Theater: François Gremaud reveals his creative process

Comedy of Geneva

To know or not to know where we are going, that is the question

As part of a focus on Swiss dramaturgy, François Gremaud reveals his creative process at the Comédie. We follow in his footsteps.

Published today at 6:39 p.m.

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In brief:
  • François Gremaud explores his art with a poetic and offbeat approach.
  • This unique show brings together diverse inspirations and personalities on stage.
  • The theater becomes a place of experimentation and personal reflection.
  • Gremaud invites spectators on an unpredictable philosophical journey.

It is perhaps one of the longest theatrical mise en abyme to be openly presented as such. Arriving at the height of a career as an author, director and performer who has not said his last word, François Gremaud he dissects his poetic art as he speaks it live, lasting an hour and forty-five minutes. Everything he says in the present tense, facing the public, was written in the past, alone in front of the blank page, with a view to this future moment of speech. “Going without knowing where – Attempt to describe operating mode” thus knows throughout where he is going, while not entirely knowing it. Like you, like me, like life itself.

The theatrical device allows François Gremaud to invite onto the stage all the objects, all the beings, dead or alive, that his digression encounters.

You think you are going to a room of the Comedywhich inserts this creation of 2021 in the «Focus Heimweh» which it devotes to dramaturgies born on Swiss territory. No way. From the low foyer of the great ship, you are taken elsewhere. At the end of a corridor, a stairwell leads you to another corridor, which opens onto an empty rehearsal studio, where a François Gremaud dressed in green awaits you, with a “surprised” and “joyful” smile. “idiot” baring his teeth. The qualifiers are his, he will explain them to you.

In nearly 250 numbered sentences, or more than 15,000 words counted in total, the cantor of mental frolic advances according to the associations of ideas that he welcomes pell-mell, democratically, piling up in the void, here the best , there the least good – artistic alchemy will take care of ennobling them. Every small piece will be recovered, promises the speaker, like that “um” once entered on the keyboard in the name of the orality to come, and which the performance puts before your eyes in song. “Lead is already gold, it’s the look that changes.”

Feigned or sincere, François Gremaud's humility propels him to the firmament of performative gloss.

The same goes for the dozens of personalities summoned to the small stage of 3e floor. A Deleuze meets a Trump, a Heraclitus rubs shoulders with the performer’s darling, Michaël. While François Gremaud digresses, stumbles, gets lost, retraces his steps or takes a shortcut, he takes care to present to the public, without discrimination, a crowd of diverse inspirations, to whom the magic of theater allows invisibility. He is also not afraid to cite himself and his current production: after all, he is responding to an invitation from the Manufacture to produce a show “about his work”.

So, certainly, in addition to a bit of histrionics and narcissism, there is a trick: the demonstration takes a carefully paved path, notwithstanding the philosophical wandering that it advocates. The speaker takes responsibility for the strings he pulls, anticipating potential criticisms one by one. The whole thing, in his opinion, consists of “dealing with chaos”, of making “arrangements come into being”. Happy with his journey, François Gremaud concludes with a “yay”.

As for your devoted person, all that remains is for him to follow in the footsteps of the pilgrim, of so many others before him, of so many to follow, on the path which winds in an eternal semi-fog. And, since these lines put an end to his journalistic journey, to salute you very lowly, at the level of his signature. Come on, yay.

“Go without knowing where”until November 1 at the Comédie, www.comedie.ch

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Katia Berger has been a journalist in the cultural section since 2012. She covers news in the performing arts, particularly through theater or dance reviews, but also sometimes deals with photography, visual arts or literature.More info

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