“Portrait of the artist after his death”: missing from Argentina, the counter-investigation

First, the title. Enigmatic, intriguing. Portrait of the artist after his death. Alone on stage, in a set under construction, a sort of simple studio, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo watches the technicians busying themselves. Above him, a screen displaying the map of Palermo, one of the most fashionable districts of the Argentine capital. On a board hanging on a partition, we can read: Argentina, 1978.

One day, Marcial receives a letter from the Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos humanos, avenida Sarmiento 329, Buenos Aires, Argentina. His first name is misspelled, Marzial, a z in place of the c. But the address is good. The letter mentions the reassignment of an apartment located at Avenida Luis Maria Campero 726, in Buenos Aires, which Marcial would have inherited from an uncle, a certain Jorge Luis Di Fonzo. Marcial has never heard of such an uncle.

Several spatio-temporal faults

With Davide Carnevali, the author of the play, they decide to go to Buenos Aires to try to understand the affair. For Marcial, Argentinian by birth, French by adoption, it is a return to his native country in strange conditions. As for Davide Carnevali, he fell ill as soon as he arrived and will not leave the rather gloomy apartment that they rented on Airbnb. Marcial, alone on stage, tells us this story. We are all ears.

The story will revolve around an Argentinian, a certain Luca Misiti, composer, pianist, who disappeared without a trace on June 25, 1978, the day of the World Cup final which Argentina won against the Netherlands. Down. Where we discover with Marcial that Misiti was the last occupant of Uncle Di Fonzo’s apartment.

The apartment remained as it was: old radio placed on the kitchen worktop, armchair, coffee table and its crystal ashtray, carpet. Only the piano, whose location we can guess, is no longer there. Well, not there all the time. Misiti’s story will echo that of Schmidt, without the letter d (for which the Argentinian musician had found the scores), a German Jewish pianist who also went missing while preparing to flee Vichy France.

The dizzying story to which Marcial Di Fonzo Bo invites us unfolds on several spatio-temporal scales, in a superposition where past and present intersect without the viewer ever losing the Ariadne’s thread of this intrigue. This story even takes a detour here through the battle of Algiers, the methods used by some French officers having inspired their Argentine “counterparts”.

In Misiti’s apartment, no trace of Marcial’s old uncle. It’s as if no one had lived there since June 25, 1978. Marcial imagines the scene. And us with it. An old red Ford with smoked windows. A cop in plain clothes, face hidden by dark glasses. Misiti’s cries of distress merge with the cries of joy of the Argentine supporters. The Ford sets off, heading towards Esma, the Naval Mechanics School, which was a torture center. This is where the planes took off to throw the bodies of the prisoners over the ocean.

Between reality and fiction

All the clues agree to enrich the story. And yet, where is the truth in this story? Any resemblance to existing characters is intended, assumed and claimed. We are both disturbed by this story where fiction and reality continue to pass the buck. Was there ever a Misiti or a Di Fonzo living on Avenida Luis Maria Campero, 726, Buenos Aires. The spectator gets involved in the game.

Portrait of the artist after his death is a counter-investigation and a chase against oblivion, that which erases History from our memories. How many Misiti or Schmidt have fallen into the limbo of History? The spectators are taken as witnesses. Better still, they are totally immersed in what is happening before their eyes. The piano seems to be the only witness to the kidnapping scene. The notes flow from the instrument without anyone playing it.

The ghosts of the missing haunt this apartment. A show apartment suddenly transformed into a museum and which the spectators, invited to come on set, will then visit. In 2023, Esma became the Museum of the Memory of Argentina.

Davide Carnevali’s text is created to be adapted to all countries depending on the actors who interpret it. The sudden theater, here, takes on its full meaning: it does not speak in the name of a particular person but of all those who passed through the hands of the dictatorship, so that they did not die for nothing.

Portrait of the artist after his death (France 41-Argentina 78)until November 27, at the Théâtre de la Bastille, Paris, 11^e. Rens. : theatre-bastille.com Tour: January 15 and 16, 2025 at the CDN in Montluçon; from February 20 to 22, 2025 at the Théâtre de Liège, Belgium, and from April 26 to May 7, 2025 at the Quai-CDN in Angers. The text is published in Solitaires intempés.