The eternal Rita Mitsouko has always charted her path with singular creativity and originality. This atom of effervescence with legendary verve, dance steps and bun returns to the stage at Plan-Les-Ouates, accompanied on the piano by Grégoire Hetzel, with the work of the phenomenal nonagenarian poet, Alice Mendelson: “The eroticism of living”. A performance of poetry that is both sensual and rebellious, in his image.
A heady tête-à-tête with the woman who always sang as if she were going to die tomorrow.
In this show, “The Eroticism of Living”, you perform the poems of Alice Mendelson, 97 years old. How did you meet this artist, unknown to the public?
He is a storyteller – a person who comes to tell stories to people – Pascal Quéré who was the trainer of this poet, ex-French teacher. When she retired, this old lady decided to become a storyteller herself. She had been a friend of my father whom I did not know. Pascal spoke to me about his poems singing the passion for life, love, people, colors, moments, words that are simple, exciting and moving at the same time. And I thought of Alice after the COVID episode, when La Huchette, a small theater in Paris, gave me carte blanche to help them maintain their activity. I asked Mauro, singer, actor, director, to act as an eye and ear. He loved the idea. We made a selection of poems then he suggested adding music and suggested Grégoire Hetzel, pianist, film score composer.
What brings you closer to Alice Mendelson?
I’m not good at explaining texts. It’s not my field but I found his creations beautiful and intense. More than erotic poetry, these are love poems, written from 1947 to 2021. They span 50 years of passion about human relationships and the intensity of life. She almost published a book. But the publisher had offered to publish with a focus on her sensual poetry, which displeased Alice who did not wish to be classified as an erotic writer.
This is a problem that you encountered when you were younger, having participated in erotic cinema…
As a teenager, like Judith Godrèche, I was the victim of a person who took advantage of my naivety and my youth. When I had a bit of notoriety with Rita Mitsouko, I preferred to talk about it straight away in order to come to terms with it as quickly as possible. It was thanks to the #MeToo movement that I was able to realize that I had been under the terrible influence of an older man. I even wrote songs about it, including “C’est comme ça” which talks about this taboo. Before I didn’t talk about it, it was a shame and a pain. I suffered from traumatic memory about this. But I freed myself from it.
How did Alice react to your performance?
She came to La Huchette in 2021 and she was delighted. She found that I conveyed her poems very well and that Grégoire’s music was perfect with a simple staging. She came back a second time, and she considers it an ode, a gift of life to see her writings come to life.
The themes of sensuality were thought of in the 1940s. How modern are Alice’s poems?
Humans don’t change that much, unlike technology. These poems still speak to us as much as ever. There are some that evolve less easily like the one on sublimated hairs in one of his writings. He talks about the virile side of the hairy chest which she expresses wonderfully. Today, there is an apology for hairless anatomy. It no longer suits! It also reminds me of Boris Vian’s song – Make me hurt Johnny! – (Laughs) “But he was as stocky as anything…”. It’s funny this generational dissonance when it comes to fashion. These change and evolve. There is also a text where she says that she feels her man like a Centaur above her. They are different visions. I had difficulty pronouncing with one term in particular – impaler – “You who impale me”…I finally managed to come to terms with it.
Do you have any other projects at the moment?
No at the moment I’m fallow (Laughs)! But I still have around twenty dates with the show that we have already performed in Auxerre, Fontainebleau and even Capri in the summer of 2022, in Italian to a translation by the poet Igor Esposito!
