Un petit tour dans le Théâtre Ontologique-Hystérique de Richard Foreman
« Le monde est une machine à résonances. »
Metteur en scène né en 1937, Richard Foreman se rattache aux avant-gardes américaines dès les années 60, et fonde en 1968 Le « Ontological-Hysteric Theater » situé dans l’East Village à New York. Marqué par les happenings et l’art minimal, Foreman s’intéresse aux mécanismes de la perception et crée avec exigence et précision des pièces où s’entrechoquent images grotesques, musiques et sons.
http://www.ontological.com/
« Je me rends compte que je suis attiré par un lieu proche de celui des acteurs du cinéma muet, parce qu’il repose essentiellement sur la gestuelle. L’exagération, l’artificialité de ce style de jeu le rendent souvent plus profond et pénétrant que le jeu naturaliste. L’exagération nous semble risible, parce qu’elle exprime en fait une dimension cosmique, une profondeur de sentiment qui n’a pas sa place dans notre société dominée par le rationalisme scientifique et le réductionnisme psychologique. »
« L’oeuvre d’art (par opposition au Kitsch) se reconnaît à sa capacité de changer de vision, non pas par le choc du « jamais vu » sensationnel, mais parce qu’elle met au premier plan le fonctionnement de la conscience dans on rapport à l’objet. »
« Certains écrivains se désespèrent de l’écart entre ce qu’ils ressentent et le langage dont ils disposent, mais pour moi cet écart est le champ même de toute création – un champ fait d’extase, pas de désespoir -, c’est par là que s’expriment l’inconscient, la divinité, c’est la source ineffable d’où jaillit toute chose. »
« Pour comprendre, il ne faut pas se demander ce que cela veut dire, mais à quel besoin cela répond. »
« L’Art = affirmer ce qui est Là et non dénaturer l’instant en l’absorbant dans un projet. »
Extraits de Richard Foreman-Abécédaire, Edition Actes Sud-Papiers, 1999, Traduction de Anne Bérélowitch
http://vimeo.com/18478031
« So vast, soft, clouds of the cloudless sky over the roof of gas stations on the road into (out of) the city. So traveled, so travelling, so much the held he held to. He held to his idea of travelling, which was like life was, was held. And the suburbanite was located in that passage to the center of the city which remained elusive in a way that the part that circulated, almost center, almost displaced into itself, center center like an echo, did not.
So here we are, suburbanite, headed central, and the tiny bits and pieces are road hitched, and the travelling eye is almost lost into its own seeing with ice, and the gasoline station and the restaurant and the motel, vacant, is but a leaf torn from the book of the center you balance under your nose as the steering wheel spins in space, too late to travel, only oscillating there under your reptilian hands because YOU have no hot and cold running through an entire system, no, you have nothing but an apex of look, turn me in this direction, turn me in that direction, isn’t that what we call AIMING?
And the suburbanite found himself out of town before he was in town. It passed — out here even if off to the side somewhere, but the experience, drug-like, would never wear off because everything that was glued in was still glued no matter how much it faded.
Yes it was time that did the fading, only the fading was backwards, not INTO time, but OUT OF time, and the road, strait was its eatenness of miles, hitched itself to that cause like muscle, and here was one motel still open, and the sleep it offered — ah, there find the elusive center.
So the suburbanite bedded down for the night, after coffee and rolls has been served — backwards? That’s what we already started rolling through the suburbanite on wheels. Backwards. And no night took over a whole life, just bits and pieces, far as always from the center (of town) the suburbanite. Motel ensconced. Drifting. Slipping by rote, under the sleep that knew no doubt. Ultimate affirmations, between ticks of the alarm that never went off.
Ferraris image
He had a watch, it counted for him.
He had eyeglasses, they made circles.
He had a wallet, no story there.
He had shoes, vibration effect, a whole body like a travel bureau.
He had keys in his pocket, did he have pockets? Maps, to find out distance, but nobody knew how much.
He had pockets, they made maps of themselves.
He had a comb, it ravished by turning over.
He had a tie, worn out, licked.
He had a belt, circling the body it smiled. Was that a face?
He had a face. It smiled, therefore.
He had a brain, it glowed like a stone, so blunt, so to the point, he kicked it and it flew down the road crying this is my life, this is your life.
He had no sense of direction. Like a flower, petals blown in the wind, more flowers, covering the mountain and death moved something. Something immense.
He had death. He sat there.
He knew that the babble of words babbled something quite beyond itself. And yet. And yet.
Silence also pushed through him and searched for the light. Silence plowed through his tongue, his eyes and nostrils, looking to lie exposed to external light, as if an inner light desired full union with that other light.
So babble rose, from a certain source, sped into space but a true bubbling that bubble-like, babbled into the shape that was explosion after explosion releasing, centering the call to silence with each sphere of punctuated, something-to-be-said. And those pin-pricks of a million calls to silence did call forth the silence from a depth that either was or was not the same depth.
So silence and babble, so both, so linked, so opposed and coordinated, in that new, next attached level of babble, laid forth blanket-like under the light, always the light re-showing itself outside which was only a way, finally, of being inside. »
Extrait de The Suburbanite de Richard Foreman