Pascal Rambert
Répétition
© Marc Domage ©
Text, directed, and choreography by, Pascal Rambert
With Emmanuelle Béart, Audrey Bonnet, Denis Podalydès, Stanislas Nordey, and Claire Zeller
Stage design, Daniel Jeanneteau
Lighting design, Yves Godin
Music, Alexandre Meyer
Costume design, Raoul Fernandez, and Pascal Rambert
Assistant director, Thomas Bouvet
Production manager, Pauline Roussille
Executive producer T2G – Théâtre de Gennevilliers, centre dramatique national de création contemporaine
A coproduction with Aux Célestins Théâtre de Lyon ; TAP Scène Nationale de Poitiers ; MC2 Grenoble ; Festival Automne en Normandie ; Centre Dramatique National de Haute Normandie ; Centre Dramatique National Orléans Loiret Centre ; CNCDC Châteauvallon ; Le Phénix Scène Nationale Valenciennes ; Festival d’Automne à Paris
In collaboration with T2G – Théâtre de Gennevilliers, centre dramatique national de création contemporaine ; Festival d’Automne à Paris
This piece is part of the Parcours d’auteurs artistic and cultural education project supported by the SACD
In partnership with France Culture
Known for works such as After/Before (2005) and Clôture de l’amour (2011), Pascal Rambert, the author-director and Artistic Director of the Théâtre de Gennevilliers has often described his works as assemblies of bodies and arrangement of voices, rooted, in a radical way, in the contemporary era. For this reason, it might come as a surprise to some to hear that, Répétition, his latest creation, leaves behind the present day and takes us back to Russia at the start of the XXth century, and to the crumbling away of the grand ideologies and toppling of a world order. A word of caution, though: it would be unwise to imagine for one moment that Pascal Rambert would relinquish his DNA as conceptual creator and plunge headlong into naturalistic drama. Faithful to his passion for “real time”, (in which the time a fiction lasts and the duration of a performance are one and the same), combined with his way of blurring the distinction between fiction and reality, he anchors himself in the world of Chekhov, but gives us every indication that the drama in question is unfurling in the “here and now”.
Accordingly, the four characters in Répétition get mixed up with the actors that interpret their roles. In a rehearsal room, Emmanuelle - actress (Emmanuelle Béart), Audrey - actress (Audrey Bonnet), Denis - writer (Denis Podalydès) and Stan - the director (Stanislas Nordey) watch as their artistic structure implodes. The end of a world... That is the story. Unless what are hearing about, through these individuals, is the fall of the Balkans? Or perhaps the current crisis in Europe? Pascal Rambert’s piece is open to interpretation. As he himself says, in Répétition, his thoughts were about “what our hopes were for Europe, and what has become of them today”.
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