‘A person is not a label’: on metamorphoses and laughter through identity

What does 'identity' mean to you in contemporary society, and how is this theme addressed in your play?

The first thing that comes to mind these days when we talk about identity is papers. The identity card, which makes it possible to control it... The card that will determine three things that crystallise in the eyes of the State in our contemporary society: your nationality, your gender and your age. While researching the play, I realised that all you had to do was add religion, as is the case in some countries, to understand how religion can become a stigma and a source of discrimination. In France we have seen all these abuses. I say "abuses" because it's very difficult to change the information on your identity papers. You have to prove that you've changed religion, that you don't have one, that you're now a man, or that you've become a woman... It's bound to be an uphill battle.

Identity is the central theme of the play. It is explored in all its aspects: gender, religion, age, skin colour, culture, morality, family... culminating in the principle that all our identities are on the move throughout our lives, shifting and never fixed, otherwise a great danger lurks: finding yourself trapped in an identity, and often the one you are given, even before the one you think of yourself.

Why did you choose a monologue format rather than a production with several characters? How does the form reinforce the social message?

You'd have to ask the author Delphine Horvilleur first. But for us, with Johanna Nizard directing, the monologue emerged as a way of dealing with the question of identity, of embodying several identities in a single being, in the image of life. The monologue is the citadel of shared solitude, a theatrical land that only reveals its secrets when it meets the audience. The audience is your only partner, who may or may not reach out to you, who may or may not respond, who may or may not support you, who may or may not love you, who may or may not hate you...

The play deals with racism, trans-identity and cultural appropriation. What ideas or perceptions do you think are often misunderstood by audiences?

I'd like to expand on my answers a little because your question touches on some essential points about our show and our contemporary societies, which are undergoing major changes.

Racism is simple, it is to judge someone inferior to his skin colour, if in your entourage you have this famous racist uncle, who for example hates people with black skin, as soon as you are with him you fear the outbursts at the first " bad " meeting. 

Anti-Semitism, the central subject of our play, and one that Delphine Horvilleur has always fought, notably through her book " Reflexions sur l'antisémitisme"is much more complex and vicious: the Jewish religion does not stop at the colour of a skin, it is a paranoid hatred, without knowing it I can have to do with a Jew, stigmatised by his name, his nose, his money, his " influence ", and so when I walk around with my famous anti-Semitic uncle, all, are likely to echo his hatred. This is often misunderstood today. Anti-Semitism is misunderstood, misjudged and misjudged to such an extent that a party founded by former Nazis is at the forefront of the defence of anti-Semitism today... That's saying a lot. Hatred of the Jew unleashes all the hatreds that human beings carry within themselves, along with a belief that they are superiorly intelligent, because we don't hate a difference in skin colour, but a whole set of fantasised ways of being, acting and thinking, under the guise of a religion.

Transidentity is a long personal and therapeutic journey. Very often people confuse gender identity with sexual identity, which has nothing to do with it. Transidentity is a relationship with your body and your gender. It's feeling from the inside that you don't have the body you feel is yours deep down, and wanting to change it. Since the law of 18 November 2016 in France, it has become easier to match your identity papers to your new gender identity. So much the better, but this is very recent, and in public opinion transgender people still suffer a lot of discrimination, and often from their close circle of friends and family who do not accept their evolution, and systematically remind them of their past identity. I often say that I see France as a country of labels, and once you've been labelled, it's very difficult to get rid of it, in all areas: intimate, professional, social, political... Let's all accept that we're on the way, in the midst of our mutation, as Delphine Horvilleur says, and the world will be more tolerant;

The issue of cultural appropriation is a much more recent one, and has now become a very sensitive one, especially among young people.

For me, in literature in particular, and in art in general, this is a very pernicious debate. It doesn't matter to me who the author is in order to judge and experience the work. It's like in a restaurant, I taste, I'm an adult, I've trained my palate, I like it or not, but just because the chef is Japanese doesn't necessarily mean the sushi is better. Knowing this 'distorts' my palate. I find it frightening and extremely impoverishing to see the trials of intent that are increasingly being made today in the name of cultural appropriation. Would Gustave Flaubert have written Madame Bovary, Romain Gary, sorry Émile Ajar, La vie devant soi? And the examples can be multiplied endlessly, unfortunately. As it says in the text: it is this ability and willingness to slip into the skin of another, which is the source of empathy, love, and all creation. What poverty it is not to speak and to seek to resemble only oneself. It's a sign of fear, fear of the other, of otherness, as if the fact that they are appropriating my history, my culture, were going to destroy it. I don't think so, culture is much stronger than that, it remains indestructible to those who want to know it, historically, perceptibly, by heart...

To what extent does humour help to convey serious social issues? Is there a risk of misinterpretation?

Humour is the keystone of the human construct, " an affirmation of man's superiority over what happens to him " says Romain Gary. Without humour there can be no love. I discovered on this show that Jews are the greatest specialists in anti-Semitic jokes. You're never better served than by yourself. Laughter is a strength, a weapon, a way out of the impasse. I laugh at the joke about a Jew who was pierced by a sword during a pogrom and asked if it hurt him, to which he replied "only when I'm laughing"...

It's legitimate to wonder about the colour of the laughter - black, yellow, white - and where it's coming from: are we laughing at me or with me? But you can't stop it talking about itself. Delphine Horvilleur's humour is omnipresent, and I remember laughing alone while reading the text, which is quite rare, because laughter is also born of the collective. Like emotions in general. Hence the strength and importance of live performance. It's never the same to laugh alone at a show on screen as it is to be in a theatre. In the auditorium, you're carried away by something, or you're questioning something: the reaction of others. It's the same principle for all emotions: laughter is an emotion, an emotion that is the twin of sadness. That's why we go from laughter to tears and back again. Humour provokes a joy of the spirit or a wild joy, but a joy above all, and that's quite an art...

How do audiences react to these sensitive subjects in Luxembourg? Do you notice any differences between different groups of viewers?

Yes, of course there are differences between different groups of spectators, and we see this every night of every performance, all our lives, but it's something we artists have no control over. We see enormous differences from one evening to the next in the way our show seems to be perceived. And we can only observe this and certainly not judge it, and even less draw conclusions from it. We ourselves are so different, despite the appearance of continuity, from one evening to the next;

"For Valère Novarina, "the ideal audience is an extremely varied one in which you find all the different professions in a society, from your baker to your lawyer, from your boss to your children, from the politician to the artist... All ages, all professions. That's when the magic really happens. On the other hand, it's very special to perform for an audience made up entirely of schoolchildren, artists and sportsmen and sportswomen. There's no diversity of viewpoint or opinion, and that's what makes the magic of a meeting in the air work, beyond all our differences.

On the whole, people reacted with great intelligence and sensitivity to all the sensitive subjects developed in our play. Many of them come away saying that it does them a lot of good in this day and age to hear everything that is said, that it makes them think, that it raises questions far more than it provides answers, and that they even want to go back to the theatre to continue exploring the ideas developed in the play. This show is a small victory for intelligence, the intelligence of the heart and soul, over the reign of stupidity, a tribute to the power of fiction and the imaginary in the face of the brutality of reality.  While I find that we often give ourselves too much importance in the way the world works, and this on both sides of the ramp, it is up to artists to take responsibility and the need to be aware of this, to try to awaken...consciences...

What are your main objectives with this play: to raise awareness, provoke dialogue, challenge the audience, or something else?

Our main objective, our only conquest, the goal we have been pursuing tirelessly all our lives, every night, is to succeed in making theatre with all the magical power contained in that word. To summon the grace of theatre. Through repetition, precision and expertise, like a craftsman, day after day, year after year, with humility and a certain talent, trying to make theatre, to make theatre happen. I always think of the spectator who comes to the theatre for the first time in his life, and above all I want him to leave the show saying to himself that he will return to the theatre. There are so many cases of people who encounter boredom at best, indifference often, and disgust at worst, and who conclude that the theatre is not for them. I want them to leave the show with the desire to return, and also, the icing on the cake, the desire to discover, or to immerse themselves in the work of Romain Gary, the great author who is the source of inspiration for the play. Theatre, like any work of art, is an infusion of complex and sometimes contradictory thoughts, which blossom long after the performance. We remember it as something that grows inside us without really knowing what it is or how far it pushes us. But to have been there that evening, to have experienced it, leaves an indelible trace of the present moment for all eternity. In a way, that's what we're aiming to do: raise awareness of the theatre, encourage people to discover new authors, ask questions - it's important not to have answers, otherwise what's the point of asking questions, we're not teachers - and leave that impression of familiarity that brings hearts and souls closer together. One of the most touching comments we heard after the show was: "I didn't understand anything, but I liked it because it was familiar to me...".

In your opinion, can contemporary art and culture really influence social stereotypes and prejudices?

Yes, of course, art and contemporary culture can influence all the stereotypes and prejudices we are subjected to. Or maybe it's the other way round, with contemporary art and culture simply being the result of the influence of all the clichés and stereotypes that our contemporary societies deliver. Either in mirror image or in opposition. Are we not in the golden age of influencers? But influencing doesn't mean changing. Chaplin put everything into his film "The Dictator", but unfortunately it didn't prevent the Second World War and its millions of deaths. On the other hand, to be an artist is to be a bit of a sorcerer, to be in touch with the times and sensitive to future times. When Duras spoke of the two thousand years in the eighties, she was visionary, and Delphine Horvilleur, in pointing out the drifts of identity crises in which society is heading, is for me a step ahead that we need to catch up with. So I don't know if she's going to influence the world, but I do know that she has influenced me, and that's enough for me to think that I'm not the only one, because as Philippe Léotard says in his song " cinéma ",  

"I wouldn't have wished myself any other way if I'd been the only one; I'm not even sure that there would have been a second man if I'd been the first"...

Do you think that social monologues and theatrical experiments have to be provocative to be effective?

Provocation depends on the context, and like Romain Gary, I think you have to do everything you can to escape the context. In the 60s and 70s, theatre, cinema and art in general pushed provocation to a degree that is inconceivable in today's society. Everything we shouldn't do was done at that time, when Ferré sang " Yes, i am an immense provocateur " and the Living Theater invited spectators to swallow acid and have sex on stage. So where would the provocation be today? Well below it, that's for sure, our age is very wise, entrenched in its principles and stereotypes, Ah, yes! Religion is a provocative subject. If Delphine Horvilleur weren't a Rabbi, a philosopher, and this immense lady of letters and minds,  this text would never be accepted, it would be attacked from all sides, by extremists of all stripes. I'm not going to put on a show without trying to provoke something in you, otherwise what's the point of putting on a show? I want it to provoke reactions in you, which I hope will be positive, but over which I have no control. Even if that's not entirely true, with experience you can anticipate the reactions that a show will provoke; it's even your duty to work on that anticipation. I'll never understand artists who are surprised to hear snoring in the auditorium if they ask their actors not to move anything other than their eyes on a stage, without words and for twenty minutes...

Then being effective doesn't mean much, it's like saying it's going well, these are phrases beyond our control to reassure ourselves and above all to note that without really knowing why, without having recipes, but not without knowing how to do it, the audience responds, the room fills up and the encounter works.

What role do religion and cultural heritage play in the themes you address?

All his life, Romain Gary seems to me to have wanted to escape the heritage of his Jewishness, and it's as if with Émile Ajar he allowed certain aspects of his religious identity to resurface.

In the preparatory work for the play, I remember reading a thesis entitled "Is Romain Gary a Jewish author? As if being Jewish were in itself a quality or a flaw, depending on where life takes you, which would be the grid for re-reading his work. I found that an incredible main question. The other day, on leaving the show, a member of parliament ended up asking Johanna Nizard if she was Jewish after all? Unthinkable, just imagine asking someone: " but then, are you Catholic, Muslim, (or worse), black, homosexual, etc.?.. "

For a show that deals with the question of identity, and the importance of not letting oneself be defined or confined by the other, we were blessed with intelligence... This perhaps ultimately ties in with the question of cultural appropriation: people need to know whether in their eyes you are legitimate or not, in order to talk about or debate a subject. Everyone has his or her own personal reading grid, which is rarely tolerant in this case.

I couldn't care less about all that, and I'm not the only one, I can assure you. I grew up at a time, in the seventies, when everything was obvious, clear and simple about openness to others, racism and tolerance. Today everything is in turmoil and religion is becoming one of the main reasons for the violence suffered by believers of all faiths throughout the world. There is talk of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, but Christians and Buddhists are also persecuted because of their intimate and personal beliefs. It's as if religion has become a source of war rather than a source of peace. So when a Rabbi wrote " Fuck belief!"  assuming that in the name of God today we do anything and everything, from war to cooking, I was very sensitive to the question posed,   " Is God taking up all the space?And it also took me back to the phrase attributed to Malraux: "The 21st century will be spiritual or it won't be&". The question is, what kind of spirituality is it or will it be? Because if it were ever " it wasn't " we wouldn't be here to see it, to write about it, to read about it and even less to experience it.

Were there any personal experiences or observations that inspired you to create this piece?

A multitude, we always create from everything we are and everything we've been through. We started by working as a team, listening to all the creators of the show, whether they came to help us think about the dramaturgy, create the lighting, costumes or sets...And then we made conscious or unconscious choices, thinking a lot about Desproges, Artaud, but also Aroun, or Cindy Sherman... I think that we are constantly nourished by everything that influences us and has influenced us, and that knowing how to recognise it means knowing how to go beyond it, and restore it " in its own way ", as Dalida sings.

From the text " Il n'y a pas de Ajar ",   I retain above all this immense homage to the work of fiction. Towards the end of the text, Delphine Horvilleur has her character say, "We are sometimes the children of our biological parents, but we are always those of our libraries ". In the course of my work, I remember dwelling at length on the words "sometimes" and "always". In our libraries, we have books, comic strips, works, films, songs and works of fiction that make us who we are, and which we often claim to be far more than our own parents. And even if we haven't read, seen or heard these works, their presence is enough to transform our lives and guide us along the personal and unknown path of existence.