Oratorio Nomade will be given at Au Fil du Tarn, from December 3 to 9. Director Bruno Geslin follows in the footsteps of filmmaker Werner Herzog and his walking diary On the Path of Ice. We met him.
How did you encounter Herzog’s work?
I discovered the text, On the Path of Ice, around twenty years ago. Over the course of my life, authors and works have gained importance in several different ways. This book is one of the works that helps us get through adversity. However, I didn't think I would be able to share this story, one day, in the form of a piece. The relationship with the text is very strange sometimes. You walk with him for several years and suddenly you feel the immediate need to share him. I was looking for the angle to do it because it's not a theater text. The entry was to use Herzog's methodology, to immerse a body in adversity.
Is this why you walked 900 km?
In the company of the actor and the musician, we repeated this journey on foot from Munich to Paris, on the same dates, 50 years later. We left on November 23 and traveled for a month to reach Paris. It's a sort of crossed story even if we only work on Herzog's text while having in mind that the actor who speaks to you is a memory of this journey traveled, that it be done on foot or indoors.
Herzog went to meet Lotte Eisner, did you go to meet Herzog?
Not only that. We prepared for the trip, we immersed ourselves in his cinema, in his writings. But each of us had our own meetings, perhaps with ghosts. Herzog was a starting point. Moreover, along the way to Herzog, we also met this wonderful woman who is Lotte Eisner. An extremely important woman for German cinema. She created a generational bridge with pre-war filmmakers and those of the new cinema, Fassbinder, Herzog and a few others.
Who was Eisner?
The friend of all filmmakers. Jewish, she fled Nazi Germany and joined Langlois, the creator of the Cinémathèque, in Paris. A film historian, she preserved films that Hitler sought to get his hands on, notably “Dictator”. A very incredible life! Full, rich. A great friend and mentor to Herzog, she supported him in his early films, he was self-taught. An almost magical bond between these two beings was created.
Why did he leave to join her on November 23, 1974?
He learns that she risks dying, he refuses that she can leave him, leave this world, he sets out with the certainty that as long as he walks towards her, she will remain alive. This is actually what happened. When he arrives in Paris, not only is she still there, but she will live for another eight years.
“Their bond was unique”
Bruno Geslin
How did the link break?
Almost blind, very tired, weary, she called him asking him to break the spell that was keeping her alive. She asked him for permission to leave. She died ten days later. Their bond was unique, which is also what the show is about. When Herzog hit the road, he wasn't just crossing landscapes, he was facing himself and crossing interior landscapes. He didn't save one life but two: Lotte's and his own. Sometimes, in his story we have a bit of a rewriting of Orpheus who crosses the underworld to bring his friend back to the world of the living.
Why did you feel the need to translate this work in two forms?
The company La Grande Mêlée is based in Boiezon, a village of 400 inhabitants between Castres and Mazamet, in a former textile factory, a place of residence and creation both for us but also for other artists. We ensure that the work of the company is seen in the village and in the community of communes. It is an integral part of the project, the idea not being to imagine a relationship between ourselves. We regularly create public meetings, sometimes as part of a festival like two years ago with Imaginary Tourism. This link is essential. I wanted this show to be performed in non-dedicated venues. I had the impression that the subject was for everyone. In Boiezon, we have a dual culture: worker and Saint-Jacques with the pilgrimage. These two distant cultures end up creating the identity of the village. The real subject is the walk and the initiatory journey or how a man manages to build or rebuild himself by relieving himself of somewhat cumbersome and emotional things. It’s a transition to the adult world.
Hence your creation as part of the Au Fil du Tarn tour…
Yes, even if it is carried by the National Scene. This idea corresponded to the subject of making a nomadic show with a totally different viewer experience. When we work on large sets something of the order of the interior landscape is born. We filmed and photographed during the trip so we are led to be in a contemplative state, since the landscapes unfold on stage.
How is the nomadic version going?
We are bi-frontal, as close as possible to the actor. The viewer becomes a landscape. Between the two formats, the show is almost the same. L'Oratorio Nomade is more refined than Le Chemin des Glaces. We are almost to the bone, we are facing this actor, facing the multiple adversities he goes through.
How do you account for this long walk on stage?
The actor, as in a sequence shot, is always moving. We witness his transformation.
Did you take Herzog's text literally?
We only work on the text, then a stage adaptation is made. The work is not in its entirety, we have carried out a dramaturgical writing so that the poem can unfold. Poem because it is a question, through successive disturbances, of an alteration in the relationship of reality as it progresses. The description of the disruption of the senses is the most interesting for me.
Did you escape from Herzog's head during your journey?
It's quite disturbing. We had the same weather conditions for almost the entire trip. We were even stopped twice by the police, like him, and in the same places. Trouble has set in. We crossed both real landscapes and a story. We felt a bit like actors in Herzog's films. This connection with events that were beyond us was crazy. Such a similarity of landscapes, of conditions, of inner movements like discouragement, the desire to give up, the boredom that grips you, the ecstasy… all this was so well described by Herzog, with such accuracy that it created a sort of fraternal correspondence.
Did you find what you were looking for?
I thought the walk would be very analytical but no. The moment we stopped it, the body put to rest, we found ourselves overwhelmed by something that was working unconsciously. I don't know if I met myself but I got rid of things that were bothering me.
– Tuesday December 3, 8 p.m., Le Foulon, Graulhet
– Wednesday December 4, 8:30 p.m., Le Colombier, Les Cabannes
– Friday December 6, 8:30 p.m., Le Balcon, Gaillac
– Saturday December 7, 8:30 p.m., Village hall, Monestiés
– Sunday December 8, 5 p.m., Omnisports hall, Salvagnac
– Monday December 9, 8:30 p.m., Le Rond-Point, Labruguière.
8/10 €.
