World Stuttering Day has been repeated every fall for 27 years. On Friday, October 18, the Lorraine branch of the “Parole bégaiement” association, chaired by Nancy speech therapist Catherine Daubié, will be back in action to remind people how stuttering is not just a joke, a subject of ridicule, a slowdown. She invited the Belgian artist Bertrand de Wolf for the occasion.
The actor will lead a theatrical improvisation workshop in Malzéville before performing in a fluent, funny, sarcastic and didactic piece. In two acts, Bertrand de Wolf will narrate on the stage of the Douëra, the adventures of a stuttering balladeer. “Words – The vicissitudes of a stuttering actor” is the story of a life, his own, but also of all those that the hatched expression has tormented, fragmented, assigned to silence. If we like to laugh about it out of intellectual laziness, stuttering remains a burden to carry throughout our existence in a world where performance, elocution and eloquence are praised to the skies. The substance does not matter as long as the form provides intoxication.
A masked stutterer
Conversely, the stutterer is mocked for his hesitations, for his silences, and his inability to express himself clearly. This weight of others, of codes and conventions, the silent suffering that it causes, Bertrand de Wolf describes it acutely in his panorama of a stutterer confronted from childhood with incomprehension and rejection. First about yourself: “I was a masked stutterer for a long time, as if in denial. While I stuttered very, very strongly,” confides the man who, paradoxically, followed the path of public speaking at a theater school in Louvain-la-Neuve: “When I was younger, I didn’t see myself as a stutterer. It’s very strange. As if I were denying the problem. In fact, by developing strategies to mask my stuttering, I ended up believing that I was not a stutterer. » Except that these tricks to hide oneself from others are expensive: “It represents immeasurable efforts. »
An interior bazaar
In his sketches, Bertrand de Wolf, who for a time studied to be a speech therapist, the equivalent of a speech therapist in Belgium, explains with almost clinical detail what happens inside him while he speaks, these shocks which sometimes shake him: “I share with the public this tragicomedy that is stuttering. Those few seconds when speech is blocked and doesn’t come out. » An internal mess: “There are the muscles of the tongue and the jaw which grumble, which come to show that it is not possible. The vocal cords close. » In his one-on-scene, Bertrand de Wolf shows this conflict between desire and organic resistance. His stuttering eases on stage, but does not disappear. At 57, he now calls himself an “expert in synonyms” and in “the art of remaining silent.”
Open to stutterers over 15 years old upon registration, the workshop that the actor will lead as a preamble to his show will focus on this alternative to speaking. Himself president of the Belgian branch of “Parole bégaiement”, Bertrand de Wolf approaches his subject through gestures. “In the eyes of most people, the stuttering character is in a single action, that of stuttering,” he continues. Stuttering obscures the individual. The interlocutor witnesses the spectacle of chaos. In my workshops, I therefore work on expression in general. I like people to engage with the body, the eyes, the voice… Speech is a final segment of communication. It will refine communication. Otherwise, apart from on the telephone, we do not need speech to communicate. » In short, let’s look at ourselves. Let us perceive ourselves. “Let us not forget that in a romantic encounter, the first moments are spent in silence. » To meditate.
Theatrical improvisation workshop at the Douëra in Malzéville reserved for stutterers over the age of 15, Friday October 18, from 2 to 6 p.m., led by actor Bertrand de Wolf. It will be followed, at 8:30 p.m., by the show “Words – The vicissitudes of a stuttering actor”. Registrations and reservations: 06 83 05 72 46.
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