“The writing of Jean-Luc Lagarce is an amusement park for my nostalgia”

The actor plays Louis in “Just the end of the world” and adapts the diary of the playwright who died thirty years ago in the dazzling alone-on-stage “Nothing ever happened to me”, both at the Atelier . He tells us about it.

I am Lagarcian

“I was 8 years old in 1995, when the most classic of our contemporary playwrights, Jean-Luc Lagarce, died at the age of 38. Later, a professor at the Saint-Étienne Comédie school decreed that I was “Lagarcian”. I read it. And I loved his writing, his repetitions, his detours. Lagarce does not erase his blunders. He lets his characters correct themselves, as we do in life; his language improves as they speak it. Nourished by disappearance, time, family, it speaks to me: a real amusement park for my nostalgia.

I therefore immediately accept Johanny Bert’s proposal to play this Louis who returns after twelve years of absence to announce to his family that he is going to die of AIDS, like Lagarce. And doesn’t say anything. I had forgotten that he spoke so little… But Lagarce wrote in his diary everything that his double should have said in Just the end of the world. I dreamed of adapting it into a one-off. I will play it alternately. »

Immersed in the intimate

“I love wandering through the diaries of authors and artists who are dear to me, Guibert, Barthes, Birkin. They reveal themselves there and lie, illuminating their works. A goldsmith of irony, Lagarce is crassly malicious in his own. To keep unhappiness, loneliness, the absence of love at bay. He describes the cruelties of the provinces and the carefree Paris of the 1980s: dazzling cultural life, festive sexuality, which my generation did not know.

In two weeks, I reduced 1,000 pages into three themes: illness, sex, solitude. At 17, I also started a journal. I stopped my litany of drama and lousy personal life at my first success. I’m trying to get back into it. »

Liked by the troop

“After two hundred and sixty-two performances ofOne gala evening, alone on stage, finding partners feels good. I love it relation exclusive with the public, but the rhythm it imposes, like the implacable clockwork ofA straw hat from Italy, from Labiche, in 2023, reached out to me. I had to loosen the bolts.

I love being directed, being told if they understand what I’m saying. Playing a silent person like Louis, internalizing his unsaid things, hearing, looking in a way that pushes you to respond, is almost a work of cinema; and solidarity with the partner. You have to listen to everything without cheating, move for the sake of moving. Fortunately, the play is framed by Louis’ monologues. Silence drives you crazy. »

2021One gala evening, second brilliant alone-on-stage.
2018 Magnificent Harlequin in The Game of Love and Chance, by Marivaux, ridden by Catherine Hiegel.
2015 If something happens…, first success, first solo-on-stage, written with Juliette Chaigneau and Mélanie Le Moine.

Just the end of the world, by Jean-Luc Lagarce, directed by Johanny Bert, at the Théâtre de l’Atelier, Paris 18th. Then from March 25 to 27 in Cébazat, March 29 in Blois, from March 1^is to April 5 in Lyon 4^eApril 8 and 9 in Pau, April 11 in Périgueux.

Nothing ever happened to me, alone-on-stage based on the diary of Jean-Luc Lagarce (ed. Les Solitaires intempestifs), adaptation Vincent Dedienne, directed by J. Bert. From January 23 at the Théâtre de l’Atelier. Then from March 25 to 27 in Cébazat, March 29 in Blois…