At the Théâtre Saint-Gervais in Geneva until November 10, director Adrien Barazzone is putting on an excellent theatrical trial. In “Any Intention to Harm”, a novelist and a lawyer who recognized himself in a character in the book face each other. Does literature have all the rights?
He is very angry, Maître Alexandre Badadone. He recognized himself in a passage from the latest novel by the author Pauline Jaubert, “Walking without fearing the ravine”. Bel, a rather boastful, misogynistic and sanguine male character, a lawyer by trade, sits in his vacation home in Tuscany and admits to his interlocutor a concern for fertility: it’s all him!
And since the publication of the work in bookstores, it has been a disaster. His office loses clients, his daughter no longer speaks to him, his relationship is adrift. Master Alexandre Badadone therefore demands compensation. We are in court and between the artist and the lawyer, there is war.
Does literature have all the rights?
“Any intention to harm” is a play in the form of a trial, a judicial spectacle. With judge in formal robes, angry lawyer, shaken witnesses, indignant complainant and artist in the dock. We are at the theater. We might as well be at number 17e chamber of the Paris Court, known as the press chamber. Paris? This is where Pauline Jaubert lives.
Everything here is fiction. But this story has a powerful scent of reality. Since the invention of autofiction, French-speaking literature has been full of lawsuits for invasion of privacy or slander: daughter against parent, ex-friend against ex-friend, former spouses or lovers or celebrity against writer. So, who knows if tomorrow, a lawyer or a writer will not recognize themselves in the theatrical guise of Pauline Jaubert and Alexandre Badadone and take legal action against “Any intention to harm”, co-written by the director Adrien Barazzone with his performers (the excellent Alain Borek, Marion Chabloz, Mélanie Foulon and David Gobet) and his accomplice Barbara Schlittler.
>> Listen to the column dedicated to the show in Vertigo on November 5:
A legal spectacle between comedy and drama
We laugh, a lot, in this trial. The rhythm is not that of justice, very procedural, but that of comedy, even farce. With interpreters who change characters in the middle of court, the presence of tasty accents and above all suspense: what will Madam Judge decide? Here she is who rebuts Master Badadone when he loses his nerve and sends Pauline Jaubert’s husband, an inconsistent witness, back to his home.
Is a novel just pure fiction, loaded with all possible rights of artistic expression? Does an author have a certain responsibility towards the people who surround her and nourish her prose? In Saint-Gervais, after leaving the room, the debate continues in the home. In the end, the cause is heard: Adrien Barazzone won his production hands down.
Thierry Sartoretti/sf
“Any intention to harm” by Adrien Barazzone, Théâtre de Saint-Gervais, Geneva, from October 31 to November 10; La Grange – UNIL, Lausanne, November 20, 21 and 23, 2024.
