To rewrite and stage the comedy of Pagnol — presented in a first version in a prison environment —, Joel Pommerat appeals to the imagination of the performers and offers a contemporary adaptation of the play Marius at MC93 as part of the Autumn Festival 2024.
This show explores the theme of the escape. Some of the actors discovered theater at the central house in Arles. Marius offers a unique opportunity to discover a little-known but crucial dimension of the work of Joel Pommerat.
Résumé : In Marseille, Marius works in his father’s bakery, where he dreams of traveling and faces a dilemma: take off or stay with those he loves.
Like a story, the show confronts us with essential questions: how to succeed in life? Is love possible? Is it reasonable to give in to the desire to escape? “Adapt, rewrite and don’t betray.” » said Joel Pommerat.
Since 2014, he has led workshops at the Maison Centrale in Arles, with long-term prisoners, to whom he offers to adapt Marius (according to Marcel Pagnol) in collaboration with Caroline Guiela Nguyen et Guillaume Lambert.
Joel Pommerat discusses its creation :
“The world of detention was unknown to me, as it was to many people…
Initially, most of the Arles inmates had no experience of theater, either as actors or spectators. It was interesting to work from this absence of codes and references specific to the world of theater. In comparison with professional actors, the research work on stage is based on a truly different relationship to being truly and completely in the present in fiction.
The specificity of the prison here is the place that the space of play and imagination takes in a context where everything else is regulated by security imperatives. The prison is also really a place where a sort of dramaturgy very tightly organizes the relationships, positions, and views on different individuals. It establishes divisions, physical and symbolic, between people. Theater disturbs this evidence of what distinguishes us from each other, of what defines us. The creative work that we tried to do shakes up the ways of perceiving this prison reality: the distribution of roles and identities…
I had to question myself about what I was launching with them to explore human and social questions, in the very place where these lives are partly at a standstill. I witnessed an intensity of emotion that the game produced and I saw before my eyes a quality of artistic work that could blossom. A very concrete relationship to fiction. At the same time, I couldn’t act as if I wasn’t aware that it was from the aridity of the prison that the stage took on this value for these actors….
I have great clarity about the limits of theater and I do not believe that it can change the world. But I chose it as the only space where I escape from what is presented as the truth or the obvious. The only true foray into reality and how it is seen and understood. To experience too. I believe that we had something close in this connection, theater as the only credible option to come and say your word in the world. »
Comments collected by Hugues Le TanneurMay 2024.
►►► Distribution
· A theatrical creation of Joel Pommerat
· Freely inspired by the piece Marius of Marcel Pagnol
· In collaboration with Caroline Guiela Nguyen et Jean Ruimi
· With Damien Baudry (the palace), Elise Douyère (Fanny), Michael Galera (Marius), Ange Melenyk (Escartefigue), Redwane Rajel (Piquoiseau), Jean Ruimi (César), Bernard Traversa (Panisse), Ludovic Velon (the customs officer)
· Scenography and lighting Eric Soyer
· Assistant to the direction Lucia Trotta, Guillaume Lambert
· Technical management Emmanuel Abate, Thaïs Morel
· Costumes Isabelle Deffin
· Sound creation Philippe Perrin, François Leymarie
Assistant reinforcement David Charier
· Sound management Philippe Perrin, Fany Schweitzer
· Lighting management Jean-Pierre Michel
· Stage management Ludovic Velon
· Décor Thomas Ramon – Artom
· Accessories Frédérique Bertrand
The MC93 – Maison de la culture de Seine-Saint-Denis and the Festival d’Automne 2024 present this show in co-production.
