The Avignon Festival seen from Belgium: Suite n°3 – Interview with Sophie Linsmaux & Aurelio Mergola / Cie Still Life / Flesh – Les éclaireur.es des images
Sylvia Botella is a critic, she is also the playwright of the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles. We asked him on this closing day of the 76th Festival d’Avignon to give us his personal assessment. She responded several times. Here is his Suite n°3 which returns to Flesh of the company Still life which was warmly welcomed by French and international audiences and professionals. According to his interview with Sophie Linsmaux and Aurelio Mergola, the Cie Still life has lost none of its tenderly Belgian bite.
You are two emblematic figures of visual theater in Belgium! Do you think you belong to a current? To a community?
Sophie Linsmaux (SL): It happens at a very unconscious level. We never wanted to be part of a particular aesthetic or movement from the outset. We never said we were going to do visual theatre. We got there instinctively, through the set. In the same way, there are always echoes, reflections with other artists, other artistic practices, other works… Which always surprises.
Aurelio Mergola (AM): Admittedly, references to the visual arts and hyperrealism flow into our work. But we are more troubled by the question of borders. We are sort of diggers. We re-articulate various disciplines to tell stories. And if there is a word that characterizes us, it is the word: indiscipline.
From 4 contemporary non-verbal short stories And even, Katy and John, bedroom of love and kissyou explore the human chair from every angle. Flesh, this are 4 intimate stories in which there is a social, political subtext. What is it?
AM: We observe everything and we feed on everything. This is the main crux of our practice: putting the world we live in on stage. But we are not tackling it head-on. Spectators can aggregate their stories, their life stories, their questions. Judging by their reactions, it seems to hit the mark, unleashing not only hilarity, but also existential questions. A spectator told us: “I don’t like to think about my father’s death. Flesh forces me to lean into it with humor and to question myself”.
SL: Choosing the non-verbal allows us to create vacant spaces and deploy the spectators’ view of the world in a different way. It sustains the whole show by tracing a dramaturgical arc of And even until kiss Passing by Katy and John and bedroom of love.
AM: I don’t know if our artistic gesture is political. Or in any case, it is not aware. On the other hand, it makes society. The theater is one of the last places where we can have sensory experiences, feel emotions, question ourselves, together. Even if afterwards, we go home, something has happened, something has happened.
SL: In a theater hall, we are living beings together. We share emotions, laughter. They make sense. There is something deeply political there, it seems to me.
AM: We are describing a world that is going terribly wrong. Yet human beings continue to interact. That’s the impression I have anyway.
In Flesh, there is something more: the lack. We guess it in the lyrics of the song Vanina originally performed by Dave.
AM: Beyond the fact that Vanina maybe someone’s favorite song, it doesn’t surprise me that it can be played at a funeral. For many, the melody seems to be watered down. But if you pay attention to the lyrics, they are terrible. They sign a farewell.
Somehow, Vanina metabolizes the whole room. This is the only time when the characters verbalize what they are going through.
AM: Everything that overwhelms us in the most organic sense of the term comes from encounters with others, and the discoveries that this brings us. The song Vanina expresses well our need to be in contact with the outside world.
SL: Our theater hammers home the need to be connected to the other. The lyrics of Vanina experience it well.
As in your other rooms, in Fleshthere is almost non-stop a mixture of horror, despair, but also comedy.
SL: It’s a composition between two states, two emotions, two ideas: despair and laughter. They constantly respond to each other in our writing: the comic bounces off of desperate and despairing situations.
AM: This motivation is not only dramatic or dramaturgical. It is significant. SO goes the world ! Not a day goes by that we don’t experience this feeling: some events are terrible for some, while they are comical for others.
S. L: It’s very classic. It’s all about the gap. A slight shift and everyone laughs
Especially in bedroom of love ! It’s a pure gag, a bit apart in the show. How did you come to writing?
SL: In bedroom of love, we question ourselves without filter on the substitute of the chair: virtual realities. We thought a lot about how to tell it. But in reality, it happened very simply in the writing. Is it a gag? I do not know. When I look bedroom of love, I want to cry. The situation is hopeless. As in many of our pieces, it is about a shipwreck. There, it is in the literal sense of the term. The actress Muriel Legrand really appropriated the story, revealing unsuspected off-screens.
AM. : This is where it all starts: our voyeurism. We watch a woman experiencing virtually what she cannot experience in real life: a love story. We laugh because Muriel Legrand’s acting reactivates our adolescent and common veneration, very blue flower, for the characters of the film in question (note: we keep the title of the film silent to create the surprise). We recognize the kickbacks from the film’s soundtrack, the near-iconic hand gesture of one of the characters against the window. We also laugh because we are uncomfortable. We shouldn’t see what’s going on in the Love room. We must not witness the distress of the woman when she takes off her helmet and realizes all that she has been through. This scene is very violent.
SL: It is all the more violent because there is a long silence! It lasts a long time. It is very beautiful to observe how the community is reconstituted from memory.
How do you articulate the dramaturgies, the writing?
SL: What triggers the varied writing from one show to another. Sometimes it’s a book, a personal story. We have an intuition, a work strikes us. We take the time to welcome it, to question it, to pull and stretch the dramaturgical thread. We write the story with 6 hands: Aurelio Mergola, me and the screenwriter Thomas van Zuylen. We identify actions, places, characters. Our writing work at the table is very long. We have a lot of words, descriptions, images until we arrive at a sort of scenario which is then enriched by the choreographic score of the actors.ices. The movements become clearer. We juxtapose the different layers of history.
AM: We never go on set until we have a solid script. This is our anchor point.
SL: If we improvise directly on set, we risk getting lost. As a result, we can explore the potential of the set, the fiction.
You work with screenwriter Thomas van Zuylen. You write a screenplay with 6 hands. However, you continue to create in the theater. What interests you so much in the theater medium today?
AM: We often say to ourselves: it would be so much easier to have a camera, to require the special effects of the cinema (laughter). But we love playing every night in front of the public. We really like the artisanal character of the theatre.
SL: We play a lot with effects. And in the theatre, everything is on view! For us, the theater is a real challenge! In the cinema, we work on a close-up. And hop ! (laughter). My love of theater is insatiable. I like the stretched time of creation, the time of representation. I like to feel the audience in the room.
What is your state of mind ?
S. L: In 2020, the Festival d’Avignon had to cancel Nobody because of the health crisis. We were very disappointed. I didn’t want to believe it until we were in Avignon. Today, I am very happy to be at the festival. I was very curious to see comments Flesh would be welcomed there. I expected everything possible. As we haven’t toured abroad so far, “playing at the Festival d’Avignon” is a real opening.
A. M: Of course, there was disappointment. But Covid-19 had the merit of declaring that we were one real team in the face of a changing world. We have annexed ourselves to each other so as not to sink into despair. Flesh was born from this.
Interview conducted on July 23 at the Festival d’Avignon
Visual : FleshSophie Linsmaux and Aurelio Mergola, 2022 © Christophe Raynaud de Lage / Festival d’Avignon