At times there is definitely a sort of courage in literature, pared down to its basics: You pit yourself against a blank page, with a character you have just created and who, nevertheless, already governs in her own way her own life in the novel, and imposes on your brain her ghostly vitality, the whimsy of a specter born in the moonlight. Obviously, there is a sort of prideful pleasure in a duel of wits with this creature from your brain who already has a will, in the triumph over her. But what is the equivalent of this great pleasure when it comes to theatre? Because to knead for the stage, on the stage, living beings, speaking beings, mulish or docile, ungrateful or magnificent, perfectible or incurable—what attracts you, I repeat, what binds you to the theatre, is this prideful pleasure. It consists in saying to an actor or an actress, in a rehearsal: There you are, with your grayish-greenish suit, or maybe your threadbare jacket, there you are with your 50 years, there you are with your impoverished hair, with your dyed hair, your rheumatism! Still, you will be the irresistible young man, you will be the virgin in the springtime of her life, you will be a courtesan with no bounds, you will be a mother torn apart, and it will be my fault, and it will be my work, and I will knead you with my own hands, and you will rehearse 100 times your attempt to make yourself cry spontaneously, your attempt at crystalline laughter, your drunken faint, you will rehearse as many times as I like until I’m content and until I tell you, That’s good—now do it better. That is the true attraction of the theatre; it’s a satisfaction that’s intense and yet never exhausted that theatre offers to our instincts of a little Nero of the republic. I have tasted that autocracy, and I assure you, the way it binds you to the theatre is much more dangerous than success! - Colette
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 18:40:00 +0000
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