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Is dream or duty?
In case you
would have guessed, the theater is a commitment. A contract signed with this
art of the living image. If Julien Gué chisels his plays in real objects of
scenic pleasures, he favors the main: the relation to the public. The theater
is act of transmission. Art of the communication, it has its requirements, as any
job.
His work,
his dream, it’s his fight –full stop! Artist’s reflex, it’s not without
evoking, all the more in Polynesian islands Children
of Paradise of Carné-Prévert (1943) tandem: both for its poetic treatment
and for its intentions. Proposing a world where love is king, where “love links
as act of resistance”. And it’s a very “declaration of love to the actors and
the stage” which Julien Gué reveals, in his short passage on the television
studio set of Polynesia 1st in Papeete.
Sounding the alarm at “Fare Ma’ohi” on 1st
Polynesia
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Such is the
message thus delivered by Julien Gué. “Fare Ma’ohi” asked him: “What do you
feel when you look over the Polynesian theater?” Julien Gué’s answer is
professional.
A theater without story
“To shake the
coconut palm” could be the title of this article, so much this allusion summarizes
the dynamics in which occurs any creative act which respects itself and
respects the public. So much the politics’ resolution is essential to anticipate,
undertake the long-term and extend the tradition of the open-air spectacle. So
much it seems harmful that the skills aren’t put in contribution and that the
potential might be doomed to failure (or abortion).
On the one hand, it
falls to the professionals to define the requisite prerogatives of their
occupation. On the other one, management of the theatrical sector can be
foreseen administratively only by including pedagogy, statutes and code of the
employment.
To make the theater
exists is to provide it with means, to rehabilitate the buried function of the
traditional arioi, these ma’ohi actors forgotten nowadays in rubble of past.
Make them go out of their forefathers’ museum; by structuring a domain which
isn’t the “paradise”!
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Jean-Marc
Tera’ituatini Pambrun’s quotation, pulled from The Tree and The Dust (1992) would suit perfectly the comments of
Julien Gué (by replacing “history” with “theater”); “Polynesian people have no
history. This formula can seem sharp, but it’s just. People have a history when
this one is the object of a systematic education in all the phases of the constituting
individuals’ personal development.”
Julien Gué regrets
that the theatrical art is tarnished and it’s confused with devalued entertainment
or hobbyists’ leisure. The announcer seems to fall in the mistake formerly
meant by Henri Hiro: be “démentalisé of his polynésianité” (for loss of one’s
roots).
Already, his play
Ariipaea-Vahine (1978), stemming from the Polynesian heritage, passed
on by memory, illustrates the movement of cultural revival which he introduced
before. Between myth and history, it looked like act of resistance at the time.
It didn’t hold for a long time in the popular consciousness, due to the lack of
orchestration by public authorities.
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| Henri Hiro and the theater ….“rementalisé" |
In right line with
Polynesian oral custom, with the pioneers of the exhumation of the theater,
tuned to the high school students whom he trained and who could now live the
scene and make it live, teachers with whom he collaborated, occasional actors
who were hatched under his direction, Julien Gué is holder of these expectations
which seem to find echoes everywhere else.
The stale culture
To brush the panorama of the
globalization of the culture, the report of this devaluation of the art
propagates on all the continents: reduction of the state budgets for the
culture, the administrative and fiscal harassments which fill the productions,
the political corruption and the embezzlements, the invasion of the financial
networks which blow a wind of commercial trifles and boss it wrongly or
fiduciary the market, the theocratic ideologies which declare it taboo… the
creation is much manhandled.
The almost world
criterion of leisure and communication being broadcasting, the image trades are
particularly worried. The creation, surprising and innovative by definition, is
it so disturbing? Let us see how the spectators of the sequence of January 14th,
2013, “Fare Ma’ohi” signed, react. They don’t know each other; originate from
different nationalities and cultures. They come from three continents: Africa,
Europe, and Oceania. They filmed, they were filmed, they wrote.
Richard Bohringer “spills the beans”
Ta’ata Paskua
comments so, hinting in Tahiti where he lives: “the territory is a real theater
of the worst”. Indeed, the image vegetates, the image is frozen, afraid of a
rise, the image is dying! (Either moving on stage, or livened: photography,
audio-visual fields as the micro-short stories of Ta’ata). Would the fixed or livened
up image be obliged to lock itself? Because the internet is harassed also, it’s
a matter of information and its cell.
The only scenic
image which is imperative is formatted: the advertising packs cross-posted by
tons, misspend billions behind. Marketing tool, it boosts its worst purveyors. Easy,
simplistic, within reach of brains the slowest, it piles up in the memory as a
second nature. What’s its assessment? It multiplies in conditioned reflexes. What’s
its recipe? The image is without smudge, tempting.
Theatricality of
the ignorance, this ersatz of knowledge doesn’t cultivate the spirits: it
restricts itself to a scrap of words matched by a jingle. It’s only filling the
garbage dumps of the hobbies and the viewers’ bellies with chips, delicacies
and flesh wrapped in slings of Misses.
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| The smokescreen culture |
Why does it fascinate? It’s because its power of seduction maintains the
confusion and holds in brief: the image-mirror… Many people believe they are a
dream creature? A gesture, a look: the mimicry raises armies of mindless
models.
The ragamuffins of the culture
The monopoly of the normative culture fails of “murdered Mozart” and of ranks
of job-seekers qualified in actor’s job. In metropolitan France, provided with
a unemployment-device, what does propose Pôle-Emploi in the column
“professionals of the show”? …strippers, cover-girls, hostesses!!!
The cinema renews its market with up-to-date lighthouses-faces without
taking big risks: because the editing erases the imperfections. At the theater,
for getting across to the audience, the apprenticeship is primordial.
With Léo Caneri’s statements we are fully getting into intramural debate:
the easy profit, its networks of privileged persons and its distribution. A
French national theater, prospecting on Tahiti, inclined to promote the
training and to move on to a show, noticed the lack on the subject and more
still: Julien Gué’s role, his existence, his skills, his trainer’s route (high school
diploma) were hidden to them during their stay in Papeete. It’s clear that,
while saying the rivalry is acerbic, it’s not enough.
Léonore Caneri speaks about theater in Tahiti
Certain indelicacy spread on Facebook would erase him
mindlessly of his direction of 2011: It
snowed at Tuamotu. Photos, video reports of the rehearsals (August to December),
press articles evoking what the comedians felt also, the broadcast interviews
of the author of the initial tale: all that deny this kind of gossips!
From Spain, this echo reaches us: “Five minutes of
speech about the theater for a cultural program, “it’s a little bit short, young
man” (Cyrano de Bergerac)! We have the bad impression that the announcer would
run the risk of losing her employ? A dialogue of the deaf, but the message
passed! Besides, the framing, pitiful! The guest stuck in a pocket
handkerchief! Fortunately, he is an actor, Julien Gué, you can see it, you can
feel it! He didn’t feel disconcerting, he emitted the plights necessary!
Material and human resources! Here, in our tiny village, we fast became disappointed.
We retrained!”
“He’s right to step up to the plate: the quality is
expected still when we pass at the box office! Drama schools make all the
difference! In the Paris region (of my universities), too many troops are
running after the rehearsal halls. The television restricts to broadcast often mediocre
shows of renowned stars: to disgust you of the theater. Amateurs’ association
it’s often anything: people indulge themselves with gags; it’s flat. Fortunately,
some call on specialists! I knew that”, comments A.R., a teacher.
The lament of the theater
It seems the
culture is either an act of resistance, the fight opened also in front of
coercive powers (let us quote Brecht), or in a context of public slowness.
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| Ridha B. (ISAD): the theater of the disenchantment |
In Tunisia,
emerging nation, the theater established one of the priorities of the first
president of the independent republic (1956). With the creation of the
Secretarial Department of the Culture (1961), an interventionist system is set
up, with the constitution of a “Commission of Orientation” which gives a visa
or not (censures) for the dramatic works. Ten years later, he founds the Center
of Dramatic Art, spent at the stage of Higher Institute (ISAD, 1981) with the
academics first generation.
Although the State censorship disappeared
after the revolution of 2011, Ridha Boukadida, an actor, director, playwright
and teacher in the Higher Institute of Dramatic Art of Tunis isn’t more
optimistic than in his thesis (2003, The
Tunisian theater in front of the modernity: the scene in an evolving society):
“Today I think of the
current event is in what we thought before the pseudo-revolution, of what we
had always thought: the freedom is necessary for the emancipation of the
individuals, the peoples and the theater.”
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| The culture hostage in Tunisia and somewhere else… |
“The Tunisian
revolution was the incredible opportunity of the emergence of what this nation
stored for centuries as ignorance, hypocrisy and opportunism. It’s after all
the residue of Bourguiba’s period among the Tunisian women more than among the
men that could save this tribe of 12 million inhabitants; otherwise, we’re sunk
and good for a wahhabit medievalization…”
The opinion of the
young Mediterranean generations underlines this achievement of a crucified
culture. Early saddened, they change orientation (a recent immigrant Tunisian, a
4th generation of Algerian immigration Frenchwoman, a French-Tunisian).
They associate
cultural mafia and State planned economy; no need to want to move forward other
trainings that those imposed by the trust of the money; no need “to break
through”, even if you are the best one.
And there, number
of capitalist countries is going to recognize itself. The word “job” becomes synonymic of privilege and exploitation,
the professional word amounts to “money pump” because the space of legal status
doesn’t recognize criteria or falsifies them!
Trained for nothing: the Maghreb-Mediterranean Sea voice
The three youngsters
were organizers and left, because the job isn’t really nourishing. Both boys
awarded a dancer diploma, have made scene (Tunisia for the oldest, Tunisia, France
and Germany for the youngest- in theater, dance and cinema).
While insuring the
daily bread, they resist by staying in shape to pass on their passion, when
they have more free time to frame the youngest later, not by obligation, but by
love.
An act of love
But, who is Julien
Gué? Why does he support a part of his intervention on the Cultural Center Tjibaou and the professional status
of the theater of New Caledonia?
Twenty five years
previously, in a village of Languedoc-Roussillon (Mudaison, less than 2000 inhabitants), he livened a theatrical group outdone in 2nd
Meetings of the Amateur theater of the region. What input do pull these actors,
exercising at present in quite different domains? Must a director be trained? Is
the actor Julien Gué on stage worth being seen and is worth the trip?
Marie, Séverine and Sylvie speak about Julien Gué
His arrival “by
canary yellow cabriolet Triumph Spifire, wind-swept hair, very Rock’n’roll boho,
electric deep blue-eyes… marks the beginning of an adventure” which starts with
“the boards practice, the discovery of a subtle, lavish, rallying, expanding world,
the familiarization with underestimated authors, the strength, the originality,
the beauty of the language and the learning of whom we became”: the actors testify
so today. “We were as in a bubble, inside ourselves, in perpetual vibration
between the articulation (O sessions of diction!), the game, the partner, the
truthfulness of the role… and the vast world.”
“The experiment was
strong, we were addicts to: practical farces, playlets, singings, poetry. We
lived on theater and Julien Gué lived it: passionate, poet, inborn-storyteller,
with something of the childhood which continues and sublimates through the oral
character. We were in apnea. It was the euphoria!”
“We crossed the
bracket of our bell tower to reach our main part. As for a choral song, we were
“in rise”. As in love relation, we were in absence of ourselves, at the same
time alone, intensely us and in communion with the other one. We keep tracks,
in the exercise of our occupations: we aren’t afraid of being; the other has
one’s truth. We have been in good hands: generosity, acceptance and disinterest!
The theater upsets, makes us change”
“Julien Gué offered
us: “the luck to exist”
“On stage, we saw
him in two totally contradictory characters (The Prophet and Schrischamtury
at the Theater Iseion in Montpellier). Alone, he occupies brilliantly a stage
platform of respectable sizes. We felt that his presence is enough to reduce
the space, to inhabit it, to devour it. Julien Gué manages at once depth and
weightlessness, somewhere else and closeness, a modulated, exciting constant
energy, furthermore stirring; solar dimension affecting the innocence,
atmosphere of serenity for the first one; contained violence and its
overflowing, icy and ardent cruelty at the same time, character impressing
everything with incandescence for the second; in summary, an ardor perfectly mastered
and supported by his eyes’ twinkle; that seizes you, returns you, you are under
influence.”
Outline of the theater of Julien Gué
In the same years
in Paris, a spectator, “not very interested in theater”, for fear of having to
face the supreme boredom of Julien soliloquizing, attests even so: “and there was
the shock! At first I discovered a text, which I often
read since. It was a little my roots. I remember that he played with a big
sobriety. He didn’t play, in fact, he was this text. I remember that I was
caught by this chap on stage: a single guy in front of a teapot, who told me
the life.” (JS, Franco-Moroccan)
No longer need to
prove that the job gives its full measure to the fascinating actors? Need to
justify the theater and its practice? Do you know that from the hamlet of
Missègre (66 inhabitants), the troop of Cultiv’actors (like “farm’actors”)
comes to occur to Mudaison?
The advent of writing erased neither the need to mediate stories, nor to perform
them. From the evenings of storytellers to the TV screen, the need to tell oneself
remains pregnant. Griot or Jeu de la Feuillée, replaced by TV
reality shows or the webcam interlude, stay substitutes in theses modes of
identification, communication, cultural opening and check which proposes the
theater.
Recognize oneself, fall and stand back: a job named theater.
An article
of Monak
Translated from French by Monak
*Drama course Monak: license -
theater Paris III-Sorbonne, 3rd degree Dance and creativity (Paris VI), modulate
theater and teaching. Actor and technician Workshops (80-90 ): Theatre de
Poche: G. Cambreleng-M. Barré, J-P Sarrazac (Nanterre), J. Lassalle, Colin
Harris, Theatre Mouvant, Roy-Hart-Theatre, El Hamra, ISAD-Tunis, Lotfi
Dziri, Cécile Backès. Freelance: Theatre Organique, Arts and Cultures, L’Etoile du Nord, Théâtre
de la Danse and Centre Chorégraphique Méditerranéen (since 96 to now).
Copyrights
Monak and Julien Gué. Ask for the authors’ agreement before any
reproduction of the text or the images on Internet or traditional press.
