A great actor can work miracles. By his sole propensity to let himself be possessed by a text, a situation, a character, he has the power to take you wherever he wants. Benjamin Voisin has the keys to this art. In Avignon then at the Petit Saint-Martin in Paris, the moment he entered the stage, the silence was total. For almost an hour and a half, not a single cough.
It will necessarily be the same at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre from January 8 for its revival of Guerre, adapted from the posthumous book by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (real name Destouches). Immersed in horror, he is sometimes charming, provocative, desperate. He sniffs, grabs his crotch, spits on the ground, puts you in a trench, a hospital, a bar, a brothel. But it inevitably takes you out of yourself.
The need to feel “humanity then silence”
And when the show is over, it instantly becomes simple and direct again, as it was before the tumult. In Sarlat, where last November he made a quick trip to present Play with fire – a film which comes out on January 22 and for which Vincent Lindon was awarded the Volpi Cup for best actor in Venice – it was on the terrace of a restaurant located in a pedestrian street that he arranged to meet us YOU.
Chestnut pants, white turtleneck, hair swept back, he does not yet know that a few hours later, the festival will distinguish him from the prize for male interpretation for the role of this young man self-conscious about not equalizing the academic success of his brother and who falls into an identity group.
Barely seated, Benjamin Voisin is surprised that we did not come “say hello” as he says, when we discovered Guerre during last year’s performances at the Petit Saint-Martin. When we tell him that we didn’t dare, he laughs: we would have had to do it to see it “full of life”. “Four hours ago, I am barely alive. The first ten minutes are extremely tiring and I don’t want to play them. But during the performance, I love this show so much, that inside I find pleasure. »
Carried away by passion, he explains how he gets in shape: “Actually, I come on stage behind the set as soon as the first person in the audience sits down. It charges me with life and, as with musicians, it gives me the buzz of the room. Because the audience helps me a lot in playing: I need these little noises that add to each other, to feel the humanity and then the silence. And now I’m ready to play. »
During installation it performs movements, “never the same, to lose intelligence and find the animality necessary in the first ten minutes. I break into a sweat, I’m all emotional, there are no more thoughts, the brain is very far behind and I find it again after fifteen minutes of the show. »
The search for the monologue
But why is this born actor, who François Ozon, Rupert Everett, André Téchiné or Mélanie Laurent fighting for, he who received the César for best male hopeful in 2022 for Lost illusionswill he thus put himself in danger in a single hyper-physical scene adapted from a controversial author?
“With my grandfather, I had seen Sami Frey in First love by Samuel Beckett. He played it for ten or fifteen years. Since then, I have always looked for a monologue for the theater that I could alternate with cinema. When the director Benoît Lavigne knew that he was going to have the rights to Guerrehe contacted me. Gallimard had the intelligence to want an actor the age of the hero. I had an audition, I probably played too much but I had to show the different registers that I could give. At the end he said to me: “that suits me”. It’s crazy how such a violent, acerbic but also sentimental text can fill me with poetry at times. The ending inevitably touches me, I say to myself: damn, he knows how to finish a play! »
His relationship to the theater, to the texts, we know it or, if necessary, we guess it. But he who readily declares his admiration for the author Céline, what does he think of the man? “It’s horrible to tell you that a writer you love so much is a piece of shit! I have to forget the man in order to read him. »
A few days away from resuming the marathon performances of Guerre who has already received the Laurent-Terzieff prize for best show presented in a private theater, this almost thirty-year-old, winner of the Lumière prize for best revelation for Summer 85requires crazy training. “Since the beginning of October, I have been doing it once a day during my sport. As soon as I stumble on a passage, I work on it.” For fear of memory lapse? “I know that this is not the time to quote Gérard Depardieu, but he told me: “The closer you are to the blackout, the truer you are”. »
“Less fear, less need to exist”
The actor knows how to divide life and his job so perfectly that on this terrace where we are sipping a beer, he also takes the time to ask the waitress how she is. And then he shakes the hand of the taxi driver who took him from Brive airport the day before. The man recognizes him and says: “ This boy is really good. » Same cordiality for a septuagenarian from Le Havre who comes to interrupt our interview a third time: “Are you Benjamin or his double?” » “Both, ma’am!” “.
Simultaneously with the resumption of GuerreBenjamin Voisin will ensure the promotion of Play with fire, where he plays alongside his friend Stefan Crépon and Vincent Lindon. “It went very well with Vincent because he appreciated the fact that I was not on social networks, that I was doing theater and that I was involved in quite demanding films. »
And why not a tour with Guerre ? “For the moment, even if there is a demand for the province, I cannot envisage a long period of traveling the country with this text. That’s a lot of energy and if you send me from town to town by myself, I could end up getting really bad. In a perfect world I would like someone to call me and say: “Didn’t we tell you? Tuesday you perform the play. ”That would be great! But there, knowing that I am in the same place every day, with the sounds of war that I hear even in my sleep and these ten kilos that I lose between the first and the last date, it is not possible, “ he confides. “In any case, my diary is closed until March 2027 with, among other things, nine months of filming for the series Lent. »
Definitely very busy, Benjamin Voisin is full of life and intensity, as in Guerre. “I’m still going to look for it, this energy. Today I need four hours of preparation to bring out the enthusiasm I had at 18 years old. As an actor, I’m much more stable than I was a year ago. I have less fear, less need to exist, less desire to compare myself to others, I don’t need to be called to be reassured, I am much more peaceful. The great producer Jean-Louis Livi once told me: “I have never seen a happy actor. ” I replied, “I’ll take care of that. ” He concluded: “I believe you can, Ben. ” »
“War”, 1 hour 25 minutes, from January 8 to March 2 at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre in Paris
Bio express
> Born in 1996 in Paris.
> He made his cinema debut in 2017 in the film “Bonne pomme”, by Florence Quentin, alongside Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu.
> In 2018, he participated in the feature film “The Happy Prince”, by Rupert Everett.
> His notoriety exploded in 2020 with the drama “Été 85”, by François Ozon.
> In 2022 he won the César for Most Promising Actor for his role in the film “Lost Illusions” by Xavier Giannoli.
