Armand Gatti on Time, Place, and the Theatrical Event

Armand Gatti on Time, Place, and the Theatrical Event TRANSCRIBED AND EDITED BY JEAN-PAUL LENIN Translated by Nancy Oakes Introduction by Pierre Bouillaguet Most followers of contemporary theatrical developments know that since 1960 Annand Gatti, playwright and director, has been one of a small number working to create a twentieth~century theatre. I address the following introductory remarks to those unfamiliar with some of these changes or with Gatti's work. After the styles of IODesco, Beckett and Adamov that characterized the theatre of the fifties, two well-known plays by Jean Genet - The Blacks, performed in 1959, and The Screens. banned in France, but partially perfonned in Berlin in 196I - set new directions for dramatic research and, responding to a preoccupation with specifically political concerns, brought back to the stage a broader investigation of the conflicts then stirring French society. The war in Algeria, then in its cruellest phase, was at the centre of violent social unrest; and the atmosphere of world conflict, revolutionary struggle and insurrection inspired, and continues to inspire, Annand Gatti. His first play' takes as its subject the Central American country of Guatemala, where Gatti had gone as a journalist. It tells the story of two insurrections in Guatemalan history: the present-day revolt of the Indian peasants against their oppression at the hands of the fascist government; and the revolt of the Mayas against the invading Spanish soldiers. The play is entitled Le Quetzal, after the bird - now the emblem of Guatemala - whose feathers were used in the head-dresses ofMaya warriors. Thus Gatti opened the way. With great courage and no small degree of innocence (as some well-intentioned observers did not fail to remark), he broke with the long line of anti-heroes of the theatre of the absurd, introducing a character who was just the opposite: a bearer of hope, of the convictions that man can change the world, and that there is a point when he must say no and take up arms. The rebel had made his stage d~but, and Gatti would continue to seek out his prototypes on the banlefield. Most of the places in this world where political oppression demands revolt have supplied Gatti with the fervour, the characteristic gesture, the very fabric of his work. I shaIl name only a few of Gatti's plays, but these five or six titles suffice to sketch in the immense and varied map of political revolt in the world: 1960 Le Quetzal - guerriIla struggle in Guatemala 70 Armand Gatti on the Theatrical Event 1962 fA Vie imaginaire de l'cboueur Auguste G. (The Imaginary Life of the Scavenger Augustus G.) - strikers' struggle in southern France prior to World War D. 1964 Le Poisson Nair (The Black Fish) - revolt in feudal China 1964 Chanl public devon! deux chaises electriques (Public Song before Two Electric Chairs) - American union battles, the Sacco and Vanzetti story 1965 La Passion du General Franco (The Passion a/General Franco) 1966 Un homme seul (A Man Alone) - the Chinese Communist revolution 1967 V comme Vietnam (Vas in Vietnam) 1968 La Cigogne (The Stork) - the bombing of Nagasaki What gives Gatti·s plays their unique quality is their historical reference, adimension which tonnents semioticians so much that some have tried to remove it, frantically maintaining that it has no importance in dramatic analysis. Gatti places this intimidating historical reference at the very heart of his work, but he writes in such acontemporaryI specific style that this work stands among the great experiments ofthe twentieth century in its modernity. In fact. Gatti's writing is so far removed from the representational style which one expects in so-called popular theatre tbat he has had to suffer not only accusations from the right ofsimplification, but also criticism from the French left which has accused him. of presenting theatre inaccessible to the proletariat, theatre for intellectuals only. But he is in a better position than I to talk about his theory ofdrama, and I shall let him speak for himself. GATTI I'd like to limit myself to my own small experiment. It's an experiment in writing, which has always been based on an idea oftheatre with...