fall into when working on Francis Bacon, in my opinion, is to go into the representation of his paintings, to represent him in his function as a painter. We would be in a realism that is not appropriate. Bacon’s paintings are never in a form of reproduction of reality. »
And the interpreter will portray his character without trying to imitate the famous painter. We are not here in the biography. The two artists compare this creation to a museum installation. “The white walls were very important for the viewer’s mental representations to complete the work. We don’t want to present to him what we already know, but to give space to the text. And Benoit shows all the nuances, all the perspectives that the novel reveals of the character, with a [souplesse] which upsets me. »
The director of Factory C goes up End Table of Love in the small hall of his theatre. She therefore wanted a very intimate show. And the creative process was first based on a very great interiority, indicates with a smile Benoit McGinnis. “At the beginning of rehearsals, Angela would often say, ‘I don’t even want to hear you. Say the text, but don’t push anything.” We have the reflex, as an actor, to go immediately to carry the text so that it is heard. It was interesting to start like that, in a finesse, a delicacy, to build the show. »
Blending scenic poetry, music and minimalist video, this interdisciplinary work is reduced to the essentials to let the public’s imagination emerge. “The scene opens up the meaning, it must not show”, explains Angela Konrad. The designer aspires to “combine all these elements to create a common thread that will be very close to what Bacon sought in his relationship to reality. Without imitating him, I want to try to understand his own relationship to representation, to translate his own artistic quest. »