7.6.2010
Quai Ouest: Director's Forewords
|
Rachid Zanouda, the director of Quai Ouest, tells about the backgrounds of the performance. There is a sense of true tragedy in Quai Ouest. This has to come out in the performance and in the way it is directed. To release the play from social chains, I think it is very important to take in consideration both the destinies of the characters and the poetic development. This way the play doesn’t become too simplified or banal. Like plays made in the era of Greek Tragedies, Quai Ouest has to participate in making the society better.Bernard-Marie Koltès makes two people, who have nothing in common but an undefined goal, meet each other outside everything, in a state of nothingness. This common goal they have soon becomes the core of the play. The actor playing Charles becomes the leader of the play – every move, every choice, every action that Charles makes has a physical effect on all the people and the play itself. The space on the stage, where the action takes place, could not be made logical. When the play proceeds, the warehouse becomes increasingly chaotic. This makes the space rambling. The development of the characters and the play itself shake the space, it becomes disunited. This place starts to resemble a labyrinth more and more as the play goes on, and the characters must develop: the space is familiar, but they don’t recognize it based on what happens there – or doesn’t happen. The place becomes a cruel world, where everything has to be remade, where each individual becomes a stranger to the others. Theatre is an instrument through which Koltès speaks about the present day in the form of a fictional story. The characters refer to political questions through poetic, simple and direct language and accordant with Greek theatre, even Shakespearean theatre and classical culture. Through the language that the characters use, Bernard-Marie Koltès mediates the political dynamics of the play. The chaos reflects social violence. RACHID ZANOUDA has graduated from the school of Théâtre National de Bretagne. This is the third play by Bernard-Marie Koltès that he directs. The earliear ones, La Nuit juste avant les Forêts (The Night Just Before the Forests) and Dans la Solitude des Champs de Coton (In the Solitude of Cotton Fields), were performed at Binari Binari -festival in San Vito al Tagliamento, Northern Italy, in 2001. This spring Quai Ouest was being performed in Théâtre National de Bretagne, Rennes. The play will also be performed in Modena in October 2010. Quai Ouest Teatterimonttu Fri 6.8. at 19.00 Sat 7.8. at 14.30 & 20.00 Sun 8.8. at 16.00 Performed in French, subtitles in Finnish |
