Announcement of a celebration and a colloquium (14-16 October 1999)
In the twentieth century Paris has drawn artists from all over the world. It was a natural haven for those fleeing the Russian revolution, since French was the language of educated Russians. It later offered safety to artists fleeing oppressive régimes - Nazism, Fascism, Stalinism. In recent decades it has again been a magnet to artists and intellectuals from Middle Eastern, African and Latin American countries, when their lives have been threatened by intolerance or political pressures.
At first this community of exiles living in Paris consisted largely of visual artists or film makers - Picasso, Dali, Bunuel, Giacometti among many others. But since the Second World War, and especially in the last thirty years, actors, directors, designers, playwrights have also come from all corners of the globe to work in Paris. This can be attributed partly to the active encouragement of a few energetic cultural workers such as Jean-Marie Serreau, who created a platform for young African theatre, or Jean-Louis Barrault, who presided over the Théâtre des Nations in the 1960s, or Jack Lang, who set up the Nancy Festival of International Theatre to bring young companies to France, or Jacques Lecoq, whose school (founded in 1956) has served as a meeting point for international performers wishing to explore the physical language of theatre.
In addition, cultural officers of the French government have been willing to fund outstanding work without reference to its national roots. This attitude was symbolised by the action of Jack Lang, when he became François Mitterand's Minister of Culture, designating the Odéon theatre Théâtre de l'Europe and appointing Giorgio Strehler to its head. Lang's 'Directeur du Théâtre', Robert Abirached, also worked hard to disseminate new international performance work.
No amount of enlightened policy-making would have succeeded without talented artists, however, and it is the outstanding quality of those who have chosen to live and work in Paris which we shall celebrate. International playwrights active in Paris in the last two decades include Fernando Arrabal, Samuel Beckett, Slimane Benaissa, Ina Césaire, Denise Chalem, Hélène Cixous, Fatima Gallaire, Adel Hakim, Armand Llamas, Edouardo Manet; directors include Alfredo Arias, Augusto Boal, Luc Bondy, Peter Brook, Jean-Claude Fall, Jorge Lavelli, Lluis Pasqual, Silvio Purcarete, Stuart Seide, André Serban, Robert Wilson. The outstanding theatre designers of the period were Yannis Kokkos and Ricardo Peduzzi (the latter now head of the chief Paris design school) and the late Fabià Puigserver, honored with a retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in 1994, pioneered new trends in scenography through his collaboration with Victor Garcia. Among actors, a large number are international rather than purely French stars, notably those who have worked and continue to work with Brook - Malick Bowens, Riszard Cieslack, Sotigui Kouyaté, Bruce Myers, Yoshi Oida - but international actors can also be found in all the major companies, notably Republican exiles Josep Maria Flotats and Maria Casarès at the T.N.P., Comédie Française and Théâtre de la Colline, Andrzej Seweryn at the Comédie Française, and the young newcomers from all over the world who are regularly invited to join Ariane Mnouchkine's Théâtre du Soleil.
The Colloquium
In October 1999 a colloquium will be held at the University of London's Institute for Advanced Study, which will explore and celebrate the internationalism of the Paris stage since 1968. We shall invite as many as possible of the creative practitioners to come and reflect on their achievements, on the structures that have made them possible, and on the international dimension of their work. We shall also invite critics, commentators and theatre historians to reflect in public on the conditions which have allowed Paris to become such a powerful magnet for dramatists, directors, performers and designers.
The theme of the colloquium will be 'La représentation émancipée: freeing creative performance.' By borrowing this title from Bernard Dort, we shall seek to emphasise the freedom and multiplicity of innovative performance practices in Paris since 1968, to which international artists have contributed so much. The focus of the two-day colloquium will be on workshops conducted by practitioners. These workshops will be open to students of theatre design, performance, directing, acting, translating, all theatre practitioners, critics and academics. Rather than give training in specific methods, they will serve to provide examples of strategies for the practice of theatre in a new Europe of ever-shifting boundaries. They will open up debate on the difficulties of working in a second language, of collaborating with practitioners from different cultural traditions, of juggling the need to preserve cultural specificity while recognising the challenge of interculturalism.
The conference will be organised, in the first instance, by Maria Delgado and David Bradby, of QMW and Royal Holloway respectively, but help will be sought from a wide range of institutions, including the ITI, Gresham=s College, the Embassies and cultural institutes of France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, etc., the BBC and Methuen Drama, which will be invited to publish a volume of the proceedings.
An advisory committee has been set up, consisting of:-
Michael Earley Dragan Klaic Peter Lichtenfels Dick McCaw Simon McBurney Eli Malka Judith Graves Miller Lluis Pasqual Patrice Pavis Béatrice Picon-Vallin Maria Shevtsova Yoshi Oida Rosario AudrasPROGRAMME: 'Internationalism and the Paris Stage' at Senate House Institute of Romance Studies, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU.
Thursday 14th. October 1999 1600 - 1730 Registration and Tea 1730 - 1830 Keynote opening address A major international practitioner working in Paris 1830 - 1930 Vice-Chancellor's reception Friday 15th. October 1999 0930 - 1000 Registration and Coffee 1000 - 1100 Keynote address 'Mapping the Territory' David Bradby and Maria Delgado 1100 - 1530 Workshops (concurrent - lunchbreak by agreement) 'Working with a group to create theatre' (workshops led by practitioners from Paris) 1530 - 1600 Tea 1600 - 1700 Plenary Panel Discussion Discussion arising out of workshops led by scholars/critics 1700 - 1800 Keynote address 'Theatre and Europe' A leading Paris arts administrator Saturday 16th. October 1999 1000 - 1030 Registration and Coffee 1030 - 1130 Keynote address 'Freeing creative performance here' A leading British practitioner. 1130 -1530 Workshops (concurrent - lunchbreak by agreement) 'Directing a text in a second language or translation' (workshops led by directors from Paris) 1530 - 1600 Tea 1600 - 1700 Plenary Panel Discussion (As Friday) 1700 - 1800 Closing address 'Future perspectives for International Theatre and the Paris Stage' A leading writer on intercultural theatre. The following have agreed to come to London and participate in the colloquium (professional commitments permitting):- Eli Malka; Yoshi Oida; Lluis Pasqual; Patrice Pavis; Peter Sellars.CALL FOR PAPERS
Anyone who would like to contribute a paper on the theme of the colloquium is invited to send a short proposal (c.300 words) to either of the organisers by the end of March 1999 (addresses given below). Papers will not be read out at the colloquium but will be photocopied and circulated to all participants who have signed up early in October 1999. These papers will then feed into the debates, especially the panel discussions from 1600 to 1700 each day.
Once proposals have been accepted, the deadline for submitting completed papers for circulation will be 1st. September 1999.
All papers will be considered for publication in the volume that will be edited from the proceedings.
For further information, please contact either of the names below:
Maria Delgado, School of English and Drama, Queen Mary and Westfield College, LONDON E1 4NS. 0171 975 5011. [email protected] David Bradby, Department of Drama, Royal Holloway, EGHAM TW20 0EX. 01784 443922. [email protected]
Created 28 April 1996. Last update 2 February 1999