Patrice Chereau: An Introduction

SPECIAL SECTION PATRICE CHEREAU An Introduction Raymonde Temkine Patrice Chwwu as Richard 11. In 1971, Roger Planchon chose Patrice Chereau to be co-director of the Theatre de la Cite in Vifleurbanne, a working-class subub of Lyon. On January 1, 1973, the Theatre de la Cite became the new T.N.P. (Theatre National Populaire). Consequently, at the age of 29, Patrice Chereau became the head of the most prestigious of French "popular" theatres, thus making him a successor to Jean Vilar's work in this field. 67 Chereau's adventure began at the Louis-le-Grand lycee where he first worked with an amateur theatre group in 1959. In the beginning, he played only walk-on parts in this company which was already wellknown outside the lycee itself. Chereau's background had not prepared him specifically for the theatre but he was well versed in the fields of painting and music. His father is a commendable painter and his mother a fabric designer. When he was six, Chereau's father took him to the Louvre. As Chereau remembers it, the purpose of the visit was to introduce him to ancient Egyptian art. He started going to the theatre at an early age: to classical matinees at the Comedie Francaise, and to Vilar's T.N.P. He also attended performances given by the Berliner Ensemble. Chereau met Jean-Pierre Vincent at the Louis-le-Grand theatre group. This was the beginning of eight years of friendship and collaboration . While they were both preparing their "licenses" at the Sorbonne, they became co-directors of the Louis-le-Grand theatre group which is traditionally managed by former students. In 1964, Chereau staged his first production for this group, Victor Hugo's L 'Intervention, a little known melodrama whose naivete and humor had caught his fancy. It wasn't long, however, before he decided that his directorial choices had not been valid. He was less critical of his next production, Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna, in which his staging was directly influenced by Brecht. He was able to escape Brecht's influence when he staged Marivaux's L'Heritier de Village for the Nancy Festival in 1965, but this production was poorly recieved and Chereau was accused of being no more than a "sub-Planchon" and of practicing a kind of "marivaudage of decomposition." That same year, however, his revival of Fuente Ovejuna won the prize for best production at the Festival du Theatre Universitaire at Erlangen, and Helene Vincent, who played the feminine lead, received the prize for best actress. Bernard Sobel was the first to offer Chereau a chance to work professionally . His theatre is located in Gennevilliers, a working-class suburb of Paris. Sobel invited Chereau to direct a play for a Festival to be held there in March 1966. Chereau chose Labiche's vaudeville comedy, L'Affaire de la rue de Lourcine, a seemingly surprising choice for him. He completely changed the spirit of the play, however, by making Labiche's fantasy murders into real ones. Whereas Labiche's aim had been to create a "theatre de constat," or theatre of certified facts, which would reassure his audience, Chereau's was exactly the opposite . Labiche's heroes end up by re-establishing themselves in good faith; Chereau propels them into an apocalypse: "We tried to give a contemporary reading to the events, making them into an adventure about a group of people caught up in the business of murder. They create an industry out of crime in order to re-establish order." The production, successful with local audiences, was ignored by the critics. They waited for the Paris production at which time they not only hailed Chereau's work, but literally "discovered" a twenty-two68 year-old director who was already producing results rather than promises . In May the production was moved to the Paris-based Theatre des Trois Baudets which was called Theatre d'Essai et de Culture at the time, and was temporarily managed by the cultural association Travail et Culture. Chereau had to change the Gennevilliers production in order to fit all fifteen performers and six musicians onto a 12' x 9' stage...