Dear Martine,
I am writing these few words to you from Sarajevo where I am at the moment thanks to you.
You were in fact director of Le Poche when I telephoned you one Sunday morning to tell you that we could not remain inert while the siege of Sarajevo and the Serb abuses in Bosnia developed. You immediately suggested that I organize an evening of mobilization which led to the creation of a Sarajevo Committee in Geneva.
You were director of Le Poche when you offered me asylum to go on a hunger strike to protest against the negligence of the municipal administration at the time.
You were director of Le Poche when Tariq Ramadan managed to obtain censorship of a play by Voltaire. You welcomed us to fight religious totalitarianism with us.
I am convinced that, if you were still director of Le Poche, we would be together to denounce the supremacist and racist policies which are giving the results that we know in Palestine and to fight against fascism which is now conquering everywhere.
I could extend the list of your commitments and make you a passion for lost causes. It’s more simple and complex than that.
For you, theater was not separated from social and political life. He was neither the copy nor the reflection but the cast shadow and the invented image, he was not the echo but the sounding board. All the theatrical work was based on the search for a fragile imbalance between reality and utopia. In this you inherited an open Marxism, very freely interpreted and lived freely, a joyful Brechtism which refused to make theater purely entertainment.
I do not want to reduce your work to its political dimension here, but I can only note the growing gap between the critical positions that we have shared and the current rules of the cultural market, of the quantified administration of the theater, of the ridiculous calculations of the rate of influence of theatrical institutions, of the boarding of the theater by the financial logics which dominate the world today. Until the end you will remain frightened by the evolution of culture and politics.
Since I met you in 1975 at the Théâtre de Carouge which François Rochaix then directed, our artistic companionship and our friendship have never ceased. I could tell many adventures we had together over fifty years, talk about everything the creation of the Châtelard in Ferney-Voltaire owes to you, talk about the shows we produced together, talk about the actress I had the pleasure of direct, multiply anecdotes of all kinds, but that would be to ignore everything you have done in other circles, other situations, with other friends and to which I have not had access. It was your life, you lived it fully, sometimes painfully, but most often in the joy of reflection, discussion, exchange, sharing, imagination. In any case, it was in this way that I knew you.
When I saw you recently at the Gilly hospital, you retained the same look of astonished and greedy child – we also shared the taste for macaroons and chocolate. You had your amused and tender little smile that gave everything the right measure.
I don’t know where you are now, or even if you are anywhere, but I am sure that, one way or another, you will receive these few words from your friend.
I kiss you hard.
Hervé
* Hervé Loichemol is a director, former director of the Comédie de Genève.
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