He was fixing the light when she walked in the theatre. He could already hear his colleagues' mockeries, 'Hey, Frenchie, here's your lady!', 'Don't forget to invite us at the wedding!'; they laughed at him, then went back to work. She took her coat off, put her notes on the table in front of her, and sat down. She stood up again, put her glasses on and called for the actors. After a few minutes, the whole company was on stage. He could not understand what she was saying, but watching her was enough. Her only presence delighted him. It was so precious. He could not lose such a treasure. He rushed to the other side of the flies, ran down the stairs and hid behind one of the black curtains that surrounded the stage. When he eventually found his bag, he took a pencil and a notebook out of it, and started to write.
She takes notes, directs, and watches the scene just like a spectator. She reacts on the moment. She knows what she wants to see at the moment she hears the lines. Try this, and this, and that. She has a fantastic energy, she is very positive and encouraging, but never pushing. Her eyes, her look, the expression of her smile. She has that softness of face which makes her so pleasant to work with. But she also has something else. She has (the) passion. But not an intellectual, or intellectualized passion. She still tastes the flavour of irrational enthusiasm. She can be thrilled for no reason, for a knee on the floor, for a word disclaimed with great voice and energy. She conveys good vibes. She knows how to listen and how to talk to people. But it always remains a game, she can laugh at the characters while she is giving them life, movement, voice, tone and identity, personality, specificity. She is enjoying the text as she is enjoying the living exchange between people. I don't talk, I just write. I really want to capture her vibrations, her energy, her beauty. Because she is so beautiful, so lovely. If she raises her voice, it is to assert something, but in such a kind, passionate way that they cannot possibly be annoyed. Or it is to give them all, to hang over her great positive quality. Her curly hair falls upon her back like air, a kind of dark cloud you cannot catch and she touches with her little hands. When she speaks, people listen. She looks so nice and cute and lovely. But she has that strength which makes her fragile aspect even more interesting. You cannot but take her seriously. She has that intelligence and, in the meantime, that innocence and naive quality you can reckon by her look. I am completely out of the group, mais je me souviens... no, I mean, she is in the moment, and I feel I can use her as a medium between the reality of the rehearsal, that is to say the reification of imagination, and my own fantasy, my free and flying away imagination. Bodies are all for her, words are all for me. Je sais comment ça marche. A writer writing about a director directing. She controls the stage, she pulls the characters' strings, and she makes them what they are. And what am I doing? I turn her into a character, not a character of flesh and voice, but of paper and words. A tiny body, a simple attitude, but a great creativity. She is exploding in her own body, and everything goes through looks and effects of voice. Ses cheveux. It is a kind of continuity, stability, that gives her these physical strength and power. She takes possession of the scene, if the characters to which she gives life, energy and presence are slowly taking possession of the stage. But she still can get up and walk on the stage, walk into their space of existing, their sphere of reality she has herself created. Unbelievable. She is all the characters and can be one and another at the same time, or can change from one to another in a second. Her passion is her power, her strength, a king of medium she flies on to have her ideas and her words sprawled out in the air. When they fall down on earth, they turn into expressions of faces and into spells which make the performers move and speak.
'Excuse me, sir, sir? Yes, you! Please don't stay here, I can't work if you keep staring at me like that. That's it. Thank you. So, like I said...'
Her voice slowly sank into the silence of the offstage. He had a look on the piece of paper, torn it, but could not throw it away. He opened his bag and put the sheets in. They disappeared among a plethora of handwritten moments.
0 comments:
Post a Comment