Co-Artistic Director David Bullen returns with the second part of his blog on working with Ariane Mnouchkine, and it wasn’t all a smooth ride…
So, less than 24 hours after Part 1 of this blog was published, I gave myself a concussion.
At the end of the École Nomade’s work on the Saturday of the project, we were all clearing up the theatre space since there was a production – a transfer from the National Theatre in London – playing that night at the North Wall. Ariane had promised us that the next day we would be beginning work with masks; everyone was excited. Full of promise but drained of energy, we set about clearing the space. I got up from the auditorium onto the stage to help with the process and BASH. I hauled myself straight up into a low-hanging speaker that was there as part of the production. Six hours later, I emerged from the local hospital with the news that I had to rest the following day and that, really, I should extend this to the days beyond as well. Needless to say, I didn’t follow this advice to the letter.
I preface this second instalment of my blog on the École like this for two reasons. Firstly, being diagnosed with the concussion necessarily changed the way I was able to engage with the work we were doing – I was advised not to participate as a performer until my headache cleared up, and so I didn’t go on stage again until the final day of the workshop. Secondly, and moreover, it changed my relationship to the process as a whole, and allowed me to gain some perspective on what we were doing.
The second week was devoted to masks. The work we had done with improvisations and music took on an additional dimension when masks from both commedia dell’arte and Balinese traditions were introduced, along with costumes to support them. On the day prior to their arrival, Mnouchkine announced: “tomorrow we introduce the masks. They are terrible. They are our masters!” Many of us were sceptical, thinking her words affectionate exaggeration; over the next six days we learned how right she in fact was.
My Saturday head bashing meant I spent much of this time observing others engaging with the masks. Each were representative of archetypal characters, with a weight of history and tradition behind it. They facilitated the introduction of a new way of speaking in the theatre space. When actors were under the mask and in costume, Mnouchkine would refer to the character and not the person beneath – she would sometimes ask the character “who is your actor today?”
Those who got the most from the masks were those that accepted them. One morning during the second week, Mnouchkine stopped work to address all the participants. She was angry, and she told us why. Many of us put on the masks without understanding entirely what we were doing, or else thinking we could innovate, attempting to bring a new dimension to these centuries-old characters. “You must have humility,” Mnouchkine told us, “Picasso learned to draw before he began to experiment with cubism.” We had to learn to follow tradition before we escaped it.
Ariane and I after the final workshop – I’m still in commedia dell’arte costume and smothered in make-up.
This struck a chord with something else Ariane said that week. She described the classics – ancient Greek drama, Shakespeare, Moliére – as like lighthouses. Whenever the Soleil find themselves lost, she said, they are guided back on track by these works. We watched many of the Théâtre du Soleil’s recent productions during the École and these were, by and large, original works. When they were in their infancy, however, they often used these classic texts as their starting point. They were following tradition – though they were, in some ways, also subverting it.
Their 1990-1992 cycle of ancient Greek tragedies, Les Atrides, are an instructive example here. The plays by Aeschylus and Euripides on which the Soleil’s work was based are among the earliest texts in the Western canon. They have long performance traditions, and while the Soleil engaged in those traditions in the making of Les Atrides, they also brought innovation. The company were among the first to preface Aeschylus’ Oresteia – a bloody revenge cycle in which a family destroys itself – with Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis. The opening act of violence in the Oresteia is Clytemnestra’s murder of her husband as a means of avenging their daughter, who was sacrificed to the gods by her husband so he might go to war. In the Oresteia this child sacrifice is a memory re-told, and Clytemnestra’s brutal vengeance casts her in a very dim light. Beginning with Euripides’ play, which dramatizes the sacrifice, re-frames the story so that Clytemnestra’s revenge can be seen in a new light. Les Atrides thus modified the tradition – the Oresteia on at the Trafalgar Studios follows suit – as much as they engaged with it in its existing state.
I realise I am veering from topic to topic, but I’ve been left with a wealth of experiences from the École, and I’ve only the space to convey a brief route through some of the highlights. I shall end the way Ariane ended. On the final day of the project, she urged us all not to struggle on alone in the theatre industry, but to form groups and resist. Work and play together. Find space where you can and create theatre together. Don’t be mercenaries; collaborate. Through this call to arms echoed her previous pieces of advice: play together on stage; be meticulous and concrete; work hard; receive and respond; follow traditions before you innovate – though do innovate when you are ready. It also chimed with a documentary we had watched earlier in the week on the company’s work setting up a sister group in Afghanistan, a project which Ariane later admitted was the seed of the École Nomade. For those Afghani actors, creating theatre became essential: it was a way to live again, to resist, to tell stories in a way they had not been able to for a long while. The work the Théâtre du Soleil did with them was a gift to be able to realise this need to make theatre. The École Nomade in Oxford, though in an entirely different environment, was designed to instil a similar urgency in its participants – to make a group of occasionally cynical Western theatre-makers and -lovers take up arms. It was a precious opportunity, and given that I was unable to participate for much of the second week, I became keenly aware of how finite the experience was.
The company hopes to bring back the École to Oxford again in future years. If and when it does return, I urge you to apply. Whether you are an actor, director, writer, academic, student, or simply interested in theatre: apply. It’ll be an experience like no other.
