Italian actress and director Daria Deflorian presents her adaptation of the novel by Han Kang, 2024 Nobel Prize winner for literature, “La Vegetariana”. Well known to the audience of the Autumn Festival, to which she has been regularly invited since 2015, for the duo she formed with Antonio Tagliarini, Daria Deflorian continues alone today her theatrical reflection on existential breaches. In a refined staging – some say “poor” – Daria Deflorian contracts in the time of the performance the slow and strange disappearance of Yŏnghye. Following a dream, Yŏnghye decided not to eat meat anymore. A minimal act of resistance, which leads to its share of anger, violence and renunciation. On stage, it is her loved ones, her husband, her brother-in-law and her sister, who tell her story.
Understanding the strangeness
Published in 2007 in Korea, it took ten years before La Végétarienne was translated and achieved the international success that we know of. Daria Deflorian read it for the first time when she was working on a show around Red Desert by Antonioni, a work itself inhabited by a character of a woman foreign to the world. “ The Vegetarian is a magical book. The first time I read it I had very strong impressions, especially from the first and second parts. I was drawn to the transformation of this woman and the fact that Art wanted to try to take it away. The third made me cry. It’s more difficult, it has something to do with mental discomfort. When I reread it I understood that this very radical choice on the part of Han Kang was essential to understand the difficulty of this transformation. »
By adapting this novel, Daria Deflorian questioned the figure of Yŏnghye and the fascination that this character aroused, both for those around her in fiction, and for the public, in reality. “ She doesn’t do anything extraordinary, she simply takes shelter from another life. We all have it, this other life, but we silence it. She doesn’t understand what’s happening to her, it’s not a passage that she is guided by. She is guided. »
Bringing the inner imagination to life
To redouble the strangeness of the story and the character, Daria Deflorian chose a simple scenography, a sort of behind-closed-doors which materializes in its own way all the themes that irrigate the novel: dreamlike, the tearing away from the earth, plant becoming and confinement. “It was very important to find the space for the apartment. I imagined him on the 18th floor of a recently constructed building. From this apartment, we couldn’t see a tree, we were far from the earth. At the beginning of the novel, it has been a year since they moved in. It was the idea of transplanting, of changing a potted plant. This house does not allow communication, it is a house where only ghosts can move around with comfort. »
This space responds in its own way to the work of Han Kang, and to his way of writing interiority. “ From reality, Han Kang takes us into a dreamlike dimension. It is an imagination of interiority. This touched me a lot because in my work I have always sought to connect the figures on stage with their thoughts, with what is happening inside them and not just the acts and actions. . »
News
- The Vegetarian – based on the novel by Han Kang, directed by Daria Deflorian from November 8 – 16, 2024 at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe – Ateliers Berthier. The piece will then tour France and Italy; from November 20 to 22 at the Olympia Theater, national drama center in Tours, from November 27 to 29 at the Triennale Milano (Italy), from January 21 to 24 at the Théâtre Garonne, European stage in Toulouse, from January 28 to February 2 at the Teatro Astra , TPE in Turin (Italy) February 5 and 6 at the Charles Dullin Theater in Chambéry and from February 10 to 12 at the Théâtre la Vignette of Montpellier.
Sound clips
- Tiphaine Raffier in De vive(s) voix on RFI in April 2023
- Han Kang interviewed by Christian Lund on May 2019 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark.
- Excerpt from the play “La Vegetariana”, directed by Daria Deflorian
- The ending song: “Lointaine” by Mansfield TYA from the album Alone after 23 seconds
