First of all, it’s a question of the grain of the voice: poised, soft, but also warm. Because the discussion with Martin Crimp is done on the phone, the musicality of the language strikes first. In a way, a telephone discussion with the one who has often been described as an author who creates voices rather than characters respects the poetic logic of Crimp. Not One of These Peoplepresented at the Carrefour international de théâtre on the 1er June 3, promises to be a radicalized version of this claim: the British author describes his new piece as a “continuous text of 299 voices”, all carried by a single interpreter – first by Crimp himself in English , then in French by Christian Lapointe.
The work, more of a “reading-performance than a traditional play”, was born from a commission from the Royal Court Theater in London with a view to the reopening of theaters in autumn 2020. From wave of COVID to wave of COVID and from closing to closing, the text was not finally presented in London, but now it finds its first stage incarnation thanks to the invitation of Christian Lapointe.
In this new text, made to be read (“to minimize the amount of repetition necessary and to have an object easily adaptable to any context of creation”), Crimp addresses three themes that organize the 299 voices: thorny cultural issues (” sexuality, racism, who can speak in whose name?), confession and luck (“one of the fundamental facts of the drama”). The text is in particular a tribute to Tim Etchells and the company Forced Entertainment, whose play Speak Bitterness is made up of actors who read “confessions” to the public, in an uninterrupted stream of thoughts: “I have always been fascinated by the formal simplicity of this address to the public, and I was looking for a way to take it up in my writing. »
“An Opportunity to Play”
Humor and the notion of pleasure hide under the serious trappings of one of the most celebrated authors of his generation, but who usually remains far from the front of the stage. “One of the things that interests me in this text, and which I also found in Speak Biterness, is its playful aspect. For me, it is also an opportunity to play, in the sense that my children did when they were younger, having fun independently with toys or dolls, inventing voices and stories for themselves”, explains Crimp.
To hear the author talk so much about acting, one wonders what could motivate him to go on stage for the first time since his student years: “The idea had not crossed my mind before the proposal by Christian, but I saw in it a form of poetic justice, as the piece is also a way of laying bare the writing process and the posture of the author. There is also a form of perversity and attraction to danger, like when you see a bare electrical wire and decide to touch it when you know it’s dangerous. »
This interplay between the author and the character, the true and the false, reality and fiction, Crimp has fun cultivating since his first texts. Impossible to try to know what part of him is found in the voices of his characters; he prefers to allow doubt to float by pushing back the limits of his own imagination: “I think of the importance of people who don’t exist. Hamlet or Mrs Dalloway, for example, do not exist, but they may represent more than a real person. The places you can go inside [de notre tête] rather than in the outside world are not to be overlooked. Often the inner world is more coherent than the outer world. Out of politeness or fear of having been misunderstood, anxious to always find the right word, he adds with a laugh: “I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but in a way it does to me. . »
If Crimp didn’t know Christian Lapointe before their first discussion, he knew that the director loves his work (Lapointe has staged three of his plays since 2015). For Not One of These Peoplethe author was quickly convinced by the scenic device (avatars created with the technology of the deepfake — or hypertrucage — mimic the 299 voices at the same time as the text is read), but also by Lapointe’s working method: “We exchanged ideas about the structure, the rhythm, but we quickly agreed on the need for me not to rehearse too much or to pretend that I am an actor. It is important to maintain a feeling of spontaneity and freshness that is not faked. The fear that currently inhabits me must remain alive on the stage! »
Does this mean that Crimp’s writing is about to change? The voice hesitates and pauses, before responding, “I don’t know if anything will change, but I’m thinking of when I was teaching a few years ago. A student asked others what they would write if they could write anything. When my turn came, I explained that I would like to be able to effortlessly write a text in flow of words, a bit like Elfriede Jelinek does. Looking back on it today, I believe I have fulfilled my fantasy, or at least 299 parts of it. »