Note by: Violet Louise (Louisa Costoula)

Little introduction is needed for Olivier Py. He is considered one of the most important living representatives of contemporary French dramaturgy, whilst at the same time he is also an actor and a director. Since 1988 when he appeared on the theatre scene as a writer, he became established in the French scene with works  in which he performed and directed. Not hesitating to proclaim his Roman Catholic faith and his homosexuality, Olivier Py creates within his works a universe driven by a dominant, raving language. Theatre is traced back to religion which annunciates the fundamental redefining of the modern world.

 

Théâtres is one of Olivier Py’s first works, with autobiographical elements. The text comprises of twelve chapters, like a personal diary. The first scene starts with an act of violence;  the knifing of a young person on a central road. As he is dying, he recalls the most important chapters of his life, he recalls the traumas which led him to become involved in the theatre and in writing.

Olivier Py, of French-Algerian nationality, puts forward the issue of violence in its many forms. From the dark side of the colonialism of the Algerian war to homophobia and street-violence in the big cities and domestic violence.  Children who are raised in cities without ideals and orientation, who are looking for some meaning in a world without moral values. Children who, according to Py, could once again find meaning in the world through creation, through theatre.

The likeness and the gap from reality of the theatre brings about a sort of catharsis. Through this even the greatest suffering is brought to peace and wounds are healed. This text by Py is a manifesto against violence and bloodied power. It is a powerful statement, in opposition to the spirit of our times, with which the writer states that it is better to be a victim than a victimizer, to be tortured than a torturer, even if you have to offer up your wounds at the altar of stupidity and human brutality.

 

 

We set up theatres and scenes.But destiny always wins.And blows them and us away

George Seferis

 

Poet, playwright, writer, novelist, director, actor, singer, homosexual, left-wing, religious catholic;  the fifty year old Olivier Py, current director of the Avignon Festival, has been involved in theatre since 1988. The same issues, thereabouts, intersect and haunt Py’s universe: politics, Art, sex, faith, philosophy, family, in such a way that could only possibly be articulated by the Theatre.

 

In the work “Théâtres”, which has many autobiographical elements, there are incidences which are  impossible to  recreate, however nothing is left unmentioned. Five people share the stage, passing from fiction to confession, from the theatrical proceedings to memory, from current affairs to mythology: Me, my Executioner, my Father, my Mother and the Goat. My Executioner is a village boy with the French flag tattooed on his shoulder. My Father, the murderer of a small poodle and dismemberer of a wild boar. My mother, absent and harsh, a vindictive townswoman.  Me, a sometimes frightened, twisted boy, an abandoned child, a figment of the mind.  The Goat is maybe the only figure which has any trace of humanity. This figure of self appears as a victim, one amongst so many  already sacrificed: “Don’t ask me why I like to be beaten, don’t ask me why I feel the need to be humiliated, it is the only way I have of saying that if I belong to a family of executioners, it is against my will!  I never meant to be!” 

 

It despises the metaphors, the crystal clear expression of Madame de Chevigné, the silent fathers and the predatory mothers. It sings of the anonymous deaths and of the forgotten. It imagines itself knifed by a hooded youth, before it talks of repeated masochistic emotions, between a mother who is possessive, stingy, repulsive and a father worthy of contempt; he describes them as “Arab-butchers”. Half naked with a knife wound drawn on his side, half Apollo, half Christ, under the protection of a Goat from ancient tragedy, this Py-self appears as the torn conscience of the people.

 

Olivier Py. Writer, director and actor, Olivier Py was born in 1965. After his studies at the Ensatt Drama School, he joined the Conservatoire national supérieur d’Art dramatique, in 1987, whilst at the same time studying theology. In 1988 his first play, entitled Des oranges et des onlges, was directed by Didier Lafaye. In the same year Olivier Py founded his own company. He made an impression at the Avignon Festival in 1995 by submitting La Servante, histoire sans fin, a series of works which lasts 24hours. In 1998 he was appointed to the management of the Centre dramatique national d’ Orléans and following that took over the management of the Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe from 2001 to 2007.

In 2013 he is assigned the management of the Avignon Festival where he appeared many times, mainly in 2006, to direct L’ Énigme Vilar, a tribute to Jean Vilar in the Cour d’honneur du Palais des papes.

 

His texts are significant: most notably from Actes Sud Editions, the Paradis de tristesse (2002), Les Mille et Une Définitions du théâtre (2013), Siegfried, nocturne (2013) and the plays (amongst others): Epitre aux jeunes acteurs, Les enfants de Saturne, Les ballads de Miss Knife and Orlando ou l’Impatience.