Interview by Rachel Halliburton (April 2004)

(source: theatrevoice.com)

RH: I’d like to start with the fact that each production is closely tied to the city where it’s presented. Can you tell me why you felt the need to be geographically specific for a phenomenon which, in so many ways, is universal?

RC: Because a limit is necessary. Then an explosion allows you to open up different directions. But that explosion needs to start from a specific place. Each city brings in itself different signs and a community of citizens. But at the same time there is a possibility for these signs to allude to something which is universal, and that is interesting.

RH: You create a theatre that in so many ways goes beyond words, and you’re very strongly influenced by Artaud in that you want to push audiences into an area where they only react emotionally. In the cycle, you have gone to extremes to achieve this. In Paris I believe three cars were dropped onto the stage, while by contrast in Brussels the audience watched a baby crying on the stage for several minutes. Can you explain to me why it is so important in your work to reach this area which, for people, goes so far beyond language?

RC: Artaud is not a source of inspiration. I’m trying to avoid Artaud. The question is, that it is difficult to avoid Artaud because he is not an author, but a condition. And this condition is too intimate to be judged. Artaud is a ‘scandal’ in the Greek sense : he is on the way and he can’t be avoided. In terms of radicality, that is a way to overcome language and open different dimensions, so theatre becomes an alien space, a space which doesn’t belong to our reality. And so theatre can every time create the foundation for a new language. There is a possibility for the foundation of a different world, which only lasts for the time of the performance.

RH: And yet your decision to focus on tragedy inevitably connects very much with the outside world. Especially at the moment we’re living in a world which is becoming increasingly aware of the looming potential of tragic events. Indeed, what happened last week in Madrid was a violent reminder of the capacity for terrorism to rock the foundations of people’s lives in a way which makes people use the word ‘tragedy’ in a kind of everyday sense. So I have to ask you, have events since the attack on the Twin Towers in any way influenced the way in which you conducted your investigation into tragedy? Do you think we’re a different world than the one which we were three years ago?

RC: I don’t think it’s a different world, if I have to respond sincerely. And these terrible episodes haven’t really changed my way of working in the theatre. But this does not mean that my experience of theatre is not permeated by reality. There is an osmosis with reality where not only these terrible events, but also the small ones, the events which seem to be just meaningless [It. la realità piu invisibile, piu piccola, piu miserabile], take place and have a place.

RH: Vulnerability, human vulnerability, is obviously a central theme. Your use of the naked human body is very striking in all of your work. In your production in Bergen, which I saw on film, the audience watches an old woman with flowing white hair. From behind her, streams of blood course down her back. In the same production, you show a half-naked child masked as if for sacrifice. Your work is filled with symbols and references, from pagan celebrations to, say, the films of Kubrick, yet you obviously feel that the human body is the most important [reference] of all. Can you explain why?

RC: Certainly the human body is the ultimate form which we bring with ourselves. But rather than talking about symbols and signs, it’s forms that my theatre is made of. The form communicates on a truly universal level. There is no need for a culture, for a decodification, because it communicates through its own shape and surface [It. a traverso a sua superficie, a traverso quello que è, a traverso la materia que la compone]. It’s a form that can be understood by a child or by an animal. The human body is precisely the ultimate form, because that’s how we perceive all the others. The human body is also the first form of space.

RH: You talked about the fact that a small child or an animal could recognize the human form, and I’d like to talk to you about your use of animals. The word ‘tragedy’ obviously comes from the Greek for ‘goat-song’, and the image of the goat is very prominent in your investigation. Through the ages the goat has symbolized a number of potent concepts. In mythology, it has represented the devil, it has represented the cuckolded husband, and, in the form of the scapegoat, it has also represented the animal that bears all of society’s evils. How did you want to use the history of the representation of the goat in your work? 

RC: It is a form that actually crosses the history of humanity like a meteorite. It crosses different religions. It crosses religions as a difference. It’s hard to give a value to that form, but the form has a lot of value in itself. In the tragedy it’s extraordinary, because it’s actually the body itself of the tragedy. And when in the history of tragedy the figure of the goat disappears, that’s when the poet emerges. So I tried to bring the goat again on the scene in my work.

We need to look at the etymology. “Tragos” is the root that gives tragedy its name. “Tragedy” means exactly “the song of the goat”. Before the writing, there were the dithyrambic songs, which had a very strong relationship with the cult of Dionysos. “Tragedy” could mean either the cry of the goat at the moment it was sacrificed, or the verse which was pronounced by the priest to allow the goat to come in. When the sacrifice as a cultural institute enters a crisis, that’s when the writing actually starts. That’s when the voice of the goat becomes in fact the voice of the poet.

RH: Last time when I interviewed you, you said that, technically, in Genesi, you were influenced by Kubrick. You are, famously, [just] as rigourous [as Kubrick] about achieving technical effects in your productions. In Strasbourg, you brought a tank onto the stage, and in Paris, as I have mentioned before, you dropped three cars from the ceiling. Can you give theatregoers an idea of how detailed your technical plans are by describing how you set up the production in Paris, involving the cars, and also, how you made sure no one was hurt?

RC: There were lots of precautions to take… I was terrorized up to the very last minute in Paris. I was mathematically sure, but there was still a part of me that was afraid. I’m not looking for the effect, though [It. fetishistica, gadgetistica]. They are an integral part of the show. They should not be considered as the “clou”. What is important is the weight [massa] these elements have on stage, and the way they are in counterpoint [contrapunto] to a different and much more subtle element. That’s the kind of dynamic I’m looking for. What happens in Paris, before the cars drop from the ceiling, is that a woman tries desperately to ‘drop’ some milk from her breast. It’s actually not milk which is dropping, but cars. There is always a relationship between what happens before and after [il primo e il dopo]. Even the smallest events are always prepared by something which as happened, and they prepare something which is going to happen.

RH: How do you pick the cities which have been involved in the cycle?

RC: That’s a very easy question, because it’s actually the cities that chose me… 

RH: That’s simple… In former works, you haven’t wanted to use trained actors, because you feel they have a self-conscious presence that destroys what you’re trying to achieve theatrically. Can you explain how you select people for your works?

RC: That really depends on the show, but I don’t have preconceptions or a style, in terms of how I choose my actors. I work with professional actors, with film actors, and I have even worked with people who not only had never worked in the theatre, but who never had been in a theatre. So I haven’t got a method.

RH: For instance, in Strasbourg, while in the background through the glass wall of the theatre we watch people watching Hitchcock’s Psycho, inside it would become like an African warscape. There was a mound of earth and African soldiers — women. Where did you find the people who participated in this? 

RC: I looked for African women, not from the second generation, but coming from Africa, because I was interested to work with the language and the direct memory of their own soil [It. terra]. It’s not necessary to see this on stage. The most important is that I work with these elements, that it is there, such as the language of these women and the connection with their country. But it was not a show on Africa. Africa was not the subject of the show. The structure of the work was really more like a classical representation. On the background there was Dürer with Melancholia I, which is kept in Strasbourg, in the Cabinet d’estampes. But in fact, the Melancholia was again counterpointed by Africa, where you cannot be melancholic. It’s a contradiction in the terms.

RH: For the LIFT festival, you’re setting up an Atlas Room in the Bargehouse. Could you explain about it?

RC: Ah, the Atlas. Talking about forms… Talking about London… In London, there is the Warburg Institute, which contains the Mnemosyne Atlas.

RH: It’s an institute in London, which looks at symbolism in European literature and in religion.

RC: No, I believe it’s an institute that keeps the studies and the materials, even physical materials, of Aby Warburg. He was a researcher from Germany, a jew. His collection was moved here, to escape Nazism.

[www.sas.ac.uk/warburg/institute/institute_introduction.htm: “The Institute stems from the personal library of the Hamburg scholar Aby Warburg (1866–1929), whose research centred on the intellectual and social context of Renaissance art. In 1921 this library became a research institute in cultural history, and both its historical scope and its activities as a centre for lectures and publications expanded. In 1933 it moved from Germany to London to escape the Nazi regime, and in 1944 it was incorporated in the University of London. It is now a member-Institute of the University’s School of Advanced Study.”] 

He founded iconology, the study of a form through history, from one civilization or epoch to the next. The Atlas is therefore connected to this exercice of mnemosis, to this collision between different figures. The Atlas is a collection of figures that actually allowed the episodes to be created. And so it’s about the history and the transformation of these forms.

RH: Am I right in saying that people are encouraged to bring their own images?

RC: Yes, this is actually what makes the Atlas alive. It’s a starting point to continue the discovery. This is very interesting to me, because the forms do not belong to me, but to everybody. It’s interesting to see what response this will create in the audience.

RH: That seems like something for Londoners to look forward to. Romeo Castellucci and Alda Terracciano, thank you very much.