24/25 The whole world in every show

Like encompassing the entire world in each performance

“Art can be a form of resistance to our simplest impulses. Hatred is easy, especially if one has been raised or educated in it. Then, art becomes a possibility, a resistance to hate, and a promise of something better... of a better world. And each work becomes like a promise of life...”

How can one offer the whole world in each performance, to encompass it for a time and hold it in a single hand? To understand it completely... 

An attempt. A new joyful and vital attempt to find the precise phrase and the dreamt image, and to keep it forever. The actor tries to retain all that he has treasured during rehearsals. He strives not to lose what he discovered in the process, so he can repeat it every night in front of you. He endeavours not to squander all the nuances he has accumulated in his body. He seeks the impossible: to find, to hold, and to show what cannot be grasped. We watch him, incredulous, perhaps fascinated. It is a difficult and passionate task. The utopia of seeking the perfect form, with beauty and pressure. It is a titanic effort.

Theatre is always this attempt. Just an attempt. This is its greatness and its fragility. And this impulse to encompass the whole world in each performance and hold it in the palm of one’s hand is nothing but the will to understand it. To comprehend it, even if only for a moment. And to share it with tenderness. 

Each work is like a promise of life. A promise always awaiting fulfilment and constantly threatened to be frustrated. Each work is a failed attempt, which, despite everything, we will want to try again. Once again and once again. To find a way not to lose what is impossible to fix. 

Can you imagine this effort? I find it wonderful. 

It is the reason for our profession. And every night it is fruitless. 

And yet, the actor’s attempt not to lose what he has never quite managed to possess —what is impossible to fix— is precious. Just as precious as the spectator’s effort to maintain focus and keep their gaze on the gesture. Both want to experience this together again. Always with the hope of achieving it: perhaps beauty resides in this impossible chimera. In the stubborn attempt to grasp life and, inevitably, the failure to do it perfectly. 

This failed attempt is the actor’s profession. To thirst for life, with calm in their gaze, and to offer us the promise of a better world. 

‘Born from higher levels than those of men and women, happiness carries with it its own denial, the threat of its possible absence.’ Theatre could be a way to avoid this obstacle that interpreters of Epicurus already recognised. And with the firm hope of achieving it, when we start a new season, we inevitably feel the temptation to set great challenges and write in grand words beautiful and elegant promises. We make them, and immediately we begin to break them, already sensing that something will be missing.  —At least I confess that I can never fully fulfil the promises I make at the start of the season (whether in September or at Christmas). But I believe in the attempt: I believe that the attempt alone is worthwhile. It gives me life and allows me to get started on the year ahead—. 

The start of a season is like the beginning of a performance. 'Anxious about what is to come, and patient in managing everyone’s dreams…’, King Duncan watches Macbeth enter the stage coming from the battlefield, and after the prologue, the action begins with these words: ‘What bloody man is that?’. How to translate this phrase? Perhaps Prospero, from the shore of his old age, could respond: ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on’. 

I have been reading texts these days like this one you are now reading, written by someone else at another moment in history. I would publish them all and agree on many of the things that have already been said. Because when we start a new season, we also pick up many of these well-told adventures, attempts, and promises of those who came before us. 

To give just one example, here are some excerpts from the letter Jean Vilar addressed to the spectators at the start of the 1961-62 season of the TNP. Here is the beginning... I think it’s worth reading it entirely: 

‘Dear friends, ... the 1960-61 season at the Théâtre National Populaire has been especially happy. Should I indicate the results here? They are considerable! Our profession has little value if it is not linked to facts, to the cruel, happy, or liberating stories of our time... Of all professions...’ 
(Read the entire letter from Jean Vilar…) 

Because when you wish to offer the whole world, holding it in a single hand... how can you avoid promising more than you can give? How do you find the words for these promises...? 

It makes one want to invent new ones. 

New stories, cruel, happy, or liberating. New forms and new songs. 

A new season for all the new promises. 

And may the world be offered to us... 

- Oriol Broggi

And while we were writing these words to you, we went back into La Biblioteca and listened again to these pieces of music that we want to share with you...

 

 

 

 

 

Have a great 2024-2025 season!