After It will be fine (1) End of Louis (2015), where he engaged with a vast cast on the ambitious terrain of revolution and political debates, the French author and director Joël Pommerat returned in November 2019 to the intimate and evocative theater that made his reputation. Portrait of a generation, Tales and legends will be Joël Pommerat’s fifth show presented at the NAC, in Ottawa and at the Carrefour, in Quebec.
Following brief significant exchanges between adolescents, adults and android robots, that is to say representing the human, Tales and legends goes through a near future to better talk about the present. “I’m not telling you, explains the designer, we are living in a fairly turbulent time from the point of view of questions of identity. We are witnessing a redefinition of the different individual and collective social categories. Deep changes are taking place. In my opinion, these upheavals affect teenagers first and with full force. »
Objects of fascination
Joël Pommerat has repeatedly addressed the construction of a child’s identity in reaction to his family, his environment, his society, and very often to the cruelty of which humans are capable; especially in Pinocchio (2008), but also in This child (2006) and The reunification of the two Koreas (2013).
However, the artist denies being a specialist: “I am an actor and a spectator of all these questions. I mean I don’t overlook them. I am not a sage or a thinker, a philosopher or a sociologist, I am a theater practitioner. I also opt for creative processes that do not necessarily highlight intelligence or knowledge, but rather allow meaning to arise by itself, a sensitive experience to occur, the unconscious to manifest. »
The performance is made up of 11 scenes, as many “tales and legends”, independent and yet inseparable microfictions that make up one of those kaleidoscopic portraits of which Joël Pommerat has the secret. Played by young actresses, the teenagers and the robots who have recently accompanied them in their daily lives maintain relationships that question the difference between humanity and artificiality, child and adult, fiction and documentary, fantasy and reality, valet and master. , female and male.
“I feel a fascination for these androids, admits the author and director. These entities are disturbing, because they are artificial and nevertheless faithful reproductions of the human being. While being created by human beings, they can surpass it, show more fluidity and flexibility, a much greater ability to move through categories. Of course, all of these issues are covered in the show. »
Pommerat specifies that his anticipation did not lead him to the side of dystopia. “I didn’t want to add drama,” he explains. Rather, I focused on constituting a reality that is on the verge of emerging, a world where robots would be very similar to human beings. I didn’t feel the need to go into science fiction, because the mise en abyme I had before me already seemed quite spectacular enough. »
set of mirrors
While acknowledging that access to robots, as well as to all technologies, is very likely to continue to widen social inequalities, Joël Pommerat is of the opinion that their presence in our lives, while many films, television series and novels keep looking for the worst, not to be seen as fundamentally toxic or destructive.
“Robots will be exactly what humans want or can do with them,” says the man of the theatre. It is possible that it will produce disasters, of course, but it could just as well bring a lot to humanity. Robots are artifacts, reproductions of our own condition; between them and humans, there is necessarily a game of mirrors that operates. »
While receiving the worried questions of many spectators, the director continues to believe that these are phantasmagoria. “These are projections, fantasies, pure fabrications of their minds,” he explains. Not only could the robots be peaceful, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were also gentle and supportive, that we could develop real relationships with them. That said, the show doesn’t formulate answers, it doesn’t impose judgment, it lets the audience draw their own conclusions. »
The art and the way
At the dawn of his sixties, after having signed around twenty shows, a repertoire of rare coherence, the creator admits that he has recently felt doubts: “I had the impression of being confronted at a limit, the feeling of being about to repeat myself. »
Then enlightenment happened again, and the creator set out to develop what would become Tales and legends. “I was convinced at that time that I had something new to offer,” he recalls. Of course, this is a utopia. Today, I know that I’m telling differently what I’ve already told and that the most important thing is probably that: the way we go about telling. »