“Bring air and fly away”? This is the intriguing proposition of actor Xavier Guelfi, going against the performative and cynical injunctions of our model of society. On stage until June 9, 2025 at La Scala in Paris, he agreed to answer our… eco-anxious questions with optimism!
How not to be stunned by the gloom of the world, its morbid news and its lack of horizon? While we live in an era of massive environmental destruction and private monopolies, wars, democratic backsliding, fake news, growing inequalities… It is an understatement to say that moments of breathing and beauty are more essential than ever for us to hold on. A ready-made mission for Art!
In his only stage, for more than an hour suspended, Xavier interprets with poetry and humor several characters written with the help of Thomas VDB and François Rollin. Its main protagonist, for example, asks himself the right questions, but not the simplest ones: Can we be judge and party to our own errors? Are humans good or bad? Does he have a chance of saving himself and the rest of life? And above all, how to find your way, even happiness, in this incessant noise…?
To the hubbub of our time and ecological issues, he will end up responding by a renewal of hope, naive and slight, but ultimately vital and communicative. Who said that dreaming of better was a defect? This wind of optimism, at a time when everything is pushing us to give up, made us want to know more about the man behind the costume. Invigorating interview.
Interview: getting some fresh air with Xavier Guelfi
Mr Globalization: Hello Xavier. First of all,… who is Xavier Guelfi?
Xavier Guelfi : Good morning ! Readers, Readers! Who is Xavier Guelfi… it’s a fairly broad question, which I ask myself less and less I believe it is vain to define oneself precisely and in an immutable way… what words on paper are.
“I am today: a being born in the 90s, having experienced very intimately the advent of portable screens which immersed me in the twists and turns of images and influences from all horizons…”
So I will be careful and respond in the fairly standard way that I follow today: a person born in the 90s, having experienced the advent of portable screens very intimately, my father being a computer science researcher, I was bound in my family cocoon, almost in advance compared to my classmates, to the digital innovations and the rise of the Internet which marked my adolescence. And immersed me in the twists and turns of images and influences from all horizons.
Today, I am, “professionally speaking”, an actor who also writes from time to time and directs. I have a fairly standard background from major schools, then experience in public theater as well as on certain film sets. And recently, I started creating this one on stage: “Bring air and fly away”.
Mr M: In your show, you take on the challenge with great humor and optimism of understanding our humanity and providing it with the keys to happiness. Two impossible equations to solve, and what's more, in just over an hour! How did this crazy and deliberately excessive desire come to you?
Xavier G. : This desire came to me for different reasons. First of all precisely because it is crazy or at least “absurd”! I have always been particularly fond of characters who seem irrational to us and who therefore allow us to question our “normativity”. Why do we see this as absurd, crazy or fanciful?
“The impossibility of expressing an optimistic thought without appearing naive and off the mark is something that, in my opinion, pulls us further towards the abyss.”
Et Isn't it terrible to say that an attempt to seek optimism at the present time is necessarily seen as “crazy”, “unrealistic”? I found it important to confront ourselves with this observation which can only be discouraging in the long run.
The impossibility of expressing an optimistic thought without appearing naive and beside the point is something that, in my opinion, pulls us further towards the abyss. I think that the beliefs we have influence the reality of what we experience, in a good part anyway.
Suffocating amidst the accumulation of terrible news, atrocious findings, jI felt the need to turn my readings towards words other than those of Aurelien Barreau, Camille Étienne and other “whistleblowers”. Their work is absolutely necessary and essential! And I admire them very much. But I often ended reading some of their writings feeling quite resigned.
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To counterbalance and find balance, I looked for other writings like those of Rutger Bergman with “Humanity an Optimistic History” and “Realistic Utopia” which offered a series of examples, knowledge, and research, which left me full of a new faith and therefore a very strong energy to act and change my daily life.
The pragmatic visions, but supported by documented testimonies which attest to the feasibility of change, of active optimism, were for me shots of desire to invest myself. With associations, also acting in my daily life as well as in my Art, it was much stronger than when my literary, informative, scientific, artistic nourishment was limited to works which mainly and often only showed the problems. Which, I find, can lead us towards inertia, a form of depression and inaction.
I convinced myself that the root of many of the problems that plague our systems is precisely linked to this lack of optimistic belief. Which can be both realistic.
Mr M: You play several characters in this single on stage: a damaged but energetic uncle, a left-wing little mouse, an extreme right-wing iguana, a capitalist brother,… Where does your voice fit in this uproar? How can you choose your own path and stick to it in this diverse range of paradigms?
“Contradiction is an inherent part of life”
Xavier G. : My voice in this din is the central voice, which investigates, questions and almost never dwells.
How to choose your own path….I am an actor and writer in this show and I hold no truth. I cannot answer this question categorically and I will refrain from doing so, everyone does their job amidst the multitude of voices they hear.
Contradiction is an inherent part of life. It's the thread that we decide to pull through all these knots that counts, mine in the show in any case is the one of the desperate, the lost who finds his salvation, its place in the disproportionate search for solutions at all costs with enthusiasm and joyful strength.
Mr M: You use a metaphor during your story, that of the two penguins that we would have within us: one destructive, the other collaborator. Whoever wins the battle of evolution is the one we feed? How well can we feed the good penguin in a world that encourages us to turn away from it? Are we really alone in nourishing these parts of us?
Xavier G. : I believe that we can nourish it precisely by creating places of expression, whether artistic or otherwise. These expressions are spiritual nourishments which, for the moment are on the margins but, the more we nourish them, the more they spread and I believe allow changes. It's like those birds on the fringes in the clouds, which help guide the others and move the whole group towards another direction. Rather than pointing the finger at these birds as irrational utopians, I believe it is necessary to nourish them to give them the strength to continue to be on the margins and offer us other perspectives on paths.
Fortunately, there is the possibility of working on “our penguin” who is collaborative, creative, attentive, active, searching… through education, through little care day after day…
Obviously there are obstacles to this, visceral inequalities and injustices which hinder the possibility of finding this food that society often does not encourage us to seek and does not offer us. But there are side roads to take, to try to discover and I wanted to modestly offer one with a show.
Mr M: Love would be our salvation. A greeting that some will call silly, childish, utopian, above ground… But you refuse this way that in our time of desacralizing and denigrating beautiful ideas. How did we get to this point of cynicism?
Xavier G. : It is extremely difficult for me to answer these questions because I am neither a historian nor a clairvoyant. But I have the feeling that this stage of cynicism was reached by a natural tendency to receive traumatic and terrorizing events in a tenfold manner. Man has been capable of unimaginable atrocities and he has created systems of society which can be alienating and whose narrative conveyed suggests that without authority or violence there would be total chaos. How can you not be suspicious, cynical and disillusioned?
“We can get out of this if we feed other stories, if we balance our ways of looking at the world and our neighbors… I dare to believe it. »
Not necessarily. We can get out of this if we feed other stories, if we balance our ways of looking at the world and our neighbors… I dare to believe it.
I don't know if shows and works will be enough to achieve this, but we can see that they mobilize much more and transport us more than demonstrations of force and military power in particular.
Mr M: Through humor and poetry, you point out a particular impasse: can the solution to our own crisis come from us? It would be necessary to be judged by an external third party, but the alien is impossible to embody and the carrot cannot speak. Is there a discerning eye that can help us see ourselves as we are?
Xavier G. : Obviously ! There is one! Me in the show, but you have to come see it! I say! Hehe.
All joking aside, there are several! Poets, grandmothers, children!
But rather than wanting to see ourselves as we are, let's try to find what we want to do together. It will be hybrid, contradictory, but without left and right legs we wouldn't walk! Only, I find that there is one today which is ten times bigger than the other and which makes us sway…
Mr M: Let's breathe some fresh air and fly away with one last little disproportionate challenge: in one word, what is humanity? and in another, how to escape from the destructive madness into which we have fallen? You have 2 hours…
Xavier G. : Humanity = the possibilities. How to get out of destructive madness? by reconstructivist madness!
Thanks to Xavier Guelfi for taking the time for this exchange as deep as it is airy!
Find it at La Scala (75010) until June 2025 pour a moment as sweet as it is intelligent, both out of the world and right in it.
– Sharon H.
Cover photo: Xavier Guelfi @Christophe Raynaud de Lage
