'Love's End' in Bangkok

The French-Thai cultural festival La Fete might only run through June and July, but the French Embassy is keeping its promise to ensure French-Thai collaboration is year-round. 

This week, acclaimed French playwright and director Pascal Rambert, the director of national contemporary arts centre Theatre de Gennevilliers (T2G), is coming to town for a series of discussions and workshops. 

His play, “Cloture de l’amour”, winner of grand prix in dramatic literature and French Drama Critics’ Association’s “Best New Play” in 2012, has its Southeast Asia premiere here in Bangkok next month. 

Rambert started writing and directing plays while still a student.

“I was studying philosophy when I wrote my first play but I’ve been writing poetry since I was 13,” he says.

Rambert says that the decision to work professionally in theatre was not actually a decision.

“I decided nothing. Even now, I still don't know. It was natural. I never attended any theatre school. One day, I came out of a theatre and I decided that was what I wanted to do. It was suddenly obvious. I had no models. I admired Pina Bauch, Claude Regy and Klaus Michael Gruber but I can’t say I have a favourite playwright.”

Seven years after his staging his first play, he was invited to the Festival d’Avignon.

“The great French producer Alain Crombecque, who was artistic director of Festival d’Avignon at the time, had seen my very first works. One afternoon he called me and asked, ‘Do you have a new project?’ I replied that I had and told him a little about it. After five minutes he told me, ‘We’re going to do it’. That’s a real producer.”

A prolific writer and director ever since, Rambert says that he has neither imagination nor inspiration.

“My work comes out of the voice and the body of the actors I write for. And I mix that with my own biography.”

A prime example of this statement is “Cloture de l’amour” (“Love’s End”), which premiered at the Avignon festival in 2011. 

According to the programme summary: “A couple puts an end to their love through two monologues which bring out their deepest thoughts, two long sentences which cannot bear any interruption. The purpose is for them to settle old accounts while asserting their physical presence in the midst of the most ruthless language attacks”.

“This play is about art – art of theatre and artists,” Rambert adds. The theme of separation has become common in his works and while he insists he hates conflicts in real life, he admits to enjoying writing conflictual situations between women and men. 

Since its Avignon debut the play has been staged – with either the original French or local cast members – in Russia, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Italy, Korea, Japan, the US and more.

He is proud of its global success. “I am very happy that this special form of contemporary theatre finds an echo elsewhere but I still don't know why people like it. And I guess I prefer not to know.” 

As for the responses in Korea and Japan where the socio-cultural context is very different from the other shores where this play has landed, he describes them as “Very emotional. That was special. Japanese people talked a lot after the play and expressed their feelings. That’s unusual for Japan.” 

Rambert is also a filmmaker. “I started because I wanted to extend my work and to be able to regard cinema as another room of the building I live in. I see my work as a building with a lot of rooms. All the rooms are connected and all the rooms are an extension of a story in another form. My 2005 short film ‘Car Wash’ is an extension of ‘Cloture de l’ amour’.” 

In 2007, he took over the running of TG2 from its founder Bernard Sobel in a Paris suburb. There he presents and produces international contemporary theatre, dance as well as visual arts.

“I never see borders in my life and work. I don't deal with borders. I deal with an endless flow of productions where a dance piece emerges from one of my theatre pieces that emerges from one of my films that emerges from one of my books that emerges from one of my opera works. There’s no limit. Never. But there is circulation. Always.”

Thanks to a collaboration between the French Embassy, Alliance Francaise, Butterfly Books and Chulalongkorn University and support from the Institut Francais and Pullman Bangkok King Power, Lambert has not only granted his permission for the translation and staging of “Cloture de l’amour” in Bangkok but will also be sharing his experiences with local playwrights and directors.

“I’m really happy at this Thai production. I decided to fly to Bangkok in between two rehearsals because I felt there was a strong desire around this production. 

“I gave my authorisation because I believe theatre plays don’t belong to their writers. Everybody should be able to take one and do whatever he wants with it.” 

 

 

ROVING WITH RAMBERT

-On Wednesday at 3.30 at the Alliance Francaise Bangkok, Rambert will discuss “Cloture de l’amour” and contemporary French theatre with Thammasat University’s French literature professor and political activist Wanrug “Fay” Suwanwattana and theatre critic Pawit Mahasarinand. Admission is free. After the talk, Rambert will launch and autograph the Thai translation of the play “Loek!” by Pakawalee Kongkrapan and Phrae Chittiphalangsri, published by Butterfly Books.

-That will be followed at 7.30pm by a forum on contemporary arts in France and Thailand, with Rambert, filmmaker Anocha Suwichakornpong, choreographer Pichet Klunchun and B-Floor Theatre director Teerawat Mulvilai. Moderators are Pawit and French cultural attache Benoit Etienne. Rambert’s short film “Car Wash” will be screened. Tickets are Bt250 (Bt200 for students). For details, call (02) 670 4240.

-On Thursday at 2, Rambert will conduct a playwriting workshop for professionals and advanced theatre students at Chulalongkorn University’s Sodsai Pantoomkomol Centre for Dramatic Arts. Admission is free but advance registration is required. E-mail [email protected]. Afterwards, he’ll join members of the media in watching a rehearsal of “Loek!” and share his comments with director Bhanbhassa Dhubthien and actors Chaiwat Anutrakulchai and Sasithorn Panichnok. 

-All sessions are in French and Thai. For details, visit www.Facebook.com/DramaArtsChula and www.Theatre2Gennevilliers.com.